Christopher Hayes, in The Nation, writes about those emails people keep forwarding to you:
On February 27, 2001, two members of the American Gold Star Mothers, an organization of women who've lost sons or daughters in combat, dropped by the temporary basement offices of the new junior senator from New York, Hillary Clinton. They didn't have an appointment, and the office, which had been up and running for barely a month, was a bit discombobulated. The two women wanted to talk to the senator about a bill pending in the Senate that would provide annuities for the parents of those killed, but they were told that Clinton wasn't in the office and that the relevant staff members were otherwise engaged. The organization later submitted a formal request in writing for a meeting, which Clinton granted, meeting and posing for pictures with four members of the group.
But the story doesn't end there. In May of that year, the right-wing website NewsMax, a clearinghouse for innuendo and rumor, ran a short item with the headline "Hillary Snubs Gold Star Mothers." Reporting via hearsay--a comment relayed to someone who then recounted it to the column's author--the article claimed that Clinton and her staff "simply refused" to meet with the Gold Star Mothers, making hers the "only office" in the Senate that snubbed the group.
At first the item didn't attract much attention, but it quickly morphed into an e-mail that started ricocheting across the Internet. "Bet this never hits the TV news!" began one version. "According to NewsMax.com there was only one politician in DC who refused to meet with these ladies. Can you guess which politician that might be?... None other than the Queen herself--the Hildebeast, Hillary Clinton."Before long, the Gold Star Mothers and the Clinton office found themselves inundated by inquiries about the "snub," prompting the Gold Star Mothers to post a small item debunking the claim on their website... "These allegations were not initiated by the Gold Star Mothers.... This is a fabricated report picked up by an individual using the Gold Star Mothers as an instrument to discredit Senator Clinton.... We do not need mischievous gossip and unfounded lies to promote our organization. Please help stop it now."
That plea notwithstanding, the e-mail continues to circulate to this day...
... "It's a Pandora's box," says Jim Kennedy, who served as Clinton's communications director during her first Senate term. "Once [the charges] are out in the ether, they are very hard to combat. It's very unlike a traditional media, newspaper or TV show, or even a blog, which at least has a fixed point of reference. You know they're traveling far and wide, but there's no way to rebut them with all the people that have seen them."
Such is the power of the right-wing smear forward, a vehicle for the dissemination of character assassination... [read the article]
Of course, it's not only smears. There's the email that claims children are not allowed to pray in school—as though any teacher ever stopped a child from bowing their head at recess, or even over a test. The real agenda, of course, is that the extreme right would like teachers to force students to pray in school, either directly or through the social pressure to join in, because they imagine that the God being prayed to will always be their own.
One of my favorites claims that "Only two people have ever given their lives for you—Jesus Christ and the American Soldier." It's brilliant. Notice how it smoothly offers a subconscious connection between religion and patriotism. Notice the implication—never actually stated—that anyone who actually cares enough about the American Soldier (the actual person: a young man or woman on the battlefield, away from home, without any power to do other than he or she is told)—that anyone who actually cares enough about them to question whether they should be put in harm's way is supposedly unpatriotic.
This constant spin, coupled with the twisting of facts—Obama is not (and never has been) a Muslim, John McCain does not have an out-of-wedlock black daughter—gets forwarded from one person to the next, and because it always comes from a trusted source (the person who sent it to you) it tends to be believed.
A democracy depends on the flow of honest, reliable information. There are things that technology can do to facilitate that, but in the end we are all responsible for the quality of the information we pass on—even if only by forwarding an email.
If we really want a democracy, we should be very careful that whatever we forward be true, and traceable. So far the vast majority of this sort of thing has been promulgated by the extreme right wing, and the reason is obvious: the extreme right does not want a democracy. They are quite happy when a belief furthers their cause, whether or not it's true.
But this should not make the rest of us complacent. There are also smears, and political nonsense, circulating from the left. I would suggest that we each commit, right now, to forwarding only what we know is true, and only when it can be clearly traced to its original source by any reader. If an email doesn't give the source, don't forward it—don't let your integrity be used to authenticate something that may be false. If it does give the source, check it out before forwarding it.
I urge my conservative friends to follow the same rule of thumb. If you, or I, want what we forward to be taken seriously we should take the trouble to vet it first. And, by the same token, we would be wise to avoid believing anything we haven't checked on—no matter how well it seems to back up the positions we love.
It all boils down to whether we view language as a source of knowledge and understanding, or as just ammunition.
