"Whitey" Tape Looking Pretty Shady

LJ points to a pro-Hillary site called HillBuzz, which now claims:

Here's what's known so far:

The Michelle Obama Rant Tape was filmed between June 26th - July 1st 2004 in Chicago, IL at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Conference at Trinity United Church: specifically the Women's Event.

Michelle Obama appeared as a panelist alongside Mrs. Khadijah Farrakhan and Mrs. James Meeks.

Bill Clinton spoke during the Conference, as did Bill Cosby and other speakers, but not at the panel Michelle attended.

Michelle Obama spoke at the Women's Event, but referenced Bill Clinton in her rant --- his presence at the conference was the impetus for her raving, it seems.

For about 30 minutes, Michelle Obama launched into a rant about the evils of America, and how America is to blame for the problems of Africa. Michelle personally blamed President Clinton for the deaths of millions of Africans and said America is responsible for the genocide of the Tutsis and other ethnic groups. She then launched into an attack on "whitey", and talked about solutions to black on black crime in the realm of diverting those actions onto white America. Her rant was fueled by the crowd: they reacted strongly to what she said, so she got more passionate and enraged, and that's when she completely loses it and says things that have made the mouths drop of everyone who's seen this.

The "tape" is a DVD that Trinity United sold on its website, and possibly offered free for download up until March 2008 when Trinity's site was scrubbed and the DVDs were no longer offered for sale.

DrewM. wants to know if the tape enjoyed such large-scale circulation (or at least was easily downloadable) it hasn't leaked yet. It would be in at least several dozen hands, wouldn't it?

The HillBuzz blogger says all that's necessary is for reporters to track the tape down and watch it. But that presumes it exists in the first place, and this latest nugget (which seems, I don't know, kinda just made up) makes that proposition even more dubious than before.

I don't like how this isn't sourced at all -- "here's what's known," as if knowledge just floated about in the air -- nor do I much like how we are being offered more and more details about the tape -- where, when, why -- without actually being offered the tape. If so damn much is known about the tape, then someone has it, and if someone has it, then where the hell is it?

It wouldn't be terribly hard to simply begin reeling off ostensibly confirmatory details about a tape that doesn't exist. It is, after all, impossible to prove a negative. The next batch of details will tell us what Michelle Obama was wearing when she launched into her anti-Whitey rant -- and those details aren't hard to provide; after all, we have a picture of her at the conference, posing with fellow panelists -- and so on and so forth, each new detail offered up to convince people that with so many verifiable details about the circumstances of the rant, the tale about the rant must also be true.

But it doesn't have to be. I can start claiming that Michelle Obama actually murdered someone at this event, providing the same details (when, where, why, what she was wearing, how she had her hair) to suggest that I must know something.

All we know is what we already knew -- she was there at a certain time and spoke on a panel. Providing additional details about a triviality doesn't establish the veracity of the important alleged fact.

posted by Ace at 12:25 PM

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