The Internet has been the subject of much scorn and ridicule as a place where untruths, lies, and outright blasphemies can be distributed with ease. But I’ve always argued that they can just as easily be refuted with ease. E-mail, however, can distribute one lie in a thousand different directions with no chance of retrieval and a total loss of control - in a microsecond. It’s a far more dangerous media tool than the World Wide Web.
Consider: The Internet is a mass communication tool. When you publish online you are communicating with millions of other people who share cyberspace. If those people cannot talk back on the same page and website on which lies are distributed, they can at least set up their own page to counter those lies and untruths. The power of distribution is equal.
E-mail, on the other hand, is a one-to-one communication tool that can be used to communicate the same message to many people by copying and blind copying them. Then those people can create a one-to-one communication message and distribute the same untruths to their friends. And so on and so on. Untrue messages can circulate over and over again continuously with no checks or balances and no chance for refutation. Sure, I can respond to an e-mail and correct the sender, but who will correct all the other recipients of that e-mail and their friends who distribute it too? The answer is, most people, even if they know a message they’ve received in e-mail is wrong, will simply delete it and not think about it again. That allows the untrue message to continue circulating unchecked.
Barack Obama And The Audacity Of Hype
I recently received an e-mail from a close member of my family that attempts to paint Barack Obama in a bad light by using his own words. They are words from Obama’s book’s Audacity of Hope and Dreams Of My Father. First, I’d like to say that I haven’t read either book and I think it is highly likely that the person who sent me the e-mail hasn’t read them either. That means that neither of us can verify whether the statements in the e-mail are true without some research. But I find them to be highly suspect because it is easy to take such statements out of context. Even if the source to which they are attributed is correct, it is highly likely that they are being construed in ways that the original source unintended. That is easy to do with e-mail. Below are the comments in the e-mail I received and my impressions:
From Dreams of My Father: ‘I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.’
Big deal. At 12 or 13, we all make statements and think thoughts that, after 30, we are quite ashamed of. Obama’s book is a memoir that tells the story of a young man with a black father and a white mother who was selected to be the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Of course race is going to be important in such a story and race in America is always - ALWAYS - a double-edge sword. Race relations are strained and there is a deep level of resentment toward whites among blacks toward blacks among whites. Anyone who hasn’t had negative thoughts about members of the opposite race has probably not had much contact with members of the other race. Obama’s youthful experience is natural and normal.
From Dreams of My Father : ‘I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s race.’
This is a loaded statement because there is no background given for this quote. How old was Obama at the time? What were the circumstances? What experiences led Obama to feel this way? Is there a white person in America who has never felt a grievance or animosity against African-Americans for one thing or another? Yes. In every city and every state. This is just another example of white people of privilege trying to paint a member of the black race unfairly. Stop it!
From Dreams of My Father: ‘There was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.’
OK. Again, what were the circumstances and how old was this Obama? Who is he talking about? Bill Clinton? George H.W. Bush? The former president of the Harvard Law Review? Give me some details. I can’t make a judgment on the basis of one fact alone.
From Dreams of My Father: ‘It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.’
Wow. To even include this statement shows an utter sense of ignorance. I think every successful black man in American has probably felt this way. Hell, I’ve felt this way and I’m not even black.
From Dreams of My Father: ‘I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn’t speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa , that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself , the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.’
Again, how old was this Obama? Does he feel the same way now? Does it matter? He’s a black man in a predominantly white society who is almost old enough (if not actually old enough) to remember when white-only water fountains were still allowed by law. So why shouldn’t he identify with members of his own race? Why is that such a sin? I understand that Malcolm X carries some baggage among some whites due to the nature of his message, but who can argue that Martin Luther King Jr., W.E.B. Dubois, and Nelson Mandela aren’t positive role models - even for white people? Give me a break!
And there’s the kicker. Oh, this is the big one. Holy Fricking Cow! I can’t believe it. The big, big sin cometh!
And FINALLY the Most Damming one of ALL of them!!!
From Audacity of Hope: ‘I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.’
This is where I, a red-blooded white American boy, am supposed to pull out the full force of my redneck attitude and start hating. A BLACK man will side with the Muslims! Oh my God! Traitor! Traitor! Heretic! Traitor!
Facetiousness aside, I’ll ask the same questions again. What were the circumstances for him saying this? What’s the background? And before you go off and say there is no set of circumstances under which a white American Christian male should say he’ll side with the Muslims, consider this:
A violent Buddhist sect from India crosses into Pakistan and begin burning mosques. There is no visible motive for doing so other than sheer hatred. They go so far as to rape the Muslim women and kill their children, setting farms to fire, and blowing up buildings and automobiles with bombs. Are you going to side with the Muslims or the Buddhists committing acts of terrorism?
As I said earlier, I haven’t read either of Barack Obama’s books. I’m not particularly fond of his brand of politics. Though, in the interest of full disclosure, if it boils down to Obama and John McCain, the less of two evils is Barack Obama. I can’t imagine that John McCain will do anything a great deal differently than our current president and I think George W. Bush has destroyed enough of American values. We don’t need any more Republican nonsense in the White House. But this isn’t about who should be our next president. It’s about stupid e-mail messages circulating untruths, half-truths, and downright misappropriations of criticism about a candidate for president. In this case, those misappropriations are racially charged.
And how urgent is this message? According to the creator of the e-mail message, it’s very urgent:
* If you have never forwarded an e-mail, now is the time to Do so!!!! We CANNOT have someone with this type of mentality running our GREAT nation!! I don’t care whether you a Democrat or a Conservative. We CANNOT turn ourselves over to this type of character in a President. PLEASE help spread the word!
Notice how Democrat and Conservative are set against each other, as if a Democrat can’t be conservative or a conservative can’t be a Democrat. And God forbid that we should elect a president who has struggled with race issues in the White House.
So you can see how e-mail is a very dangerous media for passing on messages of hate, ignorance, and downright untruthfulness as well as damaging commentary on nothing of real importance.
