The other night I went to an election-returns watch party at a pub near my house (this is what dorks do in DC), and some time after CNN called Maryland for Barack Obama a well-dressed stranger came up to me and asked who I thought had more baggage in the general election -- Obama or Clinton (this is what big dorks do in DC).

Not so confident in my own handicapping abilities -- and figuring the inquisitive gentleman had an argument he was just dying to make -- I said "I don't know, what do you think?"

A mistake, but a revealing one.

"Obama, easily! I mean, he's a MUSLIM," the young man said. My brow raised like a kite. I was unsure which tack to take first: the bigotry angle, or the accuracy angle. I went with the latter. (It turned out that my ignorant itinerant thought it horrible that being a Muslim was a liability, which was a relief.)

I had little trouble convincing the guy that Obama is a member of the UCC, but he held fast to "well, he's definitely a former Muslim. I mean, he went to a Wahabbi madrassa in Indonesia, and his dad was a radical, like almost al Qaeda radical. He will get ripped apart for that!"

Good flipping grief.

A couple months back, I wrote about what I call the matrix of deceit, the swirling combination of false reports on Fox News, misleading headlines, "accidentally" calling him "Osama" (Romney did twice in one speech), viral emails, and good old fashioned word-of-mouth creating a dishonest, bigotry-stoking buzz. I knew it was out there, and I knew people believed it, but seeing is more than believing. It amazed me that the rumor could turn even an unbigoted observer against him.