So apparently those annoying emails you get in your inbox from right-wing friends and relatives are part of a larger conspiracy to spread lies and misinformation about the left. Who knew? Apparently Christopher Hayes does, as he's written a long, detailed examination of the issue for the Nation.
The idea that there is some kind of mysterious and malevolent force out there that prompts bored, and one would assume largely middle-aged, conservatives to forward chain emails is absurd on its face. People do this of their own free will, and besides, I'm not sure what Hayes's solution would be other than to form some new government bureaucracy to monitor people's email to make sure that the contents have been properly fact-checked (after all, some magazines don't even fact-check stories before publication). Still, there's one part of his story that is itself a smear:
That leads to the $64,000 question: are these anonymous attacks organic emanations of the diffuse political consciousness, or are they deliberately seeded by professional political operators? Mikkelson is skeptical that anyone could intentionally write the kind of e-mail that would take off virally. "Even people who are steeped in it, it's very, very difficult to start something deliberately that will catch on." Still, there's some evidence it's been done. Snopes determined that a gushing pro-Bush e-mail from 2004 about watching the President worship in the pews of St. John's Church in Washington was actually written by the press spokeswoman for Republican Senator Lamar Alexander. Her name is Laura Lefler, and she now works for Senator Bob Corker. I tried to contact Lefler to get a sense of what inspired her to write the e-mail and how, exactly, she disseminated it, but she wouldn't return my calls or e-mails.
So Hayes couldn't get a hold of Lefler, and what does he do? He insinuates that her email is "evidence" of a smear that has been "deliberately seeded" by a professional political operator. First off, I know Lefler very well and I discussed her now famous email (or it would be famous if anyone read the Nation) with her at the time. She didn't smear anyone, she wrote a note about her own experience of a chance meeting with the president of the United States during Sunday morning mass. She sent it to her family and friends, who in turn sent it to their friends, who in turn forwarded it to their church congregations, until just about every person south of the Mason-Dixon line had received a copy.
Lefler was horrified that the missive had garnered so much attention. She had sent the email from her work account, which is against Senate rules, and which led to hundreds of phone calls to Senator Alexander's office seeking to verify that it was genuine. She had a pretty rough time with the whole thing--she'd erred in using a Senate email account for a personal communication, and her office was inundated with calls about the note for weeks. No one there was happy with the outcome, including Lefler.
But the note was neither a smear against a political opponent, nor part of some larger conspiracy to soften the president's image among religious conservatives. And the fact that Lefler wouldn't return Hayes's calls shouldn't have come as a surprise. The entry about the note at snopes.com, which Hayes clearly read, contains a statement from Senator Alexander's spokesmen that makes quite clear the office's displeasure with the whole affair.
But Hayes didn't let a lack of evidence prevent him from drawing conclusions that would paint his political opponents in a bad light. He smeared her, and not in some personal correspondence, but in a publication that is supposed to have higher standards.
