False ‘Death Panel’ Rumor Has Some Familiar Roots - NYTimes.com
But the rumor — which has come up at Congressional town-hall-style meetings this week in spite of an avalanche of reports laying out why it was false — was not born of anonymous e-mailers, partisan bloggers or stealthy cyberconspiracy theorists.
Rather, it has a far more mainstream provenance, openly emanating months ago from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating President Bill Clinton’s health care proposals 16 years ago, including the editorial board of The Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 health care critique made her a star of the conservative movement (and ultimately, New York’s lieutenant governor).
What? But this is grassroots-fucking-dumbshit-douchbaggery! How dare it be orchestrated by people who....
what's that? Oh, right, right, I forgot. It's theater, not democracy.
It's really sad that because a couple thousand people stand to lose a couple thousand million dollars, they'll make shit up instead of try and come up with logical arguments against the reform (and trust me, logical arguments exist).
