Comparative Derangement Syndrome

[Segami]

<[ [>


The Party of NO... Credibility

A look at Snopes.com shows rumors about Obama to be more numerous and vicious than the ones about Bush were


American right-wing leaders are responding to complaints about their adherents’ insults, threats, and acts of violence by claiming that such problems occur on the left as well. Of course, they don’t dare to compare and quantify such behavior. That would mean acknowledging that, for example, Congressional historians find no precedent for Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shouting at the president during a joint session of Congress. Or that there was a distrubing spike in death threats to the president in the months after President Barack Obama took office.


To keep on top of urban myths of all kinds, I subscribe to the Snopes.com update list, and I noticed a pattern there that I thought deserved to be examined more arithmetically. It struck me I was seeing a lot more rumors about President Obama, and a lot more false rumors, than I remembered from earlier years. So I ran the numbers, as of this week.


After eight years in the White House (with Snopes.com around all that time), George W. Bush has been the subject of 47 internet rumors.

After less than two years in office, Barack Obama has been the subject of 87, or nearly twice as many.


Even more telling is the relative accuracy of those stories.

For Bush, 20 rumors, or 43%, are true. Only 17, or 36%, are false. The remainder are of mixed veracity (4), undetermined (4), or unclassifiable (2).

In contrast, for Obama only 8 of the 87 rumors, or 9%, are true, and a whopping 59, or 68%, are whoppers. There are 17 of mixed veracity and 3 undetermined.

I delved down to the stories that the site designates as a mixture of truth and falsehood. For Obama, in many cases the truth is innocuous while the lie reflects poorly on the President, particularly photographs that are misrepresented or show behavior that produced no complaints when his predecessors did the same. In contrast, in this mixture of truth and falsehood about George W. Bush praying with an injured soldier, the lie reflected well on that President from the perspective of the religious person spreading it.

I looked on Snopes’s Politics page for another pair of politicians in parallel situations, and found the losing candidates of the last two presidential elections.

Snopes’s page on Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., lists 22 rumors, and only 3 are true (14%).

Its page for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., lists only 11 rumors, and 4 are true (36%).

There are far more rumors about the Democratic candidate, and fewer true ones.

This evidence accumulated over ten years shows a shameful but undeniable fact of American politics: Our right wing now contains a lot more liars, and a lot more folks who spread lies out of gullibility or wishfulness, than our left wing.


<http://www.salon.com/news/politics/feature/2010/04/23/snopes_rumors_obama_bush_open2010/index.html>

[Electric Monk]

1. Get thee to the Greatest page, and bookmarked as well.

Thanks for posting :)

[Segami]

14. Your welcome!

[uppityperson]

2. interesting but not surprising. Went to snopes and while I didn't

look at all the numbers, most of the Obama ones are false. Not as many Palin ones as Obama ones.

[jacktaylor70]

3. These repigs have buried their brainless heads

These repigs have buried their brainless heads in their a** for eight years. Now they came out of their holes and start smelling conspiracies everywhere. These dumb***** don't even realize that this is the smell of their own shit.
Many of these folks are looking for any reason (be it false) to show hatred and disdain.

[Electric Monk]

6. Welcome to DU :)

:)

[progressoid]

4. Which is why repukes now call Snopes a left wing website,

Their latest spam will often be accompanied by a rediculous qualification that they have researched it and its TWUE! But don't check Snopes because they have a liberal bias. :eyes:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/internet/a/snopes_exposed.htm

Edited to add one of these stupid emails

Subject: Snopes under fire

PLEASE READ!!!!!!! VERY IMPORTANT----- SNOPES EXPOSED:

Snopes under fire

I have suspected some problems with Snopes for some time now, but I have only caught them in half-truths. If there is any subjectivity they do an immediate full left rudder.

Truth or fiction.com <http://truthorfiction.com/> is the better source for verification, in my opinion.

I have recently discovered that Snopes.com is owned by a flaming liberal and this man is in the tank for Obama. There are many things they have listed on their site as a hoax and yet you can go to Youtube yourself and find the video of Obama actually saying these things. So you see, you cannot and should not trust Snopes.com.... ever for anything that remotely resembles truth! I don't even trust them to tell me if email chains are hoaxes anymore.

A few conservative speakers on Myspace told me about snopes.com <http://snopes.com/> a few months ago and I took it upon myself to do a little research to find out if it was true. Well, I found out for myself that it is true. This website is backing Obama and is covering up for him. They will say anything that makes him look bad is a hoax and they also tell lies on the other side about McCain and Palin.

Anyway just FYI please don't use Snopes.com anymore for fact checking and make your friends aware of their political leanings as well. Many people still think Snopes.com is neutral and they can be trusted as factual. We need to make sure everyone is aware that that is a hoax in itself.

[csziggy]

7. But TruthorFiction says that is FALSE and Snopes is a reliable source!

Snopes.com is a secret tool of the Democratic Party to promote Barack Obama- Fiction!
Summary of the eRumor:
An eRumor about Snopes.com accusing them being owned by a flaming liberal and this man is in the tank for Obama.

The Truth:
In October, 2008, stories began circulating via forwarded emails that the popular urban legends site Snopes.com was owned by liberals and was "in the tank" for presidential candidate Barack Obama.

As with many forwarded emails, the criticism did not include any example of what the writer of the email claimed was the difference between what Snopes.com reported and what Barack Obama had actually said.

Snopes.com is an excellent site that has become an authoritative source for information about urban legends and forwarded emails. We regard David and Barbara Mikkelson, the founders and operators of Snopes.com, as colleagues and professional researchers who have earned a good reputation for what they do.

More: http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/s/snopes.htm

Morans don't even check their claims at their own recommended fact site.

[progressoid]

9. Amazing isn't it?

I've disputed a couple nasty emails with quotes from conservative websites (like the Heritage Foundation) and that really pisses them off. :evilgrin:

It hurts to have your own sources contradict your idiotic claims.

[AwakeAtLast]

5. I was just on Snopes

finding a link to send to one of my relatives who sent me the "$64,000 Question" e-mail. :eyes:

[tridim]

8. Thank Gore for the Internet

The truth the Internet protects is far more powerful than the lies it spreads.

[AnArmyVeteran]

10. In your pictures, the 44 is because Obama is the 44th president, but the 43 by Bush is his IQ...

[MisterP]

11. just wondering, are the rumors deemed true or false by Snopes or by the author's original research?

Snopes actually has an Orwellian history of unreliable factchecking...

[Mister Ed]

12. Could you please elaborate on Snopes' history of unreliablity? You've piqued my interest. n/t

[Wednesdays]

15. *crickets*

My god, the cockroaches are everywhere.

[lpbk2713]

13. The RW Hate Machine keeps on grinding this shit out.

This doesn't surprise me at all, it simply confirms my suspicions.

Thanks for the post.

K n R


:kick:

[NoSheep]

16. We didn't HAVE TO make shit up about BUSH to make him look bad.

[Cronus Protagonist]

17. Everyone's a liar

The frequency and stats aside, I often wonder why people scream such truths out so loudly when they are also pointing the finger at themselves. We all lie. We are all liars. So THEY are liars is hardly that much of a smear, or a shock to any thinking person.