Anatomy of a smear

[Mass]

Sad image of this country and of what the Internet brought us.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/09/14/anatomy-smear/2ItX6FqhY1C8nENToIpWUN/story.html

Once upon a time, political partisans and gangsters used to adhere to a certain code of conduct: all’s fair when it came to your rivals, but their families were off limits.

But that was a long time ago. There are no men of honor left in criminal societies, and it is increasingly harder to find them among those who truck in today’s hyperpartisan politics.
...
A constellation of right-wing websites has propagated a conspiracy theory ostensibly aimed at Secretary of State John Kerry, who was the United States’ chief negotiator with Iran. But the real victims of this smear are Kerry’s daughter and her husband Brian Nahed, who are physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital.

View Story
Iran deal protected, Kerry eyes next crisis
John Kerry may have trouble matching the nuclear deal in terms of accomplishments. But even critics expect him to keep trying.

The story went like this: John Kerry is in the tank with Iran because his son-in-law is Iranian. Not only that, but the best man at the 2009 Boston wedding of Nahed and Vanessa Kerry was the son of Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister who negotiated the deal with Kerry. Kerry sold out his country for his in-laws.

It was a great story, except none of it is true.