Of course, there’s no arguing that Salon isn’t biased, what with them billing themselves as an “online journal of arts, culture and politics with a liberal bent.”
I can say that I myself have received a lot more BS emails about Obama that I can recall getting about Bush, but it’s not like I kept track. But the results from the Salon article seems very much in line with what I’ve personally received.
So, what’s going on here? Is there a lot more bullshit against Obama that there was against Bush? And if so, why?
As far as I can tell. If nothing else, the opposition to Bush didn’t need to make things up to make him look awful; Bush did an excellent job of that by himself.
He’s a Democrat, and black. The opposition is irrational, fanatic, and heavily sprinkled with racists. This sort of lying & hysteria is their standard behavior when confronted with opposition; the race issue makes it worse.
I don’t think its Obama specifically. Republicans have always used “pass-it-on” email rumors a lot more then Dems. I remember the same disparity during the 2000 and 2004 elections.
I’m not really sure what the reason is for the disparity, but its pretty prominent. I’ve wondered if there isn’t some conservative individual or group somewhere that makes a point of creating these things.
ETA: I’ll also add that they’re pretty effective. A lot of the “latest outrage” type rants I hear from conservative friends/relatives end up having come from an email they’ve read.
I perused the Salon article and the Snopes link as well, and the analysis seems to be correct. There are a few negative Obama e-mails that look like jokes (the one where he’s linked to swine flu because someone said a black man won’t be president of the US until pigs fly), but most don’t seem to fall in that category.
The internet has changed a lot since Bush took office. That said, I recall stupid nonsense forwards being more common in the past, rather than less.
I think the key point here is that Snopes, FactCheck and Politifact are a lot more popular now that they were in 2000, or even in 2004, and hence rumors from the early days of the Bush Administration probably went unnoticed.
While I’d like to join in with the sentiment that it’s nice Democrats don’t seem as willing to spread stupid rumors as Republicans, it’s sobering to remember that a 2007 poll found that most Democrats (61%) either thought George Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand or weren’t sure:
“Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.”
Loony fringes get more active/influential when their “side” is out of power.
We’ve been over that a million times before. It had been widely reported by the time of that poll (including in the 9/11 Commission Report) that Bush had been advised by the NSA that Islamic terrorist groups were planning to hijack civil aircraft in order to fly them into buildings.
Answer…depends. Why? Because it depends on who is receiving them. My WAG is that Bush got a LOT more BS emails and rumors than Obama has, simply because Bush was in office for 8 years, while Obama hasn’t even gotten through his first term. Almost the entire 9/11 Truth movement, at it’s heart, was an anti-Bush and his administration movement. Then you had the controversy over the supposed stolen election in 2000, then 9/11 (as mentioned), then the 2004 election, Katrina, Iraq and…well, the list is nearly endless. And the whacky (and perhaps not so whacky) rumors and emails about all of the above, plus the imminent attack on Iran (and assorted other countries), outlawing abortion, prayer in schools, loony CT’s, etc etc.
But it’s all pretty dependent on an individual basis. I got loads more whacky emails about Bush (and saw a ton more venom against Bush) than I’ve seen against Obama. But then a lot of my friends are more left winger types than right wing nutjobs, my sister, her husband, and most of my family are certified loony lefty types, many of who are STILL convinced Bush was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and all manner of other things, so my experience about emails is, perhaps limited by my own viewpoint. I have to say I haven’t really gotten many (I’m not sure I’ve gotten ANY, to be honest, but perhaps I missed a few) anti-Obama email rants thus far.
YMMV of course, but I think you’d be hard pressed to put Obama in the same category of BS emails and rumors (and reality) that Bush, um, enjoyed, during his presidency. And Biden isn’t even in the same universe as Cheney was…
What I find amusing is now most of these emails will actually have a link to Snopes with the claim that even Snopes says it’s true. You then follow the link and it says no such thing and actually debunks the email.
Well, yes, but how many of those criticisms were actually ungrounded? I’ll happily give you 9/11, and, less happily, the 2004 election, but of your examples, 60% are grounded in reality. I’d wager that one could equal that simply by counting the criticisms based on Obama being Kenyan or Socialist or both.
Well, reality is in the eyes of the beholder. I don’t believe that the Kenyan connection holds even a ghost of a candle to the ‘Bush stole the 2000 election’. I’m pretty certain that there are a lot of folks on this board who are convinced that he not only stole the 2000 election but stole the 2004 election as well. But that just shows (IMHO) the whole ox goring aspect. As for the socialist meme, that’s on par, IMHO, with ‘Bush is going to outlaw ABORTION!’ or ‘Bush is going to invade <insert country of choice, generally Iran though>!!’. Hell, I remember getting emails claiming that Bush was getting ready to set aside the elections and declare himself king or something (dictator for life), and I got emails like that until Obama was sworn in! Hell, I STILL get anti-Bush emails and the man has been out of office for over a year.
And this completely leaves aside the 9/11 truth movement, some of the whackier Katrina memes I remember (one claimed, with perfect sincerity, that Bush actually CAUSED Katrina, using some kind of space based hurricane generator, in order to wipe out black people in New Orleans so Haliburton could buy up all the property there and put in condos…or some other loopy BS along those lines).
Compared to some of that stuff, Obama being born in Kenya seems almost sane, to be perfectly honest. You may think that a lot of the emails about Bush (60% being ‘grounded in reality’ and all :p), but that’s only YOUR reality. From mine, I’d have to say that nearly 100% of the whack-a-do emails I got about Bush were pretty much complete horseshit…and I HATED Bush. But emails claiming to ‘prove’ Bush had a measurable IQ of 89, or saying he deliberately sabotaged the Katrina rescue efforts are only ‘grounded in reality’ if you want them to be true…which is exactly the same mentality that are seemingly behind the Obama horseshit emails some are getting (as I said, I haven’t really received much about Obama, aside from a few emails I’ve remember dealing almost entirely with his supposed imminent seizure of all our guns and ammo).
Well, in my reality, the bulk of the emails I got about Bush about the five things I included in my quote of you were 40% bullshit about 9/11 and 2004, and 60% valid criticisms of the other items. Your reality obviously varies.
Perhaps my email address isn’t as widely spread as yours, or, more likely, I’ve more successfully discouraged my relatives from sending me spam than you have.
Assuming you are getting a lot of anti-Obama emails now, I guess what that indicates is that, unlike me, you had a lot less friends and/or relatives who were spamming you about Bush when he was in office than you have folks assed about Obama today. I had just the opposite…I have very few friends or family (especially family) who email me weird shit about Obama, while I had a metric buttload of folks who felt compelled to tell me all kinds of loopy shit about Bush. Possibly because people figured ‘hey, he doesn’t like Bush, so he’ll want to hear all about THIS shit!’ while, today, most of my family (with a few exceptions that have more to do with, sadly, racism, than with Obama’s actual stances) and nearly all my friends LOVE Obama and thinks he pretty much walks on water.
Another factor might be that Bush was more of a known quantity. He’s the scion of a wealthy family that’s been in politics for nearly a century, starting with Samuel P. in WWI. His father was President, his brother a governor, and overall there’s just been a lot of biography and memoir space mentioning him and his relatives and contacts.
Obama, OTOH, is a true American success story in that he came out of nowhere (OK, OK, his grandparents did well, his father was well-connected and his mother was so interesting I desperately wish she was in the White House right now running a new American-sponsored micro-lending program to the women of Afghanistan). His biography is no secret–hell, he’s won a Grammy and made five million bucks last year mostly selling his two books–but it is a “new” story to most Americans.
My relatives send me anti-Obama stuff (not so much about the man himself as his policies) and my friends used to send me anti-Bush stuff.
Some white Christians were brought up with the belief that the devil undermines everything they do, and are blasted with hellfire and brimstone sermons promising eternal suffering if they stray. Thus, they are brought up in a culture of paranoia, and they find it easy to believe that anything non-white and/or non-Christian can do the devil’s work under their very noses. They naturally want to be prepared and able to combat this imagined corruption, so they’ll look for signs based on 10-heads-7-diadems imagery, as well as coincidences and stretched historical anecdotes, to justify their fears.
GWB is one of them, so they’re not likely to suspect their own kind. Obama however, is easy to spot. He’s an outsider, and thus up to no good. Thanks to teh interweb, they can spread their paranoia like wildfire and warn everybody of the upcoming Rapture for the 3 millionth time. And with Google, satellites, and long-range cameras and microphones easily capable of laying their souls bare for the whole world to see and thus contributing vastly to the culture of paranoia, who can blame them?
I had just the opposite…I have very few friends or family (especially family) who email me weird shit about Obama, while I had a metric buttload of folks who felt compelled to tell me all kinds of loopy shit about Bush. Possibly because people figured ‘hey, he doesn’t like Bush, so he’ll want to hear all about THIS shit!’ while, today, most of my family (with a few exceptions that have more to do with, sadly, racism, than with Obama’s actual stances) and nearly all my friends LOVE Obama and thinks he pretty much walks on water.