It strikes me that, as a good libertarian, I ought to be exploiting information asymmetries for private profit more aggressively. There appear to be a substantial number of people out there who are swallowing the obviously-bogus story about Michelle Obama calling up the African Press International (hosted at WordPress!) to deliver an insane, self-destructive rant. So let me make them all an offer.
API has promised to release on the Internet an audio recording of their conversation with Michelle Obama verifying their claims. I will wager that either they will not do so within the next week, or that if they do release some audio of someone saying approximately what they’ve attributed to Michelle Obama, it will not, in fact, be her voice. We don’t even have to go by the verdict of the dreaded MSM. If, within the next week, the general consensus at, let’s say, 2/3 of National Review, The Weekly Standard, and The American Spectator is that API has established their case and provided a genuine recording of Michelle Obama, I’ll consider that determinative. I’ll even give 3-1 odds. So if you think this story has even a 50-50 chance of being legit, this should be a pretty sweet bet.
So let’s go folks, here’s your chance to put a Beltway media snob in his place. $50? Anybody?
6 responses so far ↓
1 Jay C. // Oct 15, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Can I bet you and Megan McArdle a drink at the next DC blogger drinkup that I can attend? But not for the “Michelle Obama has gone nuts” audio tape, but rather the video tape of her and Farrakhan freaking out about Whitey, as rumoured by No Quarter.
The API one is just too preposterous to bet fifty bucks on, sorry.
2 Julian Sanchez // Oct 15, 2008 at 7:52 pm
OK, sure. If between now and the election, we see a tape substantially like what was described, and adjudged credible by the same criteria as above, I owe you a drink.
3 Mugenbao // Oct 15, 2008 at 8:02 pm
There is no “Whitey tape”, there is no “API tape”, I’d have to be a complete sucker to take that bet 🙂
I’ve followed many (most?) of the Obama conspiracy stories for the last year, and I’ve just seen to many flimsy and failed attempts to get these stories taken seriously to even *consider* taking that bet.
Not even at 50-to-1 odds.
4 Other Ezra // Oct 15, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Fifty clams, no thanks. Now, if you put all the Obama conspiracies in a pool and offered some kind of default swap derivative, then we’re talking real money.
5 Barry // Oct 29, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Other Ezra // Oct 15, 2008 at 10:58 pm
“Fifty clams, no thanks. Now, if you put all the Obama conspiracies in a pool and offered some kind of default swap derivative, then we’re talking real money.”
That’s an idea – they only real value they have is as a chaff cloud, to delude people who think that they’re being clever by saying ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire’ [or really, who hate Obama anyway].
6 One Fine Jay » I make funny bets // May 22, 2009 at 10:39 pm
[…] African Press blog claims is on audio tape. I don’t believe there is such an audio tape. So I bet instead on the “Whitey video” surfacing some time before the […]