We don’t usually hit up gossip site Gawker for our fact-checking. We’re an academic group, and we’re serious and stuff! But we can’t ignore the site’s set-up and take-down of one of the weirder Internet rumors we’ve ever seen.
As most of the Internet knows by now, Gawker both popularized and debunked the claim that President Barack Obama appeared in a 1993 music video for one-hit wonder Tag Team’s infectious "Whoomp (There It Is)." Here’s how it went down:
Whoomp: A tipster sent Gawker the 1993 video,
Boyd’s Ad on Florida Jobs Stretches Truth
Democratic Rep. Allen Boyd of Florida is running a TV ad falsely accusing his primary opponent of having "killed jobs," while exaggerating his own record for creating jobs.
The ad, titled “Job Killer,” has been airing since May 20 in Boyd’s North Florida district.
Job Killer?
Rep. Boyd’s ad goes too far when it charges that his rival, state Sen. Al Lawson, “killed” transportation and hospital jobs when he voted for the fiscal year 2011 state budget.
Halter Questioned On Misleading TV Ad
In an MSNBC interview today — the day of the June 8 Democratic primary runoff in Arkansas — Lt. Gov. Bill Halter was questioned about a TV ad that we here at FactCheck.org said made misleading claims about Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s position on Social Security cuts.
MSNBC reporter Andrea Mitchell, who interviewed Halter, called the ad "the biggest controversy right now." Mitchell showed a clip of "Pauline," which features an elderly woman claiming that Lincoln has threatened to cut Medicare and Social Security if re-elected.
Carly’s Climate Caper
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has been attacking incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer since well before June 8, when Fiorina hoped to lock up the Republican Senate nomination in California. Her latest ad went up just a few days before the primary and falsely accuses Boxer of neglecting terrorism in favor of the weather report.
"One of the very important national security issues we face, frankly, is climate change," Boxer says in a 2007 clip shown in the ad.
Sunday Replay
This Sunday’s round of political talk shows left a few misimpressions, among them the notion that nothing like the BP blowout had happened before. We clear up the confusion.
Barbour on Blowouts
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told "Fox News Sunday" viewers that the BP oil spill is the first time that "anything like this" has happened. Actually, a similar offshore blowout occurred in 1979, gushing thousands of barrels of crude oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico,
Misleading Mailer in NJ
In New Jersey’s 3rd congressional district, Republican candidate Jon Runyan made an early attack on Democratic incumbent John Adler in a campaign flier he released June 1. The flier exaggerates when it says Adler “created” the state’s estate tax, and makes true, but misleading, claims about the congressman’s votes on taxpayer funding for needle exchange programs and the repeal of the state’s death penalty. The flier also provides no specific citations to backup any of its statements.
Halter’s Ad: Misleading Senior Voters
In the final week of Arkansas’ June 8 runoff campaign for the Democratic Senate nomination, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter is running a misleading ad against Sen. Blanche Lincoln that accuses her of "cutting Social Security" and threatening to cut Medicare and Social Security in the future. For sure, there are differences between the two candidates. Lincoln is a strong supporter of reducing the deficit, and is on record as wanting to find "greater efficiencies" in entitlement programs,
It’s True: Massages, Saunas For Inmates
With the June 8 Nevada primary nearing, there was one TV ad in the Republican Senate race that caught our attention. It’s so outlandish that we thought it couldn’t possibly be true. Did former Nevada Assemblywoman Sharron Angle – a Republican backed by the Tea Party Express and the fiscally conservative Club for Growth — sponsor legislation to create a drug rehab program for state prisoners that included saunas and massage therapy? And was that program developed by the Church of Scientology?
Sunday Replay
Did someone in the White House commit a federal misdemeanor by getting involved in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary? A leading Republican House member says yes, but he’s contradicted by a former U.S. attorney general from the Bush administration.
That’s our first subject in this holiday-delayed issue of "Sunday Replay," where we regularly dissect factual claims made on weekend public affairs shows. We also fact-checked a few statements about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Phony ‘Big Oil Bailout’ Claims
In a highly competitive race for an open U.S. Senate seat in Missouri, Secretary of State Robin Carnahan accuses Republican Rep. Roy Blunt of supporting a “Big Oil bailout” and sticking the taxpayers with the cleanup costs. We find the charges to be false.