Some thoughts on political rumor and innuendo.
I've received dozens of blatantly false emails purporting to be true in order to discredit, smear and maligned the opposition candidate. The false accusations have attacked both Barrack Obama and now Mitt Romney.
What is disappointing to me is that many people forward these pieces of junk to their litany of email friends without checking the facts, without any thought of the harm they are doing and the false witness they are spreading.
I won’t repeat then new and even the old allegations because even if there were a shred of truth in them, some investigative reporter would have checked it out long ago. Rumor and innuendo, however they are spread, always belie the truth with a fetid falsity of illusion's fiction.
Back during the Franklin Roosevelt administration some of his opponents spread rumors that his democrats plundered the gold in Fort Knox to pull the country out of the depression.
In 1953, President Eisenhower was pressured to have the gold counted. When the last bar was tabulated, it was short of what was supposed to be there. Ten dollars short.
Just to even up the books, Mrs. Georgia Clark, the long time treasurer of the United States, sent the government a personal check for ten dollars to cover the missing funds.
.
The rumor went away. In this time of resurging election rhetoric how many more rumors would go away if all of us did more checking and less gossip?
I've received dozens of blatantly false emails purporting to be true in order to discredit, smear and maligned the opposition candidate. The false accusations have attacked both Barrack Obama and now Mitt Romney.
What is disappointing to me is that many people forward these pieces of junk to their litany of email friends without checking the facts, without any thought of the harm they are doing and the false witness they are spreading.
I won’t repeat then new and even the old allegations because even if there were a shred of truth in them, some investigative reporter would have checked it out long ago. Rumor and innuendo, however they are spread, always belie the truth with a fetid falsity of illusion's fiction.
Back during the Franklin Roosevelt administration some of his opponents spread rumors that his democrats plundered the gold in Fort Knox to pull the country out of the depression.
In 1953, President Eisenhower was pressured to have the gold counted. When the last bar was tabulated, it was short of what was supposed to be there. Ten dollars short.
Just to even up the books, Mrs. Georgia Clark, the long time treasurer of the United States, sent the government a personal check for ten dollars to cover the missing funds.
.
The rumor went away. In this time of resurging election rhetoric how many more rumors would go away if all of us did more checking and less gossip?
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