{"id":136289,"date":"2024-09-29T14:26:42","date_gmt":"2024-09-29T14:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=136289"},"modified":"2024-09-29T14:26:46","modified_gmt":"2024-09-29T14:26:46","slug":"what-comes-next-a-brief-history-of-skullduggery-ratexpletive-and-october-surprises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=136289","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;What comes next? A brief history of skullduggery, rat(expletive) and October surprises&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.clarionledger.com\/story\/opinion\/2024\/09\/24\/a-brief-history-of-skullduggery-ratexpletive-and-october-surprises\/75306858007\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Clarion Ledger<\/a>: &#8220;Rumors that the Democratic National Convention would have Beyonc\u00e9 as a special guest ricocheted through the media last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alas, despite her song \u201cFreedom\u201d being the official Harris-Walz theme song, Beyonc\u00e9 did not make an appearance at the DNC. Was it a mistake that, because of the pop icon rocket fuel driving it, achieved escape velocity and took on a life of its own? Was it a trick? Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer thought he knew, saying, \u201cthe Beyonc\u00e9 rumor was just a Harris ploy to inflate ratings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Such gamesmanship would only be the latest in a long tradition. Political trickery can range from benign \u2014 booking rally venues with a max capacity of 75% of the estimated turnout to create an illusion of overwhelming demand is a classic tactic \u2014 to nefarious \u2014 the release of the forged Zinoviev letter four days before the 1924 British general election which falsely purported to be a letter from the head of the Communist International created an illusion of foreign meddling that changed the election outcome \u2014 to world changing \u2014 see the anecdotes on Darius the Great and Caesar Augustus below.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Clarion Ledger: &#8220;Rumors that the Democratic National Convention would have Beyonc\u00e9 as a special guest ricocheted through the media last month. Alas, despite her song \u201cFreedom\u201d being the official Harris-Walz theme song, Beyonc\u00e9 did not make an appearance at the DNC. Was it a mistake that, because of the pop icon rocket fuel driving it,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsstory"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=136289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136290,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136289\/revisions\/136290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=136289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=136289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=136289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}