Obama's a Radical Muslim; McCain's a Racist: Facts, Mud and the Anonymous Expert

I just read that, although John McCain doesn't have an illegitimate child, he's an unreliable racist philanderer, whose wife squanders fortunes on clothing while millions starve. McCain is against women's rights, too. I'll get back to the unreliable, racist, philandering, woman-oppressing McCain later.

Meanwhile, in Kenya, the author of an anti-Obama book has been deported. Presumably because he didn't have a valid work permit.

An American author, Jerome Corsi, was about to launch his book in Kenya. Corsi's "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality" says that Barack Obama is filled with "black rage," and that Obama was raised a Muslim and attended a radical black church.

FOXNews says that "The Obama Nation" uses "innuendoes[!] and false rumors," and repeated the facts of Obama's background.

The Obama campaign says that Corsi is a bigot who is peddling rehashed lies to hurt Obama in the U.S. presidential race.

I think they're both right.

Who Said That? Tracking Down Facts

The FOXNews article on Corsi's deportation included the URL for Fight the Smears: "Obama is a Christian who attended Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, and his campaign picks apart the book's claims on the Web site FightTheSmears.com."

Fight the Smears dot com picks apart Corsi's book in "Unfit for Publication." I think that unmasking that collection of bias is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, but in an election year a campaign has to do that sort of thing.

I looked around for a McCain equivalent of Fight the Smears, and found McCain Fact Check. Sounded promising: there was even the word "fact" in the website's name.

The website's "About Us" page says: "McCainFactCheck.com was built to create an objective platform where the public can find non-biased information regarding John McCain."

In the middle of the home page, right under the banner, there's a list of allegations and facts about McCain. Here's the first half-dozen:

• Does McCain have an illegitimate child?
  No, McCain does not have an illegitimate child....
• Does McCain have the worst attendance record in the U.S. Senate?
  Yes. McCain has missed 64% of the votes cast during the current 110th Congress....
• Did McCain publicly use racial slurs until recently?
  Yes. During his 2000 campaign McCain said he'll hate the "gooks" for as long as he lives, though he later apologized....
• Was McCain unfaithful in marriage?
  Yes. While married McCain courted a beautiful heiress 17 years his junior, whom he married a month after he divorced his first wife....
• Did Cindy McCain wear a $300,000 outfit to the Republican Convention?
  Yes, says Vanity Fair, though mostly because of Cindy's $280,000 earings....
• Does McCain support overturning Roe v. Wade?
  Yes, though during the 2000 campaign he made conflicting statements on the issue....

That may be an unbiased presentation of an unreliable racist philanderer, but I'm not entirely sure.

I like to know where facts come from, and whether they're facts, assumptions, or wishful thinking. So, I checked out who had registered those two domains.

• Fight the Smears is registered by Obama for America, at a North Michigan Avenue address in Chicago
Obama Biden is also registered by Obama for America
• McCain Fact Check is registered as "Private" by DomainsByProxy.com, which has an address on North Hayden Road in Scottsdale, Arizona
• McCain-Palin 2008, has "Private" registration at DomainsByProxy.com, too

DomainsByProxy.com, like all the registration services I'm familiar with, provides customers with the option of keeping personal information about who is registering a domain confidential. Sometimes there's good reason to keep one's identity hidden. There are places in the world where it isn't safe to disagree with the leadership.

Loopy members of various political extremes notwithstanding, America isn't one of those places. If you're going to publish a website with a title like "My Teecher is Stoopid," or have opinions that you don't want your neighbors knowing about, private registration is a good idea.

Make that "anonymous" registration. Of course, in today's American culture, the words "privacy" and "anonymity" are used in almost the same way.

Which brings us to the Anonymous Expert.

'Return With Us Now to the Thrilling Days of Yesteryear: The Anonymous Expert Rides Again!

With a cloud of dust, a flash of words, and a hearty "I'm an expert," the Anonymous Expert rides again.

I wish that unnamed experts and unverified 'facts' were a thing of the past, but they're not.

I'll give Jerome Corsi credit for one thing: He uses what I presume is his own name when he makes up 'facts' about Obama.

That McCain Fact Check website's facts may or may not have come from the same world I live in, but they look like they've been carefully selected, at best.

I don't have quite the same issue with the McCain - Palin 2008 website's "Private" registration as I do with the McCain Fact Check's. The McCain-Palin website has no pretensions about being unbiased: The website is very clear about its position on who should be the next president. McCain - Palin 2008 is obviously run by McCain supporters.

The McCain Fact Check, on the other hand, reminds me on those unnamed experts we read about in the news. Granted, journalists sometimes need to keep their sources confidential, but I'm a little more willing to believe an "expert" when that person is willing to be personally identified with an assertion.

I recommend using FactCheck.org, which "aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics" - and claims to be "a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania". It's registered by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, although the address given is the National Press Building in Washington, D.C. Judging by how annoying to both (or all) sides FactCheck.org can be, I suspect that it actually is non-partisan. And I'd say that an organization interested in political deception and confusion would find more material in the capital than in Pennsylvania.

Best of all, the Annenberg Public Policy Center is a real organization, with a traceable history. So you can make up your own mind about whether what they say is worth reading, or not.

Riding Into the Sunset

And so, it's time to bid adieu to this exciting tale of national politics, rumors, and assertions of unknown provenance.

As the stranger rides off, I turn to to a colorful townsman and say, "Who was that masked man?" He replies, "I thought you knew: that's the Anonymous Expert."

In the news (links added since first posting):

• "Kenya Reportedly Deports American Author of Anti-Obama Book"
  FOXNews (October 7, 2008)
• "Anti-Obama author questioned by Kenyan officials"
  CNN (October 7, 2008)
• "Crossing the Globe to Bring Down Obama"
  LISNews Librarian And Information Science News (October 7, 2008)

The Right to Privacy and/or Anonymity

"Privacy" is important, but I've been interested in the way the term has evolved.

The American Heritage® Dictionary says that "privacy" means "The quality or condition of being secluded from the presence or view of others. b. The state of being free from unsanctioned intrusion: a person's right to privacy. 2. The state of being concealed; secrecy."

That makes sense, to me at any rate.

That "right to privacy" and "condition of being secluded from the presence or view of others" is where things get interesting.

Over the years, I've witnessed people getting upset when retailers put cameras in stores, to inhibit shoplifters. Sometimes the retailer went over the top, with cameras in women's dressing rooms. Generally, though, I'm with the store owners. I pay for what I get, and don't like paying extra to cover the costs of folks who take a five-finger discount.

Now that cameras in stores are accepted, the battle for "privacy" has gone to the streets. And the Web.

For years now, people have been expressing righteous indignation and grave concern over the terrible threat to "privacy" represented by security cameras mounted on light poles, and online merchants keeping track of what a customer buys.

After a while, I realized that these people were not crazy. Rather, their definition of "privacy" was very far removed from mine.

I think of "privacy" as applying to things like:

• Changing my underwear
• Exactly how much is (or isn't) in my bank account
• What my family and I discuss at home

"Privacy" for some people seems to mean not being recognized or remembered when, for example:

• Walking down a sidewalk
• Driving a car
• Looking at something in a store
• Buying something in a store

Those last two points took some real getting used to for me. I love it when someone in a store remembers that I bought a widget last month, and looked at three-pronged blivets last week, and points out a new widget-washing blivet. I may not buy the thing, but I appreciate being told about it.

I've had interesting discussions with acquaintances and friends who are horrified at the sort of invasion of privacy represented by cookies, which track what's done at websites. I see that sort of "spying" as being equivalent to what any half-way alert store owner would do for someone with cash or credit who entered his or her store.

If people are that concerned with "privacy," perhaps they should consider wearing paper bags over their heads when entering a convenience store.

Come to think of it, that would almost guarantee that they get prompt, personal, attention.

A shazam moment struck me some time ago. What many mean when they say "privacy" is what I mean when I say "anonymity."

I have a little more respect for "privacy advocates" now. It seems that what they ardently desire is a world where they are anonymous units in a sea of humanity, going about their solitary existences without knowing, or being known by, those around them.

There's a sort of heroic social asceticism to that desire, but I wouldn't want to live that way.

And I don't. I've lived in a town of 4,000 for the last two decades. There are some folks here who don't know me by sight, but many do. If I walk into a store downtown, the odds are that someone will recognize me. When I drive the family van down main, it would be odd if someone didn't recognize the vehicle, and notice that I was driving it.

And I don't feel that my privacy is being invaded.

Understanding that a branch of the civil liberties community are struggling to establish a citizen's Right to Anonymity has helped me to make sense of an important dialog in contemporary society.

This is a discussion that's likely to get more active, now that cities in the U.S. are talking about following the United Kingdom's lead in using security cameras to dissuade those residents who want to hurt other residents.

A quick look around the Web brought me to a few of the voices in this diverse digital debate. As usual, I don't necessarily agree with all these resources.

• An erudite look at the issue: Privacy as Contextual Integrity ("Interesting law review article by Helen Nissenbaum"). This one is also somewhat diffucult to read. The cited author doesn't seem to believe in paragraph breaks - a communication impediment shared by many in academia.
• The Neighbors Are Watching Via Surveillance Video (from the big-brother-is-next-door dept) "Yes, it's nice to have a world where people are unlikely to commit a crime since they're always being watched, but do we really want a world where no one has any real privacy?" Why are rhetorical questions so common?
• Hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras across America track our behavior every day in the San Francisco Chronicle, October 17, 2004, "It pits the right to privacy, including anonymity in a crowd, against the potent fears of crime and, particularly these days, terrorism." Citing a Supreme Court ruling about "reasonable expectation of privacy," the article states that, as of 2003, "Even the American Civil Liberties Union doesn't object to video surveillance at national monuments and other potential al Qaeda targets." I must be on the right track, when such a respected journal as the San Francisco Chronicle links the right to privacy to anonymity.
• Back-seat fun: careful, they might film you (July 8, 2007), an Australian article, discussing the dangers of security cameras in taxis. There seems to be a lack of security "when the images are downloaded, a report by Victoria's former privacy commissioner" said. The current privacy commissioner agrees.

This is serious: Aussies making out in the back of a cab face the peril of embarrassment.

Or maybe worse. If one or both of the ultrasmoochers have a significant other, that s. o. might be miffed. Or decide to express their displeasure in a crudely physical way.