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In 2004, John Kerry discounted advice that he should respond quickly and firmly to the swiftboating libels sweeping through the internet with the infectivity of Avian Flu in a chicken coop. He paid the price.
Barack Obama and his friends had learned that lesson, and when the scurrilous campaign began months ago suggesting that he was a Muslim, they worked hard to beat it down. To set the record straight, a new website has even been created: IsBarackObamaMuslim.com. Web surfers curious about the answer to the question posed by the site’s domain name are answered definitively: “No.”
Despite these efforts, however, the lies have continued to circulate over email and the internet. Now, in the run-up to this weekend’s primary in Puerto Rico, they seem to have taken on a new form. A viral email containing a Spanish-language Power Point illustrated with crudely photoshopped pictures of Obama repeats the old slander that he was born and brought up a Muslim and is, in effect, a terrorist sleeper posing as a Christian. It concludes by calling on voters - Latino voters, presumably - to “Vote for Hillary Clinton or John McCain but not for a radical Muslim, masquerading as a westerner, who wants to be in the most powerful position in the planet.” An apocalyptic image of Obama, with hellfire ringing his head, accompanies the message. Its caption reads: “America will bow down to Islam”.
An indignant friend sent me a copy that had been passed on blithely by a former employee in Latin America, who obeyed the injunction at the end of the vicious display to send it to all her friends in the US.
And they have been sending it. My friend and I tracked the email back through several iterations before the email addresses were deleted. But it obviously has already enjoyed wide circulation from people who really should know better. Just scrutinizing the fuzzy photo credits reveals that several of the images were lifted from a site, www.freakingnews.com that actually runs continual photoshopping competitions! But few readers will check these things before passing them on. Indeed the English version claimed it had been verified by Snopes.com the web’s main hoax detector - which in fact had categorically refuted its accusations.

commentisfree.guardian.co.uk