Thomas Lane August 29, 2011, 2:58 PM

Remember the ‘Whitey Tape” rumor from 2008? The gist was that a video was secretly in circulation featuring Michelle Obama badmouthing “whitey.” The blogosphere was alight with fears (or on some ends, hopes) that it would be released at a critical moment and swing the election towards John McCain.

The tape never emerged.

However, Monday the internet was aflame yet again with an apparent “whitey” tape — this time featuring not Michelle Obama, but Michele Bachmann.

The highly edited video made its rounds through email, Twitter, and Perez Hilton’s site. As you can see below, it appears to show Bachmann taking the stage at a campaign event and asking the crowd, “Who likes white people?”

However, the full version of the tape reveals a rather different story. Bachmann is clearly referencing the weather conditions outside the tent in which she appearing. “Who likes wet people?” she asks, to cheers from the crowd. “That’s right,” she continues. “Because we have the god of the winds and the rains, don’t we? We serve a mighty god.” (VIDEO BELOW)

That would seem to be put to rest a debate which raged across the liberal blogs on Monday morning as to whether or not Bachmann really uttered such potentially explosive words. The popular Liberal site Daily Kos at one point speculated that she may have been giving a shout-out to the band that preceded her on the stage, which they seemed to think went by the bizarre name, “White People Funk Band.”

TPM reporter Evan McMorris-Santoro notes that one set of people who were apparently unmoved by the tape were “White Pride” activists on the Stormfront.org website. One commentator there grumbled, “With all due respect, she has also publicly exclaimed she considers herself jewish [sic], and believes that America is damned if we ‘turn our backs’ on Isreal [sic]. An Isreal [sic] 1st’er isn’t pro-white, or a lover of the white race. It’s the opposite.”

So, Bachmann’s still enough of a force to spark selectively edited attack videos, and it turns out White Power-types don’t even like her all that much? Overall, it would seem, the fallout from this probably won’t be too bad for her campaign.

2012, 2012 Presidential Primaries, 2012 elections, Michele Bachmann