News that a Kansas printer was processing a run of Obama-Bayh bumper stickers made its way to Matt Drudge on Friday, via a KMBC-9 News report, leaving the link dump site all but confirming the Democratic contender would be picking the Indiana senator as his running mate. That's not how it happened, of course; at 3am that night (early Saturday morning), Obama began a 15-minute blast of text messages announcing Joe Biden as his running mate, with on-lookers noting the timestamp very carefully.
Before that happened, though, the printing company found it had mere hours to capitalize on the publicity of the rumor, which it may or may not have started. This meant endless reports that got its name, Gill Studios, in the press. And you know what's the best way to keep a false rumor alive? Refuse to confirm or deny it, which is what Gill Studios did.
And now that they've been exposed as having no official role in the campaign? They're disappointed in the media for running the very rumor they could've quashed.
Gill Studios, which invented the bumper sticker, would not confirm information about the material. They would not deny it either.
"We're very disappointed that you would spread this rumor," Gill Studios President Tom Carrico said.
"You didn't print it here?" Mahoney asked.
"I didn't say that. But I'm very disappointed that you would come out and interview us and ask for confirmation and we said we would not confirm," Carrico said.
"Or deny," Mahoney said.
"That's correct," Carrico said.
[KMBC]
Editorial Director
What a maroon.
There were three or four employees who confirmed the story that the company was printing the stickers before the Drudge Report ran it. Maybe it was a fast way to get publicity. It also was a way to shoot yourself in the foot — what campaign in the future would ever (1) trust that the company wouldn't leak the info in the future and (2) be straight (not crooked) by being a bona fide contractor in the first place.