As soon as I saw the sad news story that Tafari Campbell, the personal chef of the Obamas, had drowned last Sunday while swimming near Martha’s Vineyard, I knew that conspiracy mongers would seize upon it, since any tragic event connected to the Obamas or Clintons is like catnip to them. And sure enough, they have.
The death of Tafari Campbell, a Barack Obama employee whose body was recovered near the former president’s home on Martha’s Vineyard on Monday, has sparked a wave of entirely unverified conspiracy theories online.
A number of prominent right-wing accounts, some with hundreds of thousands of followers, have questioned the official version of events. One described Campbell’s death on the Massachusetts island as “strange” and asked “what do you think really happened?”
…Liz Crokin is a Trump supporter and advocate of the QAnon conspiracy theory that says America is secretly being run by a cabal of satanic child molesters. She asked, “what did he know?” referring to Campbell.
…The Carrie loves America Twitter account, which has 102,000 followers and a picture of Trump as its headed image, wrote: “Tafari Campbell isn’t the only person who has died inexplicably in Obama’s orbit.
“Did you know that the woman who verified the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate, Loretta Fuddy, was the only person to die in a plane crash in Hawaii in 2013. Everyone else survived,” the Carrie loves America account added.
Fuddy was responsible for approving the release of Obama’s long-form birth certificate in 2011. In December 2013, the 65-year-old was the only fatality when a light aircraft crashed off the coast of Hawaii, which an investigation attributed to “catastrophic engine failure.”
The Fuddy story illustrates the weird logic of these people The fact she was the only person who died in the crash is seen as the clue to it being suspicious. Somehow we are asked to think that the people who wanted to kill her and engineered the plane crash were able to arrange it so as to make just one person die. Surely it would have been easier to kill them all or, if they had some scruples about doing that, to just kill her on land in a car accident or something, rather than this far more complicated plan? But it is the convoluted nature of the plans that is appealing to conspiracists. Something that is straightforward is simply no fun for them.
Along those same lines, undoubtedly by now you’ve heard the reports about the lone star tick whose bite may cause a reaction in some people leaving them allergic to eating red meat. How long will it be before some conservative conspiracy creator/promoter* claims that it was engineered in a lab by liberal scientists so that people could no longer eat meat, all part of the global climate change/environmental agenda?
*I refuse to call them “conspiracy theorists” because it does a huge disservice to the concept of a scientific theory. I think calling them conspiracy promoters helps to delegitimize them, because many people associate “promoter” in this context as an individual standing to personally gain from it.
That is a name out of the past.
Ed Brayton, one of the founders of FTBs, used to write about her occasionally.
Liz Crokin is a sad case. She has real documented brain damage from a viral infection.
One of the few right wingnuts who has a valid excuse for their delusions.
I saw it coming, too.
I hate being right. Of course, now I don’t have to worry about the porkypines . . . .
Crap. Sorry. The whole middle portion is a giant borkquote.
[I fixed it. Mano]
Wow. You can see into the future AND defeat Borkquotia, accolyte of Typos. I am impressed.
The next panic: COVID was designed to kill republicans. Especially in Ohio.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2807617
(via BoingBoing)
Mr. Campbell overcooked the bébé flambé with adenochrome sauce. You don’t do that in the Obama kitchen!