dy156

You probably all have heard about the Kerry intern rumors that the Drudge broke, and they appear to have lost steam.

In Texas, there have been rumors spreading like wildfire that Gov. Rick Perry was having an affair with a newly appointed Secretary of State, a male lawyer, and that Anita Perry had left the Governor and was filing for divorce. Literally everyone in Texas political circles was talking about it, and wondering when the story would "break" into the media. Whispered conversations at Republican campaign events, emails, not so whispered conversations from big Democrats, I've never seen anything like it. I'm not making this up. I looked today out of curiousity, and found it discussed all over the internet.

See, for example:

Acknowledgement of the rumors in legitimate media sources-

here -down the page a bit

here

discussion of the rumor itself-

here- a forum -there is one popup ad

here

here

However, it was not an internet rumor. I heard about it mostly from old powerful men, who, from my expereience, are not big users of the internet. It was actually, honestly, a spread by word of mouth rumor/gossip. What made it so weird was that the people who were spreading it were not the young Democratic party operatives one might expect. Recently though, this article in the Dallas Morning News seems to put at least part of the rumor to rest. (can't cut and paste it for some reason, but it describes a trip the Governor, his wife, and big donors took to the Carribean recently)

Now that the rumor seems to have been refuted, I thought it would make a great topic of coversation about whether you trust political rumors, thinking that where there's smoke, there's fire, or if you actually think the traditional media covers all the real news, and we can have this discussion without being partly to blame for the further spreading of this rumor.

(I also wanted to post this in case anyone else reading this had heard these same rumblings, because I bet the refutation of the rumor will not spread with quite the intensity that the original rumor did.)

edit-the slate blurb now points to another blurb, that mentions the Dallas Morning News article

Superbelt

Burnt Orange Report is the place I have been going to follow up on this story.

http://www.burntorangereport.com/archives/001102.html

I haven't seen any resolution to it yet though. Has there been any?

dy156

Well, I figured that when there was a story in the Dallas paper about how he and his wife went to the carribean, and they both showed up together at the new Austin Arena League Football game together, at least the part of the rumor about how she had left him was false. Once that fell, the other bits just seemed so far-fetched to me that I've discounted the rumors completely, even given who I had heard them from. While it may not be a final resolution, it looked like D Magazine and MSN Slate also acknowledged the rumors, but decided they were false as well, so I thought it was okay to talk about it.

Superbelt

Well if she does finally file for divorce this is all moot, but isn't it possible she went with him as her "duty" or she possibly decided enough was enough and decided to finally divorce him after she went on that trip?