Republicans are the hateful ones

By:  Jim Fitzgerald

Sentinel Columnist

Rumors and misinformation make the rounds regularly but what intrigues me the most are the people that repeat them, apparently without question. It is almost like listening to Fox news without ever turning on the television.  For the millions of people who hear these rumors and have not been exposed to other sources of information, I suppose they believe whatever slant has been put on the “news.” Sometimes they become anxious and share the news through letters to the editor and mass emails.

The other day, a friend of mine forwarded just such an email. Everything in the email sounded plausible – and what we would expect from politicians – so he did not question a single talking point. However, whenever anything sounds too good to be true, you can bet it there is a smell lurking underneath the surface. Therefore, I went to snopes.com, the website where you can verify the veracity of mass emails and, sure enough, 99% of the email assertions were false.

The email started out innocently enough. It addressed a proposed 28^th amendment to the Constitution that would mandate all laws passed by Congress must apply to Congress as well as the general population. Sounds good, right?  We all suspect, and have heard, that the laws of the land do not apply to Congress. We are led to believe that Congressmen are free to do what they want with whomever they want without legal recourse.

In reality, the email was using a proposed 28^th amendment – which has not been proposed by anyone but a backroom political geek who wanted to use something official sounding to spread antipathy toward the government – to spread malicious rumors. The first false rumor asserted that members of Congress are eligible to draw full retirement pay after serving one term in office. See, this is the first thing in the email that sounds too good to be true – but believable. We would suspect the crooks in DC to apply just such a ruling to themselves. To anyone who bothers to check this out, they find it to be erroneous.

The second rumor, asserted as fact, said that Congress does not contribute to Social Security. Whoever cooked up this “fact” has to be at least as old as I am and remembers the time when this assertion was true. However, since 1984 Congress has been contributing to Social Security just like the rest of us.

The third assertion is a real juicy one because it deals with sex. Sex is such a sensitive, and taboo, subject that we believe just about anything said about it. After all, about the only exposure we get comes from XXX rated videos (surely the positions they get into are not comfortable or pleasurable!) and our personal experiences. Therefore, when the rumor comes along that Congress is exempt from prosecution for sexual harassment, we believe it. However, it is false and you might have suspected.

Then we come to the assertion that appears to be the real reason for generating the mass email in the first place. Okay, I am sure you guessed it pertains to the current health care bill. The rumor says that Congress exempted itself from recently passed health care reforms. Moreover, since the bill was passed without a single Republican vote, it becomes obvious that the entire email, though sounding bipartisan, is aimed at the Democrats. Given this focus, I will amend my above statement about backroom political geeks by adding the term Republican – as in Republican backroom political geek. I am sure there are Democratic backroom political geeks but I, for whatever reason, rarely see their mass emails. Nevertheless, back to the rumor. In fact, it is mandated in the bill that members of Congress and their staff only have access to health insurance plans created by the bill or through the health care exchanges to be established under the reform legislation.

In letters to the editor, I have seen several common themes emerge recently that indicate common talking points being spread around. The first, and the only one I will address in this column, is that the Obama administration has added more national debt in one year than all previous administrations – combined! That sounds a lot like a Karl Rove line and Karl Rove has never been known to speak with a non-forked tongue. Whoever believes this line – and I suspect there are plenty – has had their head in the sand for the last decade. Cowboy George added over five trillion dollars to the national debt in his over-extended time in office. He is the one that added more national debt than any administration in history. Obama, by contrast, has added just over a trillion dollars – in preventing a worse economic catastrophe.

If something is repeated often enough, it assumes the mantle of truth. It is this principle that underlies the campaign to spread false and misleading rumors. Before you forward an email or write to the editor, make sure that your information is grounded and verified in fact. It seems to me the Bible says something about spreading false rumors so if you are a believer, pay closer attention to the information you disseminate. You have the power to contribute to a better world.