"An independent conservative group went on the air with a new advertisement on Monday to be followed by a full-length documentary film that tries to portray Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, as an overhyped media darling.


The 30-second spot features a mix of conservative voices, including J. Kenneth Blackwell, OhioÕs former secretary of state; the Rev. Joe Watkins, a Republican strategist; and the commentators Tucker Carlson and Dick Morris. They accuse the news media of harboring a pro-Obama bias, or as Mr. Carlson puts it: ÒThe press loves Obama. I mean not just love, but sort of like an early teenage crush.Ó

The commercial is a prelude to the film, ÒHype: The Obama Effect,Ó which Citizens United plans to release in early September. According to the filmÕs Web site, it will ask Ñ and purport to answer Ñ a few questions about Mr. Obama, including whether he is Òthe uniter the country begs for, or a liberal divider.Ó

Will Holley, a spokesman for the group, said the film would be released in theaters in select markets across the country and offered for sale on DVD.

The Obama campaign declined to comment on the film.

Independent groups like Citizens United are increasingly inserting themselves into the contest between Mr. Obama and the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain. Another advocacy organization, Let Freedom Ring, plans to begin broadcasting a commercial on Tuesday accusing Mr. Obama of being a flip-flopper. The group, Vets for Freedom, is spending $1.5 million on an advertising and grass-roots effort trumpeting what they say is the success of the troop buildup in Iraq....".

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Here they come -- the hard-over defamers and slime-merchants of the far right.

They will obscure, alter and twist anything they can in order to do what they think of as "winning", and in doing so they will directly poison the minds of anyone they can reach, who does not have the will to think clearly for themselves. In doing so they will also make toxic the wellspring of democracy by producing ill-informed citizens. This kind of production always strikes me as something akin to selling cigarettes to pre-teens in third world countries. It is morally disgusting even when legally defensible.

A