By Rawlins Gilliland, KERA 90.1 Commentator
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-573613.mp3
Dallas, TX –
At a recent afternoon party, I joined several old friends discussing avoid-at-all-cost topics like politics. Things went swimmingly until one participant began drowning us in liquid ignorance. Provoking me to quote the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts." This prompted an around-the- table confessional; each person naming their primary sources of information to wit they formulate their beliefs. Several said CNN, Fox and NPR; newspapers, church. But this woman? An occasional "talk radio" personality. Christian TV shows, generally Daystar. But mostly, she admitted; shared internet emails.
(Music..intro riff from "I Heard It Through The Grapevine") She heard it on the "net-vine."
She was not alone. I became horrified when someone else mentioned Mexicans, announcing that there's a bill before congress, "as we speak", that will, according to him, extend Social Security benefits to illegal immigrants! Having received this email 20 times, I knew this to be an incendiary urban myth. But when I told my friends this, another responded, "Well, Rawlins, when a friend sends me things, I read them and send them on, assuming it's the truth." Bingo.
I asked everyone to consider this; that anyone could, for instance, construct a story as follows. That we were visiting Washington D.C. and our tour took us to Capitol Hill when, suddenly, a gracious representative from our state offered to show us where the senators work. Almost immediately, we saw (fill in the blanks here) Senator So-and-So, exiting their office. And for just a second, we could see, behind (his or her) desk, a life-size poster of Jesus carrying a pitchfork and wearing horns like the devil. Seeing the shock on our faces, the clearly nervous Senator slammed the door and abruptly left without speaking.
Of course none of this is true. But let's say I e-mailed this slanderous stupidity to several friends, who in turn e-mailed it to several more. It's not impossible to believe that 100 million people could ultimately read this fiction, fabricated with subversive intent no less than that bogus immigrant social security bill of goods. Now, let's just say, of the 100 million readers, only one percent believed it. That would be one million persons who now told others this story in church, perhaps eventually hearing some version from their pulpit, having become an "inside" whisper on politicized media circuits. The result? Misinformed people who feel informed. Who formed opinions based on malicious myth masquerading as patriotic factoids.
When I finished this point, my host shrugged his shoulders and said, "Rawlins. You're entitled to your opinion and we're entitled to ours." His "opinion"? That Barack Obama knows Osama Bin Laden and knows where he's hiding. But he's waiting until the election to reveal it, in order to win.
You guessed it: the internet.
Somewhere, the late Senator Moynihan is rolling in his grave.
But then I might read that Moynihan staged his death to escape paying taxes on embezzled campaign funds, and now lives in Barbados with a transsexual Arabian heiress.
Rawlins Gilliland is a writer from Dallas.
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