What started the idea of this is a co-worker claiming that Obama had replaced the American Flags in the white house with Muslim Prayer Curtains.
What the what!?
By the way, this was dropped in a conversation about learning a second language. I have no idea how or why he thought this was relevant, but evidently he needed to share this bit of 'Obama is really a Muslim' information with me.
I did what came natural... I completely ignored the statement and continued on talking about how learning a second language is in and of itself a good thing as it stimulates parts of the brain that if not used will otherwise go forever unused.
When I got home I was too tired to bother looking anything up about President Obama's secret prayer curtains (so secret they're behind him in press conferences). This morning though, I did the look up. A simple Google search of "Obama Muslim Prayer Curtains" (Google even filled in the rest when I got to "Obama Muslim P...") lead me directly to snopes. I love snopes. Here's the relevant article:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/photos/ovaloffice.asp
I'm sure most of my readers here would have already guessed it... they're not muslim prayer curtains. They are the curtains in the East Room of the White house. They've been there for years. Other presidents have had conferences in front of them.
Even if you just search for 'Muslim Prayer Curtains' Google shows you the snopes article. So if this was so easy to find out as false, how can an otherwise intelligent person repeat this as fact? It's because of the very thing that supports it as fact... The Internet. The Internet provides us all with every 'fact' that we need. Or at least think that we need. It took some deep Google searching, but I found a couple sites that pushes this as a fact that President Obama is in fact a Muslim.
It got me to thinking... is Google actually helping out people like this? People that find a fact interesting and is using Google to back it up as truth? We all know that Google uses your internet history as an indicator for what you are looking for. I tend to like snopes and go there often... as a result snopes is often one of the first search results when I look up something stupid like this. But what about other people? What about people that like those right wing crazy websites and visit there often? Won't those sites tend to show up first for them? As a result of that, won't people tend to give them even more credibility (at least in their own mind) because Google points to them?
I know that when I search for something I tend to stop my search when I've found it. That's not always the case... sometimes after I find the answer, I continue my search specifically so I can back it up with more information. But why keep searching once you've found it? That would be like continuing to dig through the sofa cushions after you've already found your recently lost keys.
So I postulate this example; 1) A person finds a tidbit of information (like Obama has hung Muslim Prayer Curtains up in the White House) on facebook or verbally from a friend. 2) This person goes to Google to see if it's true. 3) Google, knowing that this person likes to visit right wing wack job sites points him to a right wing wack job site that has an entire article on how Obama is hanging up Muslim Prayer Curtains all over the White House. 4) This person now sees this as confirmed fact and proceeds to tell others about how Obama is secretly a Muslim.
It really bothers me that a nurse would fall into this trap. This particular co-worker has a bachelor's degree in Nursing. One of the biggest things I learned in doing research for Nursing papers was using only good sources. For example if I was writing a paper on Measles, I couldn't use WebMD as a source. I most certainly couldn't use Wikipedia. In other words, I had to use a good source for my information.
So far I've used the Obama Prayer Curtain, but this applies to a lot of political issues. The Gays, The Attacks On Christianity, The Pinko Communist Socialist Obama Care, Climate Change.... all of these get wack job work overs. They are all self fulfilling circles of logic that could be so easily escaped by reading up on real journalism or fact based sites.
"But the Lame Street Media is totally Liberal biased"
Umm... ok... let's look at this because it's part of that circular logic. By using this as an excuse you can dismiss a lot of real journalism because of a supposed bias. Is there bias in journalism? True Journalism? No. Is there bias in journalism companies? Yes. Of course there is. Everybody has a bias. But don't take that fact as a reason to only view news or internet sites that SHARE your bias.
I think it's clear that I'm fairly liberal minded. But do you know what one of my favorite news sites is? Fox.
I'll give you a moment to clean up that spit-take coffee off your keyboard.
Fox is a wonderfully thorough news organization. It's bias is most certainly right leaning, but only in so much as it's commentary and/or opinion pieces make it so. The actual 'news' portion? That's wonderfully journalistic. Sure, if you think of Fox news as nothing more than Bill O'Reilly, or Sean Hannity, then it's CLEARLY biased. But I'm talking about the news division that reports... you know... news. On the opposite side of the spectrum is The New York Times. They lean to the left, but only in their opinion pieces. Their journalism is top notch and just the news.
The only big difference in these two organisations is the division of news an opinion. TNYT is almost exclusively news with only a smattering of opinion pieces. FN on the other hand is about a 50/50 split. So you have to watch a little more carefully at FN to find the stories that are biased.
What I'm really ranting about isn't the fact that people bring up bad news sources... bad news sources are everywhere. It's that people stop when the find the information that they wanted to find. This goes for me as well. The internet WILL give you what you are looking for. We all need to look past that... we all need to find the genuine fact based information that DOESN'T agree with our preconceptions.
OK, enough ranting for now. I just had to get that off my chest.
People want confirmation of their beliefs, and are willing to forgo research if somethings confirms their bias.
ReplyDeleteOf COURSE that is what Obama would do, flaunt his Muslim nature right in front of us, since he thinks so little of the conservative blah blah blah and why not as he's got the support of the liberal media blah blah blah.
I think it sort of falls into what I had talked about awhile back about how everyone hates rich people and that they should be taxed more, but then no one considers themselves rich.
And it does go for both sides, which i usually call out on Facebook. Yesterday there was the posting about how the NRA wants guns in the schools but won't allow them in the convention hall. That one is only semi-true, because its the actual building and their bylaws that says that guns can't be toted in there.
My favorites are when the memes seem to be contradictory, like when Obama is a Muslim, but the kind of Muslim that will apparently attend a United Church of Christ church in Chicago with a incendiary racist preacher. So is he faking being a Christian? I'm sure the Muslim brotherhood isn't taking too well to that if he *IS* Muslim.