Hurriedly Trying To Figure Out The History Of This Thing Before It Gets Erased From The Internet

My curiosity was piqued about how the liberal blog The Daily Kos was apparently the starting point of the false "Trig is Bristol's son" rumors that forced the McCain/Palin campaign to acknowledge that Bristol is pregnant. The scurrilous nature of the rumors forced the Obama campaign to denounce anyone associated with them. Whatever rumors these were, they were very powerful ones if they perturbed Obama too!

I was a little surprised that The Daily Kos might be the first blog to traffic in such rumors, mostly because, in the hen-peck hierarchy of left-bloggerdom, The Daily Kos is on top, not on the bottom, where one would presume such rumors would start. If anything, the Daily Kos compiles information from elsewhere, it doesn't start rumors. It's like the Encyclopedia Brittanica Of Left-Blogistan.

But because The Daily Kos has so many diarists, and so many more-or-less independent cells, it can troll both the top and the bottom of the rumor universe at the same time, like some kind of information sieve. An out-of-control balleen whale of gossip, should The Daily Kos choose, with people at the bottom starting rumors and people at the top simultaneously shooting them down. It could be made more efficient than Entertainment Tonight at spreading scurrilous rumors, if its contributors were interested in moving in that direction (which they usually aren't, except when they are). A very powerful information tool!

Today (so soon!), the scurrilous story is gone from Daily Kos. The history of this event is being dropped down the memory hole faster than you can blink your eyes. Amnesia cures all ails! But this time, it culprit isn't the usual suspects - Karl Rove and the Bush Administration - but more-affable folks one would think would be above this.

Fortunately the story was cached, and can be found at this site, and hopefully no one else will try to drop bombs on it - for the historical record, of course!

And the false rumor performed a useful function, which was to dislodge actual fact into the public realm.

Hail Gossip!