September 02, 2004
...and they say Bush talks funny
I was saddened and angered today to receive a bit of intra-office political spam today. One of my co-workers, L, forwarded an email ripping Kerry. I wasn’t surprised by that part; L often sends emails directly from the RNC to the office. What surprised me were the sheer inanity of the accusations against Kerry and L’s partisan blindness to what he had done.
I’m astonished that the level of political discourse has sunk so low that people are making up meaningless accusations like this and refusing to research them.
The message started out like this:
And they say Bush talks funny. This Kerry is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. His GPA at Yale was lower then Bush and he didn't go on to Grad School. It should get real interesting when they start debating each other. You will think Yogi Berra is writing the script.
I don't know if the GPA claim was true, but I figured the rest of the email was going to be a listing of some of the stupid things Kerry has said during the campaign, from the oft-abused "I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it" to humorous slips of the tongue. I was very surprised to see this instead:
"The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country." - John F. Kerry"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
- John F. Kerry"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'."
- John F. Kerry"I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future."
- John F. Kerry"The future will be better tomorrow."
- John F. Kerry"We're going to have the best educated American people in the world."
- John F. Kerry"I stand by all the misstatements that I've made."
- John F. Kerry"We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe."
- John F. Kerry"Public speaking is very easy."
- John F. Kerry"A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls."
- John F. Kerry"We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur."
- John F. Kerry"For NASA, space is still a high priority."
- John F. Kerry"Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children."
- John F. Kerry"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
- John F. Kerry"It's time for the human race to enter the solar system."
- John F. Kerry
These quote are all very funny of course, but they aren't Kerry's. Except for the first one, these quotes are from Dan Quayle! The first one is a paraphrase of George W. Bush (links to sources of the quotes at About.com). My boss, R, and I noticed this immediately, so R emailed L telling him to look at truthorfiction.com to see that he was spreading misattributed silliness.
I thought we'd never get a response, but L responded to R pretty quickly. Amazingly, L defended his email, even stating that he had his source (email forwarding) and we had our source (truthorfiction.com), and obviously truthorfiction.com was biased for the left and just wanted to make Republicans look bad while making Democrats look good! Of course, truthorfiction.com is not politically biased at all, but L preferred the insults to Kerry to the truth, and he fell back on bias and opinion when his belief was challenged. But these aren't issues of bias or opinion! Quotes are facts, and these quotes are from Quayle and Bush, not Kerry. Bias and opinion are used to interpret the meaning of the quotes and what they say about the speaker, but there's no liberal bias in saying that these particular quotes are by Republicans.
Has discourse in America really sunk so low that people will believe anything they hear that maligns an enemy, and assume that any attempt to correct is biased? Do we prefer hatred to fact that much?
P.S. I'm sure that Liberals have been equally silly in passing along ridiculous claims, but this insult through misattribution was too glaring for me to ignore it.
Posted by LawnBoy at September 2, 2004 08:45 PMLawnBoy, just checked out the web sites you linked and all I can do is laugh. It seems the old saying “That you can fool some of the people all the time” still holds true in the 21st Century.
What you need to do is to send L an e-mail that shows Kerry ahead in the poll by 10 points and address it from the republican party. I wonder what L’s reaction would be than?
P.S. Thanks again for the laugh!
Posted by: Henry Schlatman at September 2, 2004 09:32 PMLawnboy:
The quotes are funny. Thanks for sharing the anecdote that shows the L is pretty darn stupid. Glad he doesn’t speak for me and that his opinions are his own.
I guess there are a lot of ignorant people out there. I’m happy to NOT include thee and me amongst them.
Posted by: joebagodonuts at September 2, 2004 11:39 PMI sympathize, Lawnboy, with your office spam problem. Working in an industry where everybody thinks I must be a leftist, I get tons of well-meaning jovial Bush-bashing e-mails.
A former assistant was the worst offender—he seemed shocked when I told him I didn’t agree in the slightest with the jist of his forwarded anti-Bush emails. He stopped sending them (to me at least) and for awhile seemed to think he was about to be fired. Well, I wrote him a kick-ass rec and he now has a much better much job than making photocopies and answering the phone for a right-whacko like me! So good for him. Forgive L. After all, Jesus would. :)
Posted by: Martin at September 3, 2004 01:34 AMLawnboy asked: “Has discourse in America really sunk so low that people will believe anything they hear that maligns an enemy, and assume that any attempt to correct is biased? Do we prefer hatred to fact that much?”
The answer is ‘Yep’. That is why I am laying plans now for the next civil war. I don’t want anyone looting my plantation, raping my women folk, and branding LT on my forehead (Liberal - Traitor). My plantation is in Bush country and you know how them cowboys can get when there are no cows around.
Posted by: David R. Remer at September 3, 2004 01:41 AM“Has discourse in America really sunk so low that people will believe anything they hear that maligns an enemy, and assume that any attempt to correct is biased? Do we prefer hatred to fact that much?”
Now the question is asked that was not asked when Howard Dean, in a relentless flurry of vilification, dragged his entire party to the cliff. That was not asked when Michael Moore made a mint exploiting the willingness of Bush-haters to “believe anything.”
Calls to civil war, David? Care to explain? Are you advocating—or lamenting—what might happen if the left is not able to realize its political ambitions through democratic means at the ballot box?
Posted by: Martin at September 3, 2004 01:54 AMSorry you missed it Martin, but the title of this article is “…And they say Bush talks funny”. Get it? Oh, well, some folks just have no sense of humor this late at night.
Posted by: David R. Remer at September 3, 2004 03:11 AMMartin,
Apparently you did not hear what Zell Miller said to Hardball Chris last night. It seems that the American people may need to tell our political leaders and their extremist followers that they need a “Time Out” For if this blog don’t make you laugh at human nature than maybe you need a reality check.
Remimber the quote from Roy Rogers which said about “You can fool some of the people some of the time …”
Posted by: Henry Schlatman at September 3, 2004 03:35 AMLawnboy, I am shocked! Shocked, I say!
Who would have thought that false information would be spread around the internet? Please don’t tell me that it also had “Fw: Fw: Fw:” in the subject line. Everyone knows that means “Factworthy.” I read it on the internet. If even that isn’t true, then we’re all…DOOMED!
And this person’s messages are coming directly from the RNC? What a sneaky and unprincipled bunch, huh? Gosh, thanks for being a beacon of truth and exposing this evil. I’m especially impressed with the time and effort that you apparently spent figuring out that a junk e-mail contained bad info.
Guess I’d better call my 90 year old aunt. She just loves forwarding e-mail to me. I delete most of it, but I guess I need to start taking it seriously. The barbarians are definitely at the gate.
Posted by: NOTOTH at September 3, 2004 12:30 PMWhat really confuses me about the whole thing is who had the idea to take a list of Quayle quotes and change the attribution to Kerry. What was such a person thinking? “Well, if these are dumb when Quayle said it, they’d be dumb if Kerry said it, too!” It’s just a bizarre way to smear a person.
NOTOTH,
I didn’t call the RNC an evil, sneaky, or unprincipled bunch. I said they often send out emails attacking Kerry, which is true. Congrats on blowing down that straw man you created.
Also, I was expressing surprise that someone took forwarded emails seriously. I wasn’t saying that we should take such emails seriously, which is what your sarcasm attacked me for.
When you ignore the message to attack the messenger, it’d be more effective to attack anything actually having to do with the messenger.
Posted by: LawnBoy at September 3, 2004 02:45 PMAs Albert Alligator said when he was told that something scurrilous he was chargin Howland Owl with wasn’t true, “If you can’t use your enemies for something like that, what good are they?”
You see, it’s not enough to just be against someone else and what they “stand for,” it’s necessary to be accurate in your complaints about them. At least, in civilized political discourse, it is. These days, it doesn’t seem to matter so much, particularly for Republicans. I know Democrats have demagogued in the past, and will still do so (the misuse of Congressional votes is not a Republican monopoly, for sure), but it seems that politics isn’t just about “may the best man win” any longer; it’s necessary to destroy your opponent, and then bankrupt the country to save it from him. Hmmm… a little like the Vietnam policy of destroying villages to save them, isn’t it?
Anyway, we will continue to try to keep the truth out there, relying on facts (like accurate quotes). If the madministration thinks it’s unfair, that the truth always seems to come down on our side, so be it. If the shoe fits….
As my mother used to say, “handsome is as hansome does.”
Ed
Posted by: Ed Drone at September 6, 2004 04:08 PM
