The Obama campaign has launched a microsite at FightTheSmears.com, debunking the attacks du jour against him (and his wife): No video exists of Michelle Obama using the word “whitey”, Barack isn’t a Muslim, and he actually does put his hand over his heart when saying the Pledge of Allegiance. But why exactly did the campaign feel compelled to do this, and why won’t we be seeing a similar site from the McCain campaign? A quick visit to Snopes.com may offer an explanation.

The spread of email hoaxes has been around since the beginning of the Tubes, and Snopes.com, a site dedicated to debunking or confirming urban legends, has been around for nearly as long. Because of email’s ubiquitous presence in our lives, it’s unsurprising that the most popular urban legends viewed on the site originate from email chain letters.

Most urban legends in Snopes.com’s Hot 25 list deal with computer viruses, cell phones, missing children, and things related to consumerism. But the decidedly political items all have an overt ideological and rightward bent to them:

• 2. is dedicated to all things Obama.
• 4. is a pro-Bush, but fake, essay by Jay Leno.
• 9. is a false rumor that Speaker Pelosi plans to implement a 100% tax on “stock market windfall profits”.
• 19. details various email chains about Hugo Chavez, his remarks about President Bush, and Citgo, Venezuela’s state-controlled oil company. While the first email detailed actually seems to be anti-Bush, it is so over the top that it appears to be an effort to link liberals in America with Chavez. Other emails speak of boycotting Citgo as a countermeasure against ‘American haters”.
• 20. is a false rumor about the “In God We Trust” motto being removed from US coins.
• 25. is a compilation of emails circulating about Social Security. All false items are uniformly anti-Social Security.

To be sure, there have been many hoax chain letters spread with left-leaning or anti-Bush slants to them. But the popular ones today all seem to be conservative in nature. And they’re quite effective, as evidenced by the Obama campaign’s new microsite.

Why are conservatives more apt to spread these emails around? The most reasonable explanation is that it’s a natural extension to talk radio, which has been dominated by the right for decades. But that’s just my conjecture, and as a liberal Democrat, I certainly don’t claim to understand the conservative mind. What do you think?

UPDATE: At the aptly named Hot Air, it's been discovered that FightTheSmears.org (.org, not .com), was never registered by the Obama campaign, and the domain owner has decided to have some fun with it. While it was originally a not-very-funny parody of the authentic site, it currently contains pornography and is definitely not work safe. Despite the glee over this screw up, it's not actually harmful as of yet, as the campaign has secured the much more valuable .com domain and already has the top Google result for "fight the smears". It would be interesting if some SEO was attempted by the parody site.

UPDATE 2: FightTheSmears.org has been updated for the third time in a matter of hours, now with some strange, semi-serious mission statement. A quick WHOIS lookup of both FightTheSmears.net and FightTheSmears.org reveals that the domains are owned by a fellow in Buffalo, NY. Interestingly, FightTheSmears.com isn't even owned by the Obama campaign or their vendor Blue State Digital, but rather by a web designer living in Chicago (who may or may not be employed by the campaign).