Et Tu, Washington Post?

The Lie That Will Not Die

Here's the Washington Post front page "news" story of the "assumption" of a conservative Republican that Barack Obama is Muslim. As the Daily Kos reports, "Actually, calling them rumors gives them too much credence. It would be more accurate to call them blatant lies, yet the Washington Post has decided to give them a national platform. The only thing missing from this story is the siren at the top of the page."

The Post article even goes so far as to use the Snopes.com mythbusting website to continue the attack, only to leave out that Snopes reports the rumor is false.

Kos:

Another e-mail, on a site called Snopes.com that tracks Internet rumors, starts, "Be careful, be very careful." It notes that "Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim," and that "since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when you are seeking political office in the United States, Obama joined the United Church of Christ to help purge any notion that he is still a Muslim."

This is immediately followed with a line about a CBS poll that showed, "a huge number of voters said they did not know Obama's faith." What the Washington Post didn't bother to address? What Snopes.com had to say about the story:

Claim: Illinois senator Barack Obama is a, "radical, ideological Muslim."
Status: False.

It's over. The Washington Post has become the Weekly World News.

**UPDATE: Bob Cesca at Huffington Post has more.