Hillary and the Darker Side of Obama

The liberal blogosphere is still abuzz over charges that the Hillary Clinton campaign darkened Barack Obama's skin in an ad.

FactCheck.org says, "No."

Some Obama backers cry "racism." We find the accusation to be unsubstantiated.

Summary

Obama supporters on the Internet are agitated over the apparent darkening of Obama's image in a Clinton attack ad.

Our video team took a look. Our conclusions:

---The Obama frames from the ad do appear darker than other video of Obama from the same event.

---However, the YouTube copy of the ad, on which the bloggers base their conclusions, is darker overall than other copies of the ad. We obtained a digital recording of the ad as it actually appeared on a Texas TV station, and it is lighter.

---Furthermore, our analysis of the Obama frames, using Photoshop, shows a fairly uniform darkening of the entire image including the backdrop. It is not just Obama's skin color that's affected.

---Also, nearly all the images in the ad are dark, including those of Hillary Clinton. And dark images are a common technique used in attack ads.

Others will speculate about the Clinton campaign's intentions and motives, as they already have. But without further evidence to the contrary, we see no reason to conclude that this is anything more than a standard attempt to make an attack ad appear sinister, rather than a special effort to exploit racial bias as some Obama supporters are saying.

Will this examination by FactCheck.org put an end to this controversy?

I doubt it.

The Lefties aren't doing themselves any favors with all this in-fighting.