Obama Derangement Syndrome Documented

Salon has a great piece up debunking the wingnuttiest myths surrounding Obama. Some examples:

Myth: Republican Chrysler dealers were targeted for closure.

Who's spreading it: Michelle Malkin, World Net Daily, Doug Ross, the Washington Examiner, the Zero Hedge blog

What they believe: The Obama administration told Chrysler which of its dealerships needed to be closed -- and they wielded that power for political ends, punishing dealers who donated to Republicans while protecting Democrats. And the numbers prove it: The vast majority -- nearly all, in fact -- of the closed dealerships were owned by Republican dealers.

What is real: This one actually deserved looking into. After all, when the government takes over a major car company and starts having a hand in its business decisions, there's the possibility for all sorts of malfeasance. But it just didn't turn out to be true.

The reason so many of the closed dealerships were owned by Republican donors? Well, almost all car dealerships, period, are owned by Republicans. What statistical evidence there is to back up the hypothesis is flawed and basically meaningless. And Chrysler, not the administration, decided which dealerships to shutter.

However, now, like all good conspiracy theories, the proponents of this one have refused to let it die. One mathematical analysis showed no favoritism toward Democrats, and no targeting of Republicans -- but it did seem to indicate (if you're a little rusty on your statistics) a trend toward favoring Clinton donors. So now the hypothesis has shifted, and to back it up, the people advancing the theory are pointing to one dealer group in particular. Owned by people like Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson, a major backer of Hillary Clinton in 2008, and Mack McLarty, who served as White House press secretary in Bill Clinton's administration, it didn't lose a single dealership.

Sure, that might seem at first like an indication of something nefarious. But if you seriously think the Obama team is risking everything to protect a guy who brought up their candidate's drug use on the trail during the Democratic primary, well, we have an American car company we'd like to sell you.

There's another half-dozen of these, and the fact that five months into the man's term there's an actual need to still do this shows just how far journalism has fallen in this country.