A friend of mine just sent me a scurrilous email she’d gotten about Barack Obama, and asked me whether I had a response to the allegations in it. I did, but I knew it’d take a while — I’d have to get cites together, etc. I told her that I’d try to get to it tomorrow, and thanked her for sending it to me!

Meanwhile, I went ahead and forwarded it to the address given at the “Fight The Smears” website. Figured I’d do my little bit of reportage before getting down to the nitty-gritty.

Five minutes later — literally five minutes later — I received a response from the Obama campaign, addressing in great detail the specific allegations made in the email.  I won’t quote the whole thing but the Snopes rebuttal (one of several links in the email) is here.

I’m sure that the the email I received from the Obama campaign wasn’t, like, composed on the spot, but the speed with which the specific smear was identified and the corrective was sent out still astounds me.