The first email arrived in my inbox at 10:34 a.m. "Thought you might want to check this out," wrote Digg user "southjaw." The next one came at 10:50, from a reader with the handle "misssbd": "Since the media broke the story about Barack's bitter comments to help Hillary in PA, let's see if they are going to break this story concerning Indiana voters......." "How about an article on this video to the Indiana voters?" wrote another eager correspondent, about an hour later. And the links kept coming: 12:56, 1:08, 2:03, 2:09 and so on. Each one was steering me to a video clip posted this morning on YouTube--a clip that supposedly showed, in the words of the original Digg story, "Bill Clinton Campaign Chairman and Hillary Clinton '08 Advisor Mickey Kantor tell[ing] George Stephanapoulos and James Carville: 'Look at Indiana...it doesn't matter if we win. Those people are sh*t. How would you like to be a worthless white ni**er?'"

The point, I suppose, was clear: supporters of Barack Obama were finally getting revenge. "If the company candidates keep is as important as your coverage of Rev. Wright implies," wrote one reader, "then Kantor's continued association with Hillary Clinton and her campaign certainly is noteworthy. Most specifically, to the voters of Indiana." The only problem: the video doesn't actually catch Kantor saying any of those things. Excerpted from "The War Room," a 1992 D.A Pennebaker documentary about Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign, the footage depicts Kantor and former Bill Clinton aides James Carville and George Stephanopoulos marveling over preliminary Election Day exit polling that shows them ahead of incumbent President George H.W. Bush in deep-red Indiana. "Look at Indiana -- wait, wait, look at Indiana," says Kantor, "42-40!" Then, according to the video first posted on YouTube--which included subtitles not in the original Pennebaker film--Kantor adds the fateful lines about "sh*t" and "white ni**er[s]."

But as the video quickly spread through the pro-Obama blogosphere this morning, reporters contacted Kantor and Pennebaker--and both insisted that the subtitles had it wrong and that a prankster had overdubbed the n-word, which is not remotely audible in the original film. The son of civil rights activists, Kantor called the clip "frankly libelous" and told the Huffington Post, "I've never used that word in my entire life, ever, under any circumstance, ever." And Pennebaker was equally adamant in an interview with the Politico. "He does not say that," he said. Soon, the poster removed the video from YouTube and replaced it with a non-subtitled version (above). A close listening reveals the truth. Buoyed by the Indiana exit poll, Kantor clearly says "those people are sh*tting," not "those people are sh*t"--meaning that they (i.e., the president's reelection team) are shaken, frightened, nervous. (He even adds "in the White House.") And far from following that (by all accounts accurate) analysis with a racial slur, Kantor then turns to Stephanopolous and asks, ""How would you like to be in the White House right now?" He's jabbing the Bush campaign, not ripping on Hoosiers. End of story.

Ultimately, though, the Kantor contretemps is less interesting as a hoax than as a window on the deeply divided Democratic psyche. Assume that Kantor did say some inappropriate things about Hoosiers 15 years ago. Would those remarks really reflect poorly on anyone other than him? I'm not so sure. Obama spent two decades listening to Wright deliver sermons that (by his own admission) veered at times into controversial territory; whether or not that lowers your opinion of the senator, it's at least reasonable to examine whether Obama's decision to keep sitting in those pews reveals something about his character and judgment. But to knock Clinton for a comment she never even heard is silly. Still, this morning a few thousand fed-up Obama supporters blindly seized on the footage and attacked--indulging in precisely the sort of tit-for-tat, politics-as-usual game-playing that their candidate has premised his entire bid on ending.

When Kantor was cleared, at least one of my original emailers wrote back to express remorse. "It illustrates what this horrible primary season has devolved into," she said. "Do you remember how everyone in the Democratic party felt last year when we looked upon our wealth of choices for Democratic nominee?  It's like remembering how unified we were as a country after 9/11 then seeing it all frittered away for a political agenda.  I felt we such a unified party back then & now we're ripping and tearing at one another.  Horrible.  I dearly hope it all ends sooner rather than later... Please disregard and accept my apologies." 

UPDATE, May 3: To the readers pointing out that a few 1992 reviewers heard Kantor's remarks as anti-Hoosier: that only proves that they misheard, not that Kantor misspoke. It's 100 percent clear if you watch the original film that Kantor is saying "sh*tting," not "sh*t"--and therefore referring to Bush's nervous campaign staff. Which makes more sense: reacting to Indiana's Clinton-friendly poll numbers by denigrating the state's residents--or by speculating that your opponent (whose vice president was from Hoosier Country) must be scared? Logic says the latter. (And the transcript from Pennebaker agrees.)