[Image]
The picture that launched a million e-mails
A lot of people have found the traditional holidays in recent years
increasingly uncomfortable events, especially as the Culture Wars have
heated up. The corrosive politics of eliminationism
practiced by the right has turned more than a few holiday gatherings
into occasions for political brawls and rancorous familial splits.
I’ve been fortunate in that regard; both my parents, though former
Goldwater Republicans, have become dyed-in-the-wool Democrats in recent
years, mainly because they have seen firsthand how badly conservative
rule screws things up. But many of their relatives and longtime friends
and neighbors, of course, are not. Dad stays in touch with many of them
via e-mail, which means that he gets a lot of right-wing crap. And like a
lot of people, he takes much of it at face value without really
thinking about it.
Which means that I had a conversation with my Dad this Christmas
similar to ones I bet a lot of other people had at home for the holidays
with their parents and relatives. You know: the one about Barack Obama
being a Muslim who refuses to salute the flag.
It went something like this:
Dad: "Who do you support among the Democratic candidates?"
Me: "Not sure yet. I like Dodd a lot, and I’m warming to Edwards."
"What about Obama?"
"I’d gladly vote for him in the general. I’m not sure he’s the right guy at this time."
"Well, I sure as hell won’t."
"Why not?"
"I’m not sure he’s who he says he is about his religion. And he won’t salute the flag."
[... A brief stunned silence.]
"Well, I don’t know about him saluting the flag. But I know for a fact that the nonsense about him secretly being Muslim is pure horseshit. It’s been completely debunked."
"Well, I have some e-mails that show him standing there, not saluting
while everyone else on the stage is saying the Pledge of Allegiance."
"Dad. Think about it. How many times have those mass-forwarded e-mails proven to be complete bullshit?"
He agrees. I promise him I’ll look into the salute thing and find out what the story is.
Sure enough, it was pretty easy to find the source of the rumors: an e-mail forward
that included the photo you see at the top of the post. Note, however,
that it doesn’t specify what activity was taking place — the assumption
is that they’re saying the Pledge. But they’re not.
As Obama explained:
"This was not during the pledge of allegiance," Obama said of the
picture taken at Senator Tom Harkin’s, D-Iowa, annual steak fry and
first published by Time. "A woman was singing the Star Spangled Banner
when that picture was taken.
… "I was taught by my grandfather that you put your hand over your
heart during the pledge, but during the Star Spangled Banner, you sing!"
Obama said.
… Obama called the circulation of such pictures a "dirty trick" and
mentioned other emails accusing him of being "a Muslim plant."
"I have been pledging allegiance since I was a kid," Obama said.
Obama advised his supporters who receive such emails to ignore them.
"Just tell whoever sent it," Obama told the crowd, "they’re misinformed."
You’ll note, of course, that this was debunked back in early November
— and we’re still hearing about it over our Christmas breakfasts. So
Obama’s advice, sound as it was, clearly isn’t stoppingthis
crap from
spreading.
That’s the evil genius of the e-mail forward: Its originators don’t
have to give a shit about its being debunked (and you’ll note that in
this case, the "debunking" sites like Snopes haven’t updated to include
Obama’s very reasonable explanation, which means that a lot of people
still believe it’s true he won’t salute the flag; after all, the Snopes
site currently says the report is "true," even though it also has a shot
of him saluting the flag).
But the smear merchants who use e-mail forwards don’t have to be
accountable to anyone since they are, ultimately, quite anonymous. They
can spread just about any lie they like as long as they can make it seem
plausible enough. And once it starts spreading, it just takes on a life
of its own. Christopher Hayes at The Nation
explored the phenomenon of the e-mail forward a couple of months ago.
It was an important piece, really, because it shed fresh light on one of
the more unremarked, and yet more effective, components of the
right-wing propaganda machine:
Such is the power of the right-wing smear forward, a vehicle for the
dissemination of character assassination that has escaped the scrutiny
directed at the Limbaughs and Coulters and O’Reillys but one that is as
potent as it is invisible. In 2004 putative firsthand accounts of
Kerry’s performance in Vietnam traveled through e-mail in right-wing
circles, presaging the Swift Boat attacks. Last winter a forward began
circulating accusing Barack Obama of being a secret Muslim schooled in a
radical madrassa (about which more later). While the story was later
fed through familiar right-wing megaphones, even making it onto Fox, it
has continued to circulate via e-mail long after being definitively
debunked by CNN. In other words, the few weeks the smear spent in the
glare of the mainstream media was just a tiny portion of a long life
cycle, most of which has been spent darting from inbox to inbox.
In that respect, the e-mail forward doesn’t fit into our existing
model of the right-wing noise machine’s structure (hierarchical) or its
approach (broadcast). It is, instead, organic and peer-to-peer. If the
manufactured outrage over Kerry’s botched joke about George Bush’s study
habits was the equivalent of a Hollywood blockbuster, the Gold Star
Mother smear was like one of those goofy viral videos of a dog on a
skateboard on YouTube. Of course, some of those videos end up with 25
million page views. And now that large media companies understand their
potential, they’ve begun trying to create their own. Which prompts the
obvious question: if a handful of millionaires and disgruntled Swift
Boat Veterans were able to sabotage Kerry’s campaign in 2004, what kind
of havoc could be wreaked in 2008 by a few political operatives armed
with little more than Outlook and a talent for gossip?
The smear forward has its roots in two distinct forms of Internet-age
communication. First, there’s the electronically disseminated urban
legend ("Help find this missing child!"; "Bill Gates is going to pay
people for every e-mail they send!"), which has been a staple of the
Internet since the mid- ’90s. Then there’s the surreal genre of
right-wing e-mail forwards. These range from creepy rage-filled
quasi-fascist invocations ("The next time you see an adult
talking…during the playing of the National Anthem–kick their ass") to
treacly aphorisms of patriotic/religious uplift ("remember only two
defining forces have ever offered to die for you, Jesus Christ…and the
American Soldier").
Obama, as the piece explains in considerable detail, has been a
special victim of the e-mail smear campaign, particularly in seeing the
spread of the story that he attended a madrassa. Hayes explores the
origins of that smear in some enlightening detail, and then observes:
Despite the fact that CNN and others have thoroughly debunked the
smear, the original false accusation has clearly sunk into people’s
consciousness. One Obama organizer told me recently that every day,
while calling prospective voters, he gets at least one or two people who
tell him they won’t be voting for Obama because he’s a Muslim.
According to Google, "Barack Obama Muslim" is the third most-searched
term for the Illinois senator. And an August CBS poll found that when
voters were asked to give Obama’s religion, as many said Muslim as
correctly answered Protestant.
Oh yeah. And the e-mail continues to circulate.
What’s even more remarkable, in my mind, is how the mainstream media
have responded to this phenomenon. Rather than inquiring into how and
why these false rumors continue to spread and to be believed, it appears
that editors and reporters both are content to merely report on their
continuing existence as though it were a fact of political life.
There’s a reason to ask these questions, of course: These smears have
real-life consequences. The flow of disinformation is inimical to a
functioning democracy, which depends on a well-informed citizenry. Any
reporter looking into why these rumors persist will encounter the
world of the e-mail forward — a phenomenon that is long overdue for a
proper media spotlight, especially in helping the reading public
understand that these e-mails are almost always unadulterated horseshit.
And then there are the ramifications for Americans on the personal
level. One of the truly evil aspects of the genius of the e-mail forward
is its uniquely polarizing effect. Not only does the spread of false
information create arguments and animosities over our holiday
breakfasts, but in many of our other relationships, especially the many
people — old friends and colleagues, relatives and acquaintances — with
whom we share our e-mail addresses.
Because we all have received these e-mails. I know how I first
responded to this crap: Not nicely. And I’m not apologizing for that,
though I’ve learned since then that sometimes (especially with those
close to us) it’s important to talk about it in a way that persuades
rather than berates, though I’m probably justified using the latter.
But wherever these e-mails land, inevitably they create ill will and
ruptured friendships. People get polarized and stop talking.
And I suspect that’s exactly what their authors intend, even more than just the spread of lies.
posted by David Neiwert at 1:33 PM on Dec 27, 2007
No comments yet.
Close this window