E-Mail vs. the evil MSM
Via Making Light comes this interesting article from The Nation about the below the radar smear machine of the right. I’ve seen a couple of these e-mails sent to myself and other people. One question that occurs to me is to wonder what kind of person would really want something as important as the Presidency of the United States to be decided by this kind of trash. And of course there is the question of why so many people are willing to believe anything they get in their in box. I think it’s basically the fruit of the years long smearing of mainstream news by the American right wing. They know they are correct on every issue and there cannot be any compromise with any other viewpoint. Since they cannot be wrong and the mainstream news doesn’t report things that agree with them it has to be liberal bias. It obviously can’t be that they are wrong about anything. So repeat the mantra over and over again that the MSM is liberal and it lies about everything. Never let up. Lie over and over again. Then it will be believed by enough people so that when something is claimed that is blatantly false so the MSM doesn’t report on it you have a base of people who will believe your version because they know that the MSM will never report the truth.
Thus is born the credibility of dishonest e-mail chain smears. It’s very sad that so many Americans are willing to buy into this and never think to actually research the claim. Everyone should know about web sites like Snopes and how to dig through search results and dismiss blatantly biased sites. But then, of course, they’ve been conditioned to believe in the veracity of the more biased sites, haven’t they?
