The things one finds when looking for something else: A 1999 Rhinoceros Times front-pager on Y2K telling readers to be afraid...be very afraid.

Obama-era conspiracy theories got nothing on Clinton-era conspiracy theories. 

Comments

[Jeff]

Wish I could have read more about the chain link fence.

[Andrew Brod]

"Obama-era conspiracy theories got nothing on Clinton-era conspiracy theories."

That's what the promoters of Obama-era conspiracy theories would like us to think.

[Ed Cone]

Not sure what you're saying, Dr. Brod.

Obama nuttery comes with extra racism/otherism, but if you look back at some Hammer faves like Clinton's Trail of Dead Bodies!, The Murder of Ron Brown!, and so on, it's hard to say the intensity is higher now.

That's not in any way to excuse or diminish the Obama nuttery, just sayin' it's been a long run of crazy.

[John]

Every president faces criticism. To be fair, much of the vitriol aimed at Mr. Obama has been over the top. He's not a Muslim. He was not born anywhere except right here in the good ol' USA. He's not a socialist, or a communist or a fascist or a (fill in the blanks-ish).

What he is, is a lousy president. On that measure, any criticism leveled at Mr. Obama is completely fair game. To assume that said criticism is fueled by racism alone is pure, 100% weapons-grade bullshit.

At this stage of the game, that's all that the die-hard Obama apologists have to fall back on. "You hate him because he's black!" "You WANT him to fail!" "You've never supported ANYTHING he's done!"

Bush was a lousy president, too. Was criticism against him over the top? I would say so.

As Ed points out, it was just as deranged for Bill Clinton, too. I recall nutjobs like Chuck Harder saying Clinton ran cocaine out of an airstrip in Medina, Arkansas. Let's not forget the Vince Foster murder rumors, either.

Ed is right, it's been a long run of crazy. What sends me around the bend is the attempt to marginalize or silence criticism of Obama because everyone who says a bad word against our president is doing so behind a white sheet.

[Ed Cone]

I don't think anyone's done that in this thread, John, have they?

[Daniel Foster]

It's unfortunate that potentially legitimate criticisms of White House policy are detracted by this behavior (as an aside I was also repulsed by the more egregious act of transposing swastikas on the previous president's forehead):

"In his back page weekly column, "Under The Hammer" he has repeatedly questioned -- and never seems satisfied -- with the president’s birth certificate. He repeatedly questioned Obama’s family connections to the Muslim community, and claims that we really know almost nothing about this man in the White House. The subtext being that he’s a dark and possibly evil mystery man, even though there are multiple biographies of him in every bookstore and library. Of late, Hammer’s been questioning how Obama could possibly have made his way into Harvard.

But perhaps most telling is Hammer’s constant use of Barack Obama’s middle name, "Hussein." His repetitive use of the middle name -- we don’t recall this being a common practice since FDR was in office -- seems more intended to insinuate a Muslim connection and to drive home the point that Obama is not like you and me.

No matter that his is one of the few publications, other than blatantly racist blogs, that do that. And it’s no surprise that The Rhinoceros Times doesn't use the middle names of the mayor, city council members or county commissioners when referring to them."

http://archive.today/u7Gxy#selection-1293.0-1301.24

[NitWitCharmer]

Were the Y2K fears conservative in nature?

Seemed fairly bipartisan to me.

[Ed Cone]

Yeah, I don't think Y2K fever had a defined political bias.

In this case, though, you have a Clinton fantasist who adopted Y2K into his conspiracy menagerie and gave it his usual spin -- blaming the media for spreading complacency, when a more realistic charge would have been blaming the media for spreading fear.

Here's another, current, politically agnostic scare story that the media is making worse.

[Leatherwing]

John, the supposed Clinton smuggling was out of Mena, AR. There is no Medina, AR.