DIRTY WIKITRICKS.(The Talk of the Town)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 06-NOV-06

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If you look up "negative campaigning" on Wikipedia, the interactive Internet encyclopedia, you will learn that "mudslinging has been called 'as American as Mississippi mud.' " Click on "mudslinging" and there it is: "The exchange of petty, vicious insults, especially between candidates in an election. This phrase can also refer to the slinging or hurling of mud."

Readers of Wikipedia write and edit the entries themselves; the negative-campaigning page has been amended twelve times this fall, both by Wikipedia administrators and by civilians. In spite of some recent deletions (gone, for now, is the disqualifyingly "absurd" statement "The use of negative campaigning is a contribution to modern politics by Joseph Goebbels"), the entry is a fairly ample one. Examples abound: L.B.J.'s...

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