Hotline details a memo from the Obama camp on the Madrassa story. Key paragraph:
To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago. Furthermore, the Indonesian school Obama attended in Jakarta is a public school that is not and never has been a Madrassa. These malicious, irresponsible charges are precisely the kind of politics the American people have grown tired of, and that Senator Obama is trying to change by focusing on bringing people together to solve our common problems.
The Hotline gang have three interpretations – one that Obama wants to bash Fox News to score points among liberals, one that “Obama with not be swiftboated” (snort) and the most intriguing:
The story still has legs, and Obama’s staff are concerned that the madrassa rumor will never be fully put to bed unless it’s tucked under the covers by Obama himself. Obama, we’re told, was asked about the madrassa story at least six times yesterday. One reporter wasn’t aware that CNN had proven the rumor false.
When a politician gets confronted with an allegation like this, they usually face a certain paralysis – do they respond with a vehement and vocal denial, or does that call more attention to the original charge? Obama’s team clearly has decided to pull out the stops in their denial.
But you wonder how often this charge is going to float around the Internet like an urban legend, forwarded via e-mail among those who don’t follow the news, or who don’t believe the denials, or who simply don’t pay attention to the denials.