In other words, to put a fine point on things, the media, especially the entertainment media, can and have served a persuasive or propagandistic function. They can, in theory, turn populations any way they want if the messages are well done and thematically consistent, whether we're talking about films, Internet, television, print, and radio. These platforms are so powerful and so easy and so rapid in their ability to disseminate misleading political messages that there is little chance these messages will "go away" by themselves.

Thus, ironically and, fortunately, at least for Obama, there was probably a good lesson learned from Sen. John Kerry's ill-fated 2004 presidential campaign: Rumor and disputable or false allegations delivered in a hit-and-run fashion or virally spread across the Internet cannot be ignored, cannot be neutralized, cannot be vanquished by taking the non-reactive "high road." To borrow from Colin Powell's war doctrine, if you're going after an enemy, hit the enemy with overwhelming force. To which one should add, do it quickly and do it consistently. Barack Obama has chosen to do just that. He probably won't convert the core Republican base but he may inoculate the uninformed, the undecided or the "leaners" from being seduced by big lies repeated and repeated until they feel like truths. We'll see now how well fighting lies and innuendos with truths and corrections, and fighting them with overwhelming force works in cyberspace. May the force be with him.