If online attack confirms your biases too nicely, it just might be a fake

By David McElroy · October 30, 2012

Did you see this picture last week? I saw it posted by a number of Democrats on Facebook in order to make fun of those stupid Tea Party types who hate Barack Obama. Here’s an example of one of the many sites that posted the picture after it went viral. Here’s what the caption told us about the picture:

Student’s sign mocking Obama provides compelling argument for education reform. Well, at least a dorm room at the University of Alabama has found its constipated-looking, grammatically challenged sorority girl. This passionately misspelled indictment of the commander-in-chief, which appears to have been scrawled on a discarded pizza box (the official protest medium of college students) makes a pretty effective case for Mitt Romney, but an even better case against Romney’s plan to slash the education budget. Come on, America. This girl is one more cut language arts program away from having the linguistic skills of a Chick-Fil-A cow.

There’s only one problem. None of this was true. A reporter for The Birmingham News saw the graphic and wanted to track down this alleged University of Alabama student. She’s not an Alabama conservative for Mitt Romney. She’s a Massachusetts liberal for Obama. Her name is Kim Stafford, and she grew up in Boston. She goes to a liberal arts college in Massachusetts, not to my alma mater.

The spelling errors? Satire. The sign itself? It was her way of making fun of her notion of what a Romney Tea Party supporter might create, although she claimed in the interview with the Birmingham News reporter that she knows not all Tea Party folks are idiots. Still, the sign was an indication of her own bigotry, but because her prejudice fit so nicely with what so many on the left believe about Republicans and conservatives, many of them accepted her satire as truth.

Stafford has actually started a Tumblr site to respond to the places she finds that posted the picture, but I don’t figure most people will ever see it.

It’s easy to write this off, because it’s just one of a million idiotic political graphics that gets passed around every day. Stafford was certainly bigoted and immature, but plenty of people make mistakes when they’re college students. (It’s not actually much different from white frat boys who dress up in blackface in order to satirize black stereotypes. The only difference is that such instances are routinely punished as racist on campuses today.) The real mistake in this story was made by all the people who were eager to believe and pass along this lie as being true — all because it seemed to confirm their ignorant biases.

And that’s the real point. If you see something that pushes all of your buttons, because it seems to so neatly confirm what you already believe, ask yourself what the source is. Just because you saw it on Facebook or on some website linked from Reddit or something similar doesn’t make it true. Look for a link to the original source. If the information is vague — and if an original source isn’t named — it’s probably not true. And you’re probably hurting someone by repeating a lie.

Stafford told The Birmingham News that her experience has taught her there are extremists of every political type.

“The party I’m a part of because I’m tolerant and I think that homosexuals should be able to get married — the group of people that I associate with — can be just as cruel as the people I disagree with,” she said.

Have enough respect for the truth and for your own integrity to find out whether something is true before you pass it along to friends by email or on Facebook. Especially if something seems too good to be true, remember that it’s probably made up. Just because a lot of people are dishonest about politics doesn’t mean you have to be. Set a higher standard for yourself.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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