Also, conservatarian voters don't read or think so good, so they believe every goddamn thing that their inbox tells them. Critical thinking? That's for fags!

We should do some of these--they practically write themselves. Here are a few subject lines:

Rudy Rumored to Have Hired Tony Soprano for Hit on Ex-Wife

Romney Seen Boarding UFO, Takes Bribe Money From Kolobians to Support Immigration Reform

Thompson Reported to be a TV Actor, Not a Real Politician

It's sad to see our nation's political destiny being so influenced by the braying masses of hatred, ignorance, and dishonesty.

Honor, Reason, Integrity, facts and reasoned debate are simply being shouted down by the lowest common denominators in our society.

Of course society has always had these elements within it. Unfortunately the news media has adopted their methods and is now leading the charge to present the world to their viewers in the thinly veiled mold of the Jerry Springer show.

When people on Fox News can denigrate Gore's Nobel Peace Prize because Arafat and Carter won it, while at the same time say with a straight face that the award should have gone to general Petreus, you know American democracy has jumped the shark.

Everyone here knows where they were and what they were doing on the day that Russia became an associate member of NATO, the final signal that the Free World had won the Cold War, a war that we had waged for half a century, costing trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of American lives in proxy wars, and nearly brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

The problem is, the reason why everyone knows where they were when this happened is because it was the same day that OJ led police on the slow speed chase down the 405. OJ was news, the most significant symbol of the end of the Cold War was only mentioned on the PBS News Hour. And no one watches that because, judging from the content on the news, what this country seems to care most about is dead white women or white female celebrity train wrecks.

The problem with this country is that we generally do get the kind of government we deserve.

And as usual, the values voters, the religio-right, propagate and promote these character attacks and lies.

Them's some swell values.

In 2000 I remember getting a long list of idiotic Dan Quayle quotes, all attributed to Gore (though they led off with the "invented the internet" fabricated quote).

It takes a special kind of mendacity to loudly excoriate your enemies for your own side's quotes.

It is a sad commentary on America that "Obama is a Muslim" is considered a smear.

i used to get those all of the time. i would reply something like, hahaha that is some funny shit man, send more jokes like this, please and then hit reply all. i was removed from my wingnut relatives email lists after the second or third one.

We are all entitled to our opinions - we are NOT entitled to our own facts. This thread illustrates why the divide between left and right in America has gotten so wide. The far right has essentially created their own alternative universe! It's pretty hard to have a rational conversation with someone who truly believes that:

- Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster in their Washington lovenest.
- Ron Brown, Clinton's Commerce Secretary was killed for "what he knew about Clinton's Chinese connection" (never specified).
- Bill Clinton fathered a child with a black prostitute.
- Al Gore is one of the "Illuminati", a secret sect somehow connected to freemasonry.

But, there are literally millions of people out there who absolutely believe these things. My brother-in-law is one of them.

How will we ever agree on matters of opinion, when we can't even agree on what the facts are???

I've been wanting to know more about these emails and their origins for a long while now. Thanks for giving this tactic some attention. I often get these screeds and try to debunk them in a reply. But this tactic isn't so much a "New" right-wing smear machine as an old one.

I used to get forwarded these wingnut chain emails by an acquaintance. I would link to the snopes page that debunked the email, then reply all. And _every_ one of the smear emails was proved to be a lie.
Did this cause them to check snopes before they hit send? No.
After the fourth time, I was simply removed from the list.

TCD: tiny slip-up in your mythology.
Al Gore ACTUALLY IS a member of the "Illuminati" but it turns out they're just a bunch of hippies who want us to replace all our incandescent bulbs with CF bulbs.
You're thinking of the Templars, or maybe the Rosicrucians. I can't remember.
Love this post.

When a wingnut says stuff like that, it's hard to tell in an individual case if the person is ignorant, stupid, or evil. Sometime it's one, sometimes the other. My inclination when I see something odd is to presume ignorance first, then stupidity, then evil, but with the people who start it, such as swiftboaters, it's clearly evil.

Who hasn't received the e-mail that starts with something like, "Well, somebody finally said it. Andy Rooney said [insert long-winded right-wing rant that hits every hot button known to man]".

I once had a boss who repeated the whole Oliver North - Al Gore fable to me, that North was desperately trying to warn everyone about Osama bin Laden and Gore was a complete dick.

Of course, when I pointed out that Al Gore was not on the Iran-Contra committee and, therefore, could not possibly have even been questioning Oliver North, he was very disappointed in me for being a liberal. His unwavering belief in these stupid e-mails never changed.

When a wingnut says stuff like that, it's hard to tell in an individual case if the person is ignorant, stupid, or evil.

For the Bush Cultists that post here, it's safe to assume that it's all three.

At least my right-wing family members have learned to stop forwarding me the extremist propaganda that floods into their in-boxes. I'd always respond with point-by-point refutations and references to Snopes.com and other myth-busting sites.

The Republican National Committee generates a ton of its own Internet nonsense. This week it started a poll on the "Scariest Democrat" in honor of Halloween. No surprise there, of course: They're most afraid of vaginal-American Hillary Clinton. Those boys at the RNC are wusses. [Link]

"When people on Fox News can denigrate Gore's Nobel Peace Prize because Arafat and Carter won it, while at the same time say with a straight face that the award should have gone to general Petreus"

I must have missed that show. This is evidence that the problem of nonsense rumors is equally divided. Obama's flirtation with the 9/11 truthers is evidence that he can sink his own campaign with no help from internet rumors.

We have a conservative relative who insisted on keeping us on his mailing list over these. He at first claimed it was a mistake and that he'd remove us from the list, but finally wrote a critical letter denouncing our narrow-mindedness for not wanting to read them and breaking off relations with us. (Temporarily. We've finally patched things up by the simple expedient measure of not mentioning it.)

These are the electronic versions of right wing scare-monger solicitations aimed at the ancient and doddering. For years right-wing leeches have battened on the nearly senile with patriotic bunkum. Panama Canal! Hillary! Gun control! UN! When we cleaned out an ancient relative's house after she died we found around 30 leaf collection size garbage bags filled with mail like that. There were 0 from "liberal" groups.

Interesting, although if you went to a Upper West Side private school, as I did, or read Mark Kleiman, you'll get any number of unsourced "left-wing" rumors. Indeed, looking at what the article says about Bush and Kerry, it seems like the real deficit on the leftist/Democratic side is not the absence of nasty false rumors, but the absence of positive, uplifting stories, in which the little boy grows up to be Teddy Kennedy and never forgets how important Social Security is, or some such.

Are you ready to apologize to the state of South Carolina after smearing them for passing on the "Obama as Muslim" story?

fear and outrage...its all we got!

and its working out......GREAT!

Jeffrey: Although false and "hysterical" (we need a word for that, not derived from Greek for uterus) rumors are bad, it is at least debatable whether giving up the Panama canal was a good idea, what the 2nd Amendment really says, etc.

congrats, Kevin! you deserve the honour of best political blog with all the work you put in. Keep it up!

They're most afraid of vaginal-American Hillary Clinton. Those boys at the RNC are wusses.

This is something that's always amused me about the gender-specific attacks on HRC. The first few times, you chalk it up to the reflexive female bashing that comes so naturally to some of our right-wing friends (and a few on the left, too). You know, the ones who will immediately respond to a female adversary with an insult that's unique to XXers, regardless of the actual issue being discussed.

After 15 years of it, you wonder why they can't see that it makes them look like complete candyasses obsessed with the power of a girl. Talk about looking weak.

Join some right-wing Yahoo groups devoted to praising George W. Bush, campaigning for Bush and others, etc., and you will soon be on the receiving end of RNC emails. If you want to see the twaddle these folks are saying.

An interesting note: if you ever get Republican junk mail at home and send them the pre-paid envelope carefully filled up to bursting with cut-up magazines or cut-up catalogues, you will find that they quickly remove you from their mailing lists. BUT, how do they manage this? There are no identifying details about you. Nothing inside the envelope or outside. And you black out that little code at the bottom of the address, which is probably just some sort of address code for their address, not yours. So how do they manage this? It's really kind of impressive, in a big-brother-is-watching-you kind of way.

Anyway, at least you can make right-wingers pay 40 extra cents in postage or whatever.

Kevin,

Thanks for this link. It's always been a little mystifying how this all works on the right. I have a cousin, who seems to be an otherwise intelligent guy, who incessantly forwards me these messages that are just plain ol bullshit. If I cut and paste a few words in quotation marks and Google them, it usually brings me to the Snopes page discrediting the email. Easiest thing in the world to disprove, but the problem is volume.

And I'll bet Wolf Blitzer believes them all...

There's just no equivalent of this on the left, and it seems that the GOP has been at this since Al Gore invented the Internets.

You can always tell how long an author has been plugged into the inet by when they reference the origins of some inet phenom or another.

Since the mid-90s? Hell, this shit has been going on for longer than that.

Eg, prior to 1992 there was a list of actual Dan Quayle idiotic quotes that was circulating the inet. During the 92 election this same list was recirculated with Bill Clinton and/or Al Gore as the sources of the quotes.

, it usually brings me to the Snopes page discrediting the email.

Snopes is a liberal plot to undermine wingnut irreality....

Although I must be on plenty of lists, I seldom if ever receive right-wing smear e-mails. So, I would guess that their distribution isn't that broad.

OTOH I often receive left-wing smear e-mails, like the one about George Bush having a low IQ according to the Lovenstein Institute [which doesn't exist.]

ex-liberal: Although I must be on plenty of lists, I seldom if ever receive right-wing smear e-mails.

Coffee just came through my nose. Sure you don't, honey; you receive quality research and cutting-edge analysis that you rush to share with us here.

It is a sad commentary on America that "Obama is a Muslim" is considered a smear.

In what country wouldn't it have the same effect? Britain, France, Australia, Russia, India, Italy...? Perhaps Canada.

There's a weblog dedicated to chronicling these e-mail forwards over at MyRightWingDad.

My Republican family members have generally refrained from forwarding me such things, either because they're not the "forwarding" type, they're polite, or they know better than to send BS my way.

Oliver North offered an impassioned Cassandra-like warning about the threat of Osama bin Laden,

How was do they imagine that went?:

"Look, I've negotiated with, funded, or sold weapons to some of the craziest terrorists on the planet. So, believe me when I tell you Osama is bad news. Sure, he's currently fighting the Soviet Union (the greatest threat to our nation that ever existed) but he will turn against us one day. Also, he never cashes my checks."

The sad thing is, these pernicious emails even confuse and convince some of my more liberal friends and family members, especially any emails that conflate right-wing christian crap and patriotic pablum.

People who profess to HATE Bush and all he stands for routinely send me crap about evil Muslim America-Haters (the infamous "Budweiser-Muslim story" made its way into my inbox just last week), why America is a Christian nation, why atheists don't deserve a voice in American politcs, jingoistic military garbage, etc etc.

I can't tell you how disheartening it is for me to get this sh*t from supposedly-democratic friends. I expect it from the wingnuts, but to know that it suckers in gullible people on our side too is depressing.

And as usual, the values voters, the religio-right, propagate and promote these character attacks and lies...Them's some swell values.

For a bunch that professes a deontological philosophy, they sure can be downright utilitarian at times, can't they?

Btw, in my experience the people who send me the "Democrats are evil" chain emails are the same people who send me the "get rich quick with yet another scam" and "this technically impossible computer virus will crash your drive" emails.

"Look, I've negotiated with, funded, or sold weapons to some of the craziest terrorists on the planet. So, believe me when I tell you Osama is bad news. Sure, he's currently fighting the Soviet Union (the greatest threat to our nation that ever existed) but he will turn against us one day. Also, he never cashes my checks."

Hilarious.

I recently received a mass email where you were to guess if the quotations were from Stalin, Marx or some other well known communitst. At the end, you find they were all from Hillary. They give no indication of the audience or context. It finished with "Be very afraid." I wrote back that if I took quotations out of context, I could put Bush in that stall with Larry Craig. I was not appreciated by the recipients.

I long ago decided that the only appropriate response to these emails was to send the tale of the Burlap Boy.

http://www.snopes.com/humor/iftrue/burlap.asp

Kinda depressing that Snopes had to debunk this one.

John, I haven't seen that email, but my guess is that those quotes were indeed from Marx, Stalin or some other commie, if not outright fabrications. To do the research involved in culling actual HRC quotes is too much work for these scum.

Don't break the chain, create our own. You could sent around some great whoppers about the GOPers like

- Did you know Rudy Giuliani married his own cousin?

- Did you know that Fred Thompson got a 17 year old girl pregnant?

- Did you know that John McCain was a serial adulterer?

- Did you know that Mitt Romney believes that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri?

Etc. etc.

It is a sad commentary on America that "Obama is a Muslim" is considered a smear.

Indeed. Even amongst nominal progressives in the US, I find that negative impressions, fear, and distrust of Muslims is widespread. Unfortunately that is to be expected, since we all grew up on an almost steady diet of negative Muslim stereotypes fed to us by the MSM and Hollywood.

I agree with Gypsy; a lot of the emails I get are of the Jesus/American Soldier variety and they come from other Democrats. People so reflexively want to support their country, despite what the wingnuts claim, that the send these "patriotic" emails that spread wingnut dogma.

I actually debunked the Andy Rooney one for an Olbermann-watching Dem friend.

My Repub friends send me funny pictures of whatever Dem the right is currently afraid of and things like that.

One Dan Rather mistake equals millions of maliciously and deliberately false conservative-generated e-mails and the actions of the SwiftBoat Vets of Dishonor.

One word: populism.

Wow. While I'm relieved that liberalism prevailed in your Punnett squares, I can't help but feel sorry for you guys as the holidays approach. I think I'd completely lose my shit if I had to sit next to someone like ex-liberal at the family dinner table.

I receive a couple of these wingnut emails a week, sent by elderly, vulnerable, reflexively authoritarian veteran friends of my veteran father. I know he receives the same email and we sometimes argue about it. One argument against the message, I explain to him, is esthetic: Just because it's in 18-point blue type doesn't mean it's true, dad! He concedes this. But still, all the emails/fake news confirm an existing bias, so it persists.

My favorite, following September 11, was this ludicrous account, from "the Pentagon," which described a beatific encounter with President Bush. "First, let me tell you, he's a big man. . . ." Really, just the worst sort of drivel.

The one in my mailbox this morning, was rather high-minded, quoting a ca. 1907 Teddy Roosevelt on immigrants and what it means to be American. "Tell everyone you know!" was the injunction at the close. The message is that we're surrounded by a sea of brown people who we can't understand at the grocery store. It's not my hearing aid, goddammit.

But it's more than the email. They are getting wingnut newsletters in the mail from junk science purveyors like Physicians for Disaster Preparedness. And there's a crazy physician in Oregon, with no sense of humor.

They have junk news sources but read the New York Times for tone. If you argue politics with them, they send you a subscription to the National Review. You retaliate with a countersubscription, for them, to The Nation.

They return from winter in Florida with fresh Chelsea's mom jokes rhyming Osama, Obama, Yo Mama, which they deliver with gusto and then are shocked to hear you say: "I don't know anyone who would think that joke is funny." And this is months before Romney posed next to the placard with the same joke.

It's more than email. It's old people watching the world change around them, rearranging information to make themselves feel safer, superior, . . . you get the idea.

I think I'd completely lose my shit if I had to sit next to someone like ex-liberal at the family dinner table.

My prediction: a lot of previously loud-mouthed ignorant uncles are going to sheepishly mention that they "don't want to talk about politics" at the table or simply declare "all politicians are crooks" and leave it at that.

I get these type of emails from my right wing relatives and friends from time to time.

I answer the emails with that concept the right wing has a hard time understanding, the truth. I also provide proof such as the url's of copied and pasted items and only use credible sources.

I have helped a few people begin to do something they have never done before, think.

I hope you all start answering the chain emails with the truth and help a couple of people wake up and smell reality.

"First, let me tell you, he's a big man. . . ."

Why is the Pentagon checking out Bush's package?

More importantly, why do they think that Wingosphere is interested in Bush's package?

Is it really that big?!

I gotta get me a piece of that action!

Not strictly related, but interesting (to me) regardless...

Smathers:

Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless EXTROVERT?

Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice NEPOTISM with his sister-in-law, and he has a sister who was once a THESPIAN in wicked New York.

Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, he habitually practiced CELIBACY.

Snopes, of course, has more.

That was a great post, paxr55.

And Tyro, you cracked me up: I expect the exact same phenomenon around the Thanksgiving table at my house.

Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice NEPOTISM with his sister-in-law, and he has a sister who was once a THESPIAN in wicked New York.

It's even worse than that. I hear he's a serial philatelist.

John, I haven't seen that email, but my guess is that those quotes were indeed from Marx, Stalin or some other commie, if not outright fabrications. To do the research involved in culling actual HRC quotes is too much work for these scum.Posted by: Disputo on October 26, 2007 at 11:26 AM |

http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/marxist.asp

Kevin: "The left may own the blogosphere, but the right owns chain email."

I'm not sure claiming ownership of the blogosphere is a good thing.

Disputo posts about scum, and majarosh answers the call.

I got a whistle for every dog.

You guys are making me giggle.

Evidently Hillary is not averse to e-mail.

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/hillary_obama/2007/10/22/44184.html?s=al&promo_code=3C0B-1

Evidently the "scum" did cull "...actual HRC quotes..."

"Disputo posts about scum, and majarosh answers the call." Posted bt Gregory

Greg,
Context, context, context.

"John, I haven't seen that email, but my guess is that those quotes were indeed from Marx, Stalin or some other commie, if not outright fabrications."

Not according to Snopes.

***

Poor liberals! They are always being picked on and mistreated by the powerful right wing. Boo-hoo. Liberals are so misunderstood! ...

Poor mhr! Can't get his trolling to stay up more than a few minutes! Oh boo hoo!

Just curious...

Sometimes mhr gets replaced by one asterisk, sometimes by two, and, as here, sometimes by three. Are his comments being rated for stupidity and offensiveness? Is Kevin doing the rating?

[Think of it as my own little game of "Rate the Wingnuttery". --Mod]

Oh, goody. The racist fascist ASSHOLE - Gladys Kravitz, spyin' on the neighbors, is back. I thought we pretty much exposed you for the piece of shit you are on THIS THREAD. majarosh is a fucking NAZI and an embarrassment to the uniform he claims he once wore. But don't take my word for anything. Go to the thread I linked and follow the links to his own words posted elsewhere.

This piece of shit is not worthy of the attention of the thinking, sentient people here. He actually makes ex-liberal and his torture apologies and excuses look good by comparison.

This fucker would have his god-damned citizenship revoked if it were my call.

Poor mhr! Can't get his trolling to stay up more than a few minutes! Oh boo hoo! Posted by: Blue Girl, Red State (aka G.C.)

Why does it need to stay up for more than a few minutes?

If Bush gets 50/50 insults/praise and Kerry gets just insults, I'm not sure that really proves anything about right-wing dominance of the e-mail based smear.

After all, do any of you know anybody coming out with spontaneous compliments for Kerry other than "A bit better than Bush"?
(talk about damning with faint praise)

And a 50/50 split on Bush, given that the national vote split 50/50 between the candidates actually seems pretty moderate to me.

The Nation doesn't come up with a more damning statistic than that (or, apparently, any other statistics), so the piece rests on 6 anecdotes of dishonest e-mails circulating among the dimmer sections of the right-wing.

Color me unconvinced.

That said, the Obama at the madrassa crap is really disgusting.

So, a few suggestions for retaliation:

Giuliani to appoint Cheney secretary of defense.
"We need to send a clear message to our enemies: 'I will not back down. Ever.'"

Romney plans mass conversions to Mormonism. "It's the only truly American religion."

Mccain has inoperable cancer. Life expectancy less than a year. "Better dead than red!"

(That last one might have been a bit tasteless.)

What about Julie-Annie forcing our men to don pink burqas with plenty of lace?

Actually, I'm pretty sure Prince offered to die 4 me once too. So that's three...

There's a great line in the Mel Brooks movie Blazing Saddles when the people of Rock Ridge are planning to build a fake town so the bad guys (the railroad company) burn down the wrong town and the real town is saved. Before they start building, the preacher asks, "Are we really going to do this, or are we just jerking off?"

We are in a propaganda war with the neocons and you guys need to ask the same question, because it sounds to me like you're just jerking off. Are phases like "treacly aphorisms", "invented malapropisms", "Cassandra-like warning" used to enlighten blue-collar readers, or are they used to dazzle your "effete snob" friends?

If you want to win this war, you have to stop preaching to the choir and start communicating with all the voters.

Oh, puh-lease. The evidence that there are more right wing than left wing "smears" is that Snopes actually lists more attacks on Bush (25) than on Kerry (22)?

And it's not as if I don't regularly get "George Bush blew up the WTC" emails from kooks on the left.

In 2000 I remember getting a long list of idiotic Dan Quayle quotes, all attributed to Gore (though they led off with the "invented the internet" fabricated quote).

Really? Because in 2000 I remember getting a long list of mostly fake Dan Quayle quotes, all re-attributed to Bush. (Like the whole "Wanted to learn Latin so he could go to Latin America" line.)

By the way, I'm amused at the claim that "remember only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you, Jesus Christ...and the American Soldier" is a "right wing" claim. Liberals regularly claim that their patriotism or religious faith is being unfairly challenged -- but then they claim that any mention of patriotism or religious faith is a "right wing" thing.

And it's not as if I don't regularly get "George Bush blew up the WTC" emails from kooks on the left.

Or the Robert Scheer-originated lie that Bush gave $40 million to the Taliban just before 9/11.

Or the one referenced above about fake IQ tests from a fake place claiming that Bush was the lowest scoring president in history.