An Obama Murder Conspiracy

We live in the golden age of conspiracies. The Internet spreads insanity at the speed of light. Flat Earthers have conventions,¹ vaccine deniers have presidential candidates,² and New Age idiots have Gwenyth Paltrow.³

No matter how bizarre the conspiracy, there are grifters eager to spread it.

Can’t think of any other explanation for drug cartels? How about addiction, supply and demand, and capitalism? If you want more on how drugs feed violence, rewatch The Wire.

Cartoonist Scott Adams is the classic “I’m not saying it’s true, but what else could it be?” guy. He keeps a smidgen of deniability while spewing nonsense to his one million Twitter followers.

The wildfires in Maui have been a boon to the grifting class. The pictures are horrible, and the death toll of 106 (as of Wednesday, August 16) is guaranteed to rise, but all these vultures can do is use the tragedy to justify their paranoid worldviews. (Remember Alex Jones and his Sandy Hook conspiracies?)

This lunatic (with 197,000 followers) thinks someone (the government, aliens, George Soros?) burnt the houses but not the trees for some nefarious purpose.

Twitter’s Community Notes⁴ explained, “Some plants are able to survive wildfires due to a layer of thermal insulation provided by their bark, dead leaves, or moist tissues,” but this clarification didn’t stop The Punisher.

“If you can’t see it, it’s because you’re not looking,” sums up conspiratorial thinking. You don’t need an explanation that covers all the facts because you already know the conspiracy is there. Your job is to look for proof the Illuminati are hiding behind that tree. You highlight suspicious-sounding information (which is often either distorted or completely untrue) and ignore everything else.

An influencer with 1.1 million followers claims the fires are part of a plot to help rich people get richer.

People challenging accepted narratives should offer decent alternative explanations. You don’t trust the government? You think something is fishy? Fine, what is an alternative explanation that explains all the facts better than the official narrative? If the Hawaiian wildfires weren’t natural, what caused all the burning? Some tweeters are claiming they were “direct energy weapons.” Space lasers, oy vey. Presumably constructed by a vast secret government project (because our government is notoriously good at keeping things secret.) How many tens of thousands of people would it take to build, use, and keep secret such weapons? And what about Julia Roberts and Morgan Freeman? How are they involved? Do they gather in monthly conclaves at a tastefully decorated grotto in Beverly Hills to worship Baal and plot the destruction of humanity? (Catered by Massimo Battura’s Gucci Osteria, of course.⁵) To believe in this story requires a cartoon-like understanding of the world.

Conspiracy theories happen because human brains are pattern-finding machines and we often see patterns that aren’t there. Conspiracies offer simple explanations for a confusing world. I’ve written a few essays about this (“Conspiracies and Bicycles,” “Friends Don't Let Friends Spread Conspiracies”), but somehow that hasn’t stopped the neverending onslaught of nonsense.

Conspiracy mongers also misunderstand the odds of strange things happening. Unlikely events occur daily, but most of us don’t think twice about them. What are the odds that a red Toyota Camry would cut you off at that exact moment at that exact intersection while you were wearing that shirt? If you’d calculated the odds six hours earlier, they would have been billions to one! Amazingly unlikely things happen constantly; it’d be amazing if they didn’t.

Which brings me to the sad death of the Obamas’ chef.

This is Tafari Campbell and his wife Sherise Campbell. Mr. Campbell had been a sous-chef at the White House and then went on to work for the Obamas as their personal chef. On July 24, he drowned while paddleboarding in Edgartown Pond at Martha’s Vinyard (an island off Massachusetts where rich folks spend the summer hob-nobbing with each other). He’d been staying at one of the Obamas’ homes while they were out of town. Besides his wife, he left behind two adult sons. His wife wrote on Instagram, “My heart is broken. Please pray for me and our families as I deal with the loss of my husband.”

Common decency would lead most people to leave the Campbell family alone; however, the hatred that some on the right feel towards Obama made it inevitable that conspiracy theories would pop up like rabid prairie dogs.

Note the conspiratorial mindset. Catturd2⁶, with 1.9 million followers, refuses to “believe a word of it.” He knows something is shady, never mind the evidence.

On August 5, conservative gadfly Dinesh D’Souza tweeted, “Something doesn’t add up here,” with a link to a Conservative Brief article, “Barack, Michelle Obama Release New, Separate Statements Following Death of Chef.”

The article recaps that Mr. Campbell was paddleboarding near the Obamas’ home in Martha Vineyard and was not wearing a life jacket. He was reported (by another paddleboarder) to have stood up on his paddleboard before losing his balance and falling into the water. His body was recovered from Edgartown Great Pond, and the police suspect no foul play. The Obamas’ statements are what you would expect. Barack called Campbell “a man of character.” Michele promised “to honor your legacy.”

Then the Conservative Brief pumps up the conspiratorial paranoia, passing along a Daily Mail’s report that police are

labeling the incident an accident but continuing to withhold information under the guise of an ‘ongoing investigation. It’s been 11 days since Tafari Campbell drowned in a pond bordering the former president’s estate, but authorities are rejecting requests for even basic facts, including the identity of the sole witness and the 911 caller.

In other words, there is zero information indicating foul play, the police say it wasn’t foul play, but we haven’t been told every last detail about a man’s death, and this gives haters room to imagine something ugly, and so they do. Many comments under D’Souza’s tweet feed the paranoia. (Other comments fed nasty racism⁷.)

“Where is the video surveillance? Where are the satellite images? They know what happened and they are covering it up.”
“Does anyone believe this.”
“Don’t paddleboards float?”

Someone recommended I watch Tim Dillon’s YouTube episode on Campbell’s death because it supposedly offered a good analysis of why foul play was likely. (Spoiler: It didn’t.)

Dillon is a conservative-leaning shock-joke comedian. The segment about Campbell’s death runs from about minute 4:10 to minute 19:00. It’s gross. Dillon chuckles and guffaws as he speculates about a man’s death.

Dillon sets the classy tone by opening, “the Obamas killed a sex slave.” He goes on to speculate that if he (Dillon) were Obama, and were “gay or bisexual”⁸ (a common right-wing rumor about Obama⁹), he’d be fucking “the hot chef,” and if the chef got “mouthy” “I would drown him in a pond.” Dillon asks why we haven’t heard the 9/11 call tape. It’s because “The Democrats run Martha’s Vinyard” “and they take care of their own.”

With a pro-forma caveat of “we don’t know what happened, clearly,” he goes on to list all the supposedly “odd” things about the death (none of which are odd).

Dillon wants to know why Tafari Campbell was there without the Obamas. “Am I nuts? Is that weird?” No, it’s not weird. Rich people (the nice ones) let friends and favored employees stay in their places. I’ve stayed in rich people’s homes¹⁰, and I can’t cook a thing.

Dillon emphasizes that Campbell was a good swimmer.¹¹ For me, that makes his death more tragic. For Dillon, it means, “This man was murdered.”

“I’m not trying to make light of the tragedy of it.” [Yes, you are.] “But if they killed him for a good reason, then that’s what it is.” “Weird shit happens around these people, around these people who run our country.” “Being around anyone who runs this country is a hazardous job.”

So that’s the Campbell conspiracy theory: A man drowns, and it is probably murder because 1) he worked for a famous guy, 2) he was a good swimmer, and 3) the police aren’t giving us all the information.

The “people dying around famous people” thing is cherry-picking. Thousands of people work around famous people, and a few die in tragic accidents. I have a much smaller circle of connections (no entourage for me), and even so, people around me have died in tragic accidents, including drug overdoses, car accidents, and suicide, but nobody cares because I’m not famous. And have you noticed all the people around Obama who haven’t died?

Good swimmers drown. It happens all the time. They get a cramp, have a stroke, were inebriated, bang their head. Which happened in Campbell’s case? I don’t know, and neither does anyone else, but it seems far far more likely to have been some terrible accident than a murder.

The World Congress on Drowning states that an estimated 66% of the more than 360,000 people who drown worldwide each year knew how to swim, said Dave Benjamin, executive director of the nonprofit Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project (www.glsrp.org).
“Just because you know how to swim doesn't mean you know how to survive drowning,” Chicago Tribune, June 2019

And the cops aren’t giving us all the information? Perhaps because they’ve investigated and found no foul play. There is no pressing need for the authorities to have press releases and feed the voyeuristic urges of the public. The grieving family deserves some privacy.

Remember the Paul Pelosi case last year? Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked by a hammer-wielding lunatic in their San Francisco home. Because initial information was limited and garbled, all sorts of silly theories were advanced. They’d been gay lovers. The attacker was just in his underwear. There were two hammers. When these stories were decried as nonsense, the conspiritrons retorted, “Then why aren’t they showing us the bodycam videos? Hmmm? They’re covering something up!” Eventually, the bodycam video was released, and it showed one hammer and a fully clothed intruder. Did any conspiracy spreaders apologize? I doubt it. They just moved on to the next set of lies (and many people who didn’t see the follow-up stories probably still believe the original conspiracy theories).

What if I’m wrong and the crazies are right? What if Obama did have Campbell killed? How would it have gone down?

They have a torrid love affair. Campbell threatens to tell all. Obama picks up the phone and calls his regular assassin. “Bob, I want Tafari killed. I’ll invite him to Martha’s Vinyard. You can do it there.” Bob flies out to the Vineyard, grabs Campbell, injects him with something, and then drags his body to the middle of the lake. Any witnesses are killed by Bob’s henchmen, Sid and Cathy. The police arrive and are suspicious, but Bob calls the Democrat-controlled Martha’s Vinyard government, and Marty, the local selectman, tells the officers to cover up everything. “The Big O wants things to go smoothly.” And so the police bury the 9/11 call and pressure the local medical examiner to fake up a report. Because that’s what you do for your $82,000 a year annual salary.¹² Problem solved! And everybody involved keeps their mouths shut forever.

I mean, it’s possible. I saw “Enemy of the State” (Gene Hackman was great!). I can picture it all. And it’s a fairy tale.

In the real world, drug cartels result from drug demand, wildfires are spread by high winds, and people die in unfortunate accidents. And yet every time, the credulous will arrive with a narrative already formed (someone did this). They’ll then cherrypick facts and complain about information gaps to make their weak case. Conspiracies feeding off tragedy is disgusting and inevitable.

1. Behind the Curve.

2. Kennedy 2024.

3. Buy your own Gwenyth Paltrow-endorsed Goop vaginal egg for only $66!

4. Community Notes are a new Twitter feature. They are crowd-sourced fact-checks that correct misinformation in a tweet. So far, they’re among the few solid improvements in Elon Musk’s Twitter.

5. The Tortellini with Parmigiano Reggiano Sauce is amazing.

6. Catturd2 is a troll and shitposter who has acquired a giant following by attacking the libs and defending Donald Trump. Some sources trace the ownership of the account to a 50-something man in Florida, but I can’t verify. No word on what happened to Catturd1.

7. Many of the comments on Dinesh’s tweet ignore the conspiracy and just shovel racism by claiming Michelle Obama is a man with the nickname “Big Mike.” It’s hard to tell how much of the “Big Mike” talk is made by idiots who really believe Michelle is a man and how much is just ugly posturing, riffing off the racist calumny that black women aren’t sufficiently feminine, but the claim is extremely common in certain right-wing circles.

8. Dillon happens to be gay.

9. A new Obama biography reveals that Obama wrote to his then girlfriend saying he made “love to men daily, but in the imagination.” This could mean Obama is bi, but it probably means 21-year-olds write lots of stuff, especially when trying to seem cool.

10. A New York brownstone in Cobble Hill, a New York luxury apartment, a place in the Hamptons, and a San Francisco apartment in North Beach. These were all friends or connections, so slightly different, but if I was a beloved family chef, I think the same would apply.

11. “Obamas' personal chef Tafari Campbell seen confidently swimming laps before tragically drowning.”

12. Yes, I looked up the salary of a Martha’s Vineyard cop. You’re welcome.