The gullibility of the booboisie
May 9th, 2008 at 08:09am Pat Cunningham
This is both funny and sad.
The lower ranks of the right-wing blogosphere — which excludes, of course, those notable conservative pundits who actually walk upright — have been busy of late passing among one another a phony quotation attributed to Barack Obama.
It reads: “My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you’ll join with me as we try to change it.”
Oh, how the dimwits chortle at that one. They think they’ve caught that Harvard elitist at an embarrassing mistatement that betrays his fiendish designs.
What makes this matter truly funny is that the phony quotation was first jokingly peddled by a conservative Web site — and was aimed at John McCain (note the familiar salutation: “My friends”), not Barack Obama.
It’s all explained HERE.
The truth of the matter, however, may never reach the nether regions of the blogosphere. There will always be strange little creatures eager to believe the next bit of nonsense that comes along via e-mail or from the dark corners of the Internet and somehow mentally unable to check out the veracity of it.
Last year, the vogue among these folks was to impugn the patriotism of Iraq war critics in Congress with these words, falsely attributed to Abraham Lincoln:
“Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.”
Not only did Lincoln never utter such bilge, he was a war protester himself during his time as a member of Congress.
In fact, Lincoln’s criticisms of the Mexican War in 1848 greatly angered the pseudo-patriots of his time and cost him his seat in Congress.
Some things never change.
Entry Filed under: Mexican War, Abraham Lincoln, War in Iraq, John McCain, Barack Obama
4 Comments Add your own
1. Mr. Baseball | May 9th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
It’s amazing what people will believe. The classic examples are the so-called urban legends that lend themselves to our biases. When I was in news, we had a least a half dozen calls asking why we didn’t report about a kidnapping at either Cherryvale or Machesney Park mall where two black women abducted a white child, took her into a restroom and changed her looks so nobody would recognize her, and walked her out of the mall. Just to make sure, we did contact the police and they told us they received the same calls and it was all bogus. Naturally, the caller claimed the story was absolutely true and there was some media conspiracy to hide it from the public since it was so racially charged.
2. Pat Cunningham | May 10th, 2008 at 6:54 am
Mr. B: That mall restroom story and variations on it have been going around for more than 40 years. I, too, received such phone calls as a news guy. I heard one especially racist version of the story when I was living in Chicago 43 years ago. That one got around so much that even Mike Royko wrote a column debunking it. People are idiots, Mr. B, except for me and thee (and I’m not always sure about thee. Heh, heh.)
3. Sense of Five | May 12th, 2008 at 2:09 am
“In fact, Lincoln’s criticisms of the Mexican War in 1848 greatly angered the pseudo-patriots of his time and cost him his seat in Congress.”
He was wrong about that, too. History took a different course, just as it will take a different course here. BO is wrong on Iraq. However, Lincoln was able to redeem his public self later on by being right on a different issue. Will BO? At this point, I am doubting it. Make this about Iraq and you will get no where ahead.
4. Mr. Baseball | May 12th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
How was Lincoln wrong about the War with Mexico? Read any credible history, examine the facts and it’s incontrovertible that the U.S. started that war and its purpose was American imperialism, an effort to expand the country westward. We have a lot of things to be proud of, but the War with Mexico is not one of them.
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