After a wretched week for the Allen campaign, in which they've continually been playing defense, some of Allen's blog goons have opted to go on the offensive. I can't say I blame them--if my candidate had been outed as a racist with an apparent problem with Jews, I'd probably try to regain the upper hand too.
In a post this morning on the blog "Allen's A-Team," blogger Jim Rittinger attempts to smear Webb by association. What he does is delve into the hundreds of thousands of comments here to find some unsavory words to link to James Webb. His line of thinking is that because Markos has endorsed Webb, and because Markos runs DailyKos. Webb is therefore responsible for what any of our 100K+ members have written. Absurd, but when there are over 100,000 people posting several-hundred thousands (millions?) of comments, you're sure to find something bad and I'd guess they'll take what they can get.
Unfortunately, "Allen's A-Team" is as dishonest as Mr. Allen is inclined towards using racist terms. Join me after the jump to learn exactly how.
Ignoring the dishonesty of his tactic, Rittinger/A-Team took a quote from a Daily Kos member, chopped it down and removed context to achieve his end result of making him look like a vulgar anti-Semite (and by association, James Webb, of course). What follows are some screen shots, context, and a case study into the banality of evil that is George Allen's senate campaign. Bonus points for whoever gets that reference.
Below is a quote that the "A-Team" cherry picked from this diary written by Kos.
On it's face, it looks pretty bad. It's stupid to suggest James Webb is somehow at fault for a comment made by someone before he was even a Democratic nominee for Senate, but it still looks bad. It's also a crock (here's a larger capture of the page).
Here is what Allen's A-Team quoted:
"As everyone knows, Jews only care about the welfare of other Jews. Thanks for reminding everyone of this most salient fact, so that we might better ignore all that Jewish propoganda."-tomjones, December 7, 2005
Here is the real quote:
right
because as everybody knows, jews ONLY care about the welfare of other jews; thanks ever so much for reminding everyone of this most salient fact, so that we might better ignore all that jewish propaganda about participating in the civil rights movement of the 60s and so on
Allen's A-Team removed the emphasis on "ONLY" and truncated the quote after they misspelled Jones's correct spelling of the word "propaganda" to leave out the end of his post that read: "about participating in the civil rights movement of the 60s and so on." Why would they do this? To make you think it was a sincere expression of the poster in question (tomjones) and not the clearly sarcastic rejoinder countering an anti-Semitic statement that it actually was.
This is the same blog that goes after Lowell Feld and Raising Kaine with a vicious vengance. Considering how adamant Allen is in asserting his non-Judaism, he may want to have his goons review that biblical passage in the Book of Matthew about the beam in their collective eye.