Too Bad to Be True? It Probably Isn't

Fake political emails have been especially plentiful for the past few months. I’ve received a video email a few times recently supposedly showing President Obama being snubbed by the Russians. False. I’ve received an email stating that Canada thinks President Obama is a failure, and another describing Mrs. Obama is an over-indulged princess. Also false. The Canada Free Press, an ultra-conservative Canadian newsletter, was being passed off as the legitimate news agency of Canada, like our Associated Press. And besides, both stories were written by Americans.

Several months ago there was a fabricated email story circulating—with a copy of the so-called bill—that Mrs. Obama had a very expensive brunch at a posh hotel in New York when she wasn’t there. The publisher printed a retraction, but didn’t forward it to me. I had to track it down on my own.

There was yet another email story zooming around cyberspace stating that a doctor of philosophy wrote a dissertation on Mr. Obama’s narcissism. While that author did comment about Obama possibly being a narcissist, the poor author was erroneously credited with a hate-filled article published on a secularist website and written by an ex-Muslim using a pseudonym. That author was so hateful I left his website as soon as I could for fear of being infected.

Why do we forward and circulate so much misinformation and even hatred? Partly, of course, because we can. In years past, who would have driven to the local copy center to make multiple copies of a hand-written or typed letter stating their reasons for hating someone? And then filled and addressed dozens of envelopes, affixed dozens of postage stamps, and slipped them into a U.S. postal mailbox for distribution? And if they did, what would we think about them? Hello? Does the name Unabomber ring a bell? As I said, we forward this “stuff” because we can, because it’s free and so easy to do. And yes, of course I’ve done it also.

“People say believe half of what you see, son, and none of what you hear." I Heard it Through the Grapevine, Marvin Gaye

With today’s amazing, readily available computer software, it’s no longer safe to believe “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Still photos, videos and voice recordings can and are routinely altered to sell something or make a point. There are probably tens of thousands of good people out there who believe that photo of a gun-totin,’ bikini-clad Sarah Palin was real. It wasn't. The photo was digitally altered. You knew that too, right?

And why is it necessary to paint Mrs. Palin as a sexy, gun-happy, beauty queen? Why is it necessary to paint Hillary Clinton as a shrewish, man-eating, ball-busting harpy? Right now some of us are saying, “Because they are,” aren’t we?

“Check it out.” John Mellencamp

How do we stop the proliferation of these WMD’s (weapons of mass deception)? Here’s my plan. Add our government representatives’ email addresses to our email contacts. If, after checking truthorfiction.com, urbanlegends.about.com, and snopes.com, we find an email story is indeed true and we object to its message, we can forward it to our Senators and Representatives and tell them this news really pisses us off. We can even insist they do something about it. Then when those angry, and yes, sometimes funny emails show up, it will be as easy to make our voices heard by our government as it is to hit the “forward” command and entertain our friends.

Donna

Next Week: Are we still supposed to shave our legs if we only have twelve hairs left on them? Laugh—it’s good for us!