Snopes (aka pro-Obama Smear Machine) Watch

Yeah, Snopes is in the tank for Obama. Still.

It starts right away:

Claim: During a campaign stop, Barack Obama said that he had visited "fifty-seven states."

Status: Multiple — see below.

Remember when I said earlier that Snopes at least got the truth-value of its urban legends right, even if the explanation would veer off the path of veracity? I take it back.

Simply put, this claim is true. Not kind of true, not both true and false (uh...), but true. That Obama was tired, or that people may have interpreted Obama's statement to mean something about Islam, can go in the explanation, you damned hacks.

I'm starting (ok, I'm already there) to regard Snopes as having all the accuracy of Wikipedia. So, some on trivial matters, none where it counts. Yay!

This was cute (this is actually from Snopes's explanation, not an Obama press release):

On the campaign trail in Beaverton, Oregon, in May 2008, an obviously tired Barack Obama mistakenly told a crowd that over the course of the long campaign he had been to fifty-seven states in the U.S., with one left to go

Emphasis added. I'll note that Obama appears "obviously tired" whenever he doesn't have a teleprompter in front of him. In other words, the supposed brilliant orator is...not.

Snopes doubles down by trying to tie criticism of Obama's gaffe with Islamophobia:

Quickly enough, based on the (spurious) rumor that Senator Obama is a Muslim, someone came up with the fanciful idea that his mention of "fifty-seven states" was a reference to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which has 57 member states.

I have never heard of this "fanciful idea" before, and I'm not exactly surfing Obama-friendly sites. I can only imagine that Snopes is including it to associate people who think Obama is a gaffe machine with people who think he's a secret Muslim; you know, sane critics and insane critics.

Way to smear us, Snopes.