Is the Rutherford Institute's founder *always* this gullible?

[RTFirefly]

[This is more of an observation than a rant, but this still struck me as the appropriate forum.]

Y’all remember the Rutherford Institute, the conservative organization best known for picking up the tab for Paula Jones’ sexual harassment suit. The founder and president of the Rutherford institute is John W. Whitehead; basically, the Institute is Whitehead, some staff, and a bunch of money. It’s his toy.

Whitehead writes a regular column, and his most recent column features an email glurge about the horrors the Declaration of Independence signatories suffered at the hands of the British:

Francis Lewis, for example, a merchant from New York, saw his home and lands destroyed and his wife imprisoned. Richard Stockton, a justice on the New Jersey Supreme Court, was forced to go into hiding with his wife and children, only to be captured, beaten and jailed by British soldiers. His home burned and his possessions destroyed, Stockton was left with nothing and had to live off charity.

In all, 17 of the signers lost their fortunes. Nine lost their lives. Several were imprisoned and tortured. Others lost wives and children. Many were never able to see the “Promised Land” of liberty, but they were content to leave a legacy far greater than wealth or property.

You have to wonder about an organization run by a man who doesn’t bother to fact-check the glurge he gets in his email before broadcasting it to the world. Snopes had had the following comments about this particular glurge some weeks earlier:

The implication of the article is that many of the Declaration’s signers were killed, injured, or tortured; suffered serious illness due to mistreatment; or were stripped of their wealth and possessions for having dared to put their names on that famous document. The truth is that only one man, Richard Stockton, came to harm at the hands of the British as a direct result of his having signed the Declaration of Independence, and he isn’t even mentioned here. The omission of anything having to do with Stockton is probably deliberate: After he was “dragged from his bed by night” by royalists and imprisoned in New York, he repudiated the Declaration of Independence and swore allegiance to Great Britain…

Whitehead’s glurge is a slightly different glurge, since it mentions Stockton, but it still omits his reversal of allegiance, a rather key fact.

Several signers were captured by the British during the Revolutionary War, and all of them were released alive by the end of the war. Certainly they suffered the ill treatment often afforded to prisoners of war, but they were not tortured, nor is there any evidence that they were treated more harshly than other wartime prisoners who were not also signatories to the Declaration. Some signers were killed or injured because they took an active part in fighting the war for independence, some of them lost their wealth or their property because they used their assets to support the revolutionary cause, and some of them suffered losses simply because they (or their property) got in the way of a war that was being waged on American soil, but all of this was the result of the fortunes of war, not of their having signed a piece of paper.

[Sublight]

Wow, he’s really out of date. Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe got suspended for running that antique over a year ago (the suspension was because Jeff, in the fine tradition of Globe columnists, tried to pass it off as his own work).

Still, if he were bright enough to check how long this glurge has been floating around, he’d be bright enough to figure out it wasn’t true.

[Abe_Babe]

So who fought in this Revolutionary War they keep talking about? Was the U.S. involved?

[RTFirefly]

*Originally posted by Abe Babe *
**So who fought in this Revolutionary War they keep talking about? **

The peasants. They’re revolting.

[pldennison]

As the newspaper editor said in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” He probably knows damn well it’s crap, but crap sells.

[Rilchiam]

[howl of frustration]NOOOOOOT AGAAAAAAAIN!!![/howl of frustration]

(That’s aimed at Whitehead, not you, RTF.)

[Ankh_Too]

*Originally posted by RTFirefly *
**The peasants. They’re revolting. **

You said it, they stink on ice.

[Dr.Rieux]

“They’ve always been revolting–now they’re rebelling.”

[Abe_Babe]

I, too, was a rebellious peasant as a teenager, but I grew out of it.

This seems more a case of shoddy journalism rather than intentionally dishonest journalism.

[Wendell_Wagner]

Yeah, but it’s shoddy journalism by the head of a foundation with plenty of money to do fact-checking when needed. If a ditsy friend sends you this glurge by E-mail, you can tell them that they should check things on Snopes before spreading rumors further. You’ve always known they were somewhat of a dope and this only further confirms it. When the head of a foundation includes this glurge in a column though, you should ignore any further statements from the foundation (unless they print an abject apology for their laziness in a future issue).

[iampunha]

The Washington Post Magazine printed that thing last 4th of July (2001, not 2002).

I’m gonna take a stab in the dark and say either someone pointed out the snopes refutation to them or someone realized it wasn’t true.

I hope, anyway. I couldn’t find an email address to shoot them the “You dolt! It’s NOT TRUE!” response.

[Rilchiam]

iampunha and others: Let’s not harsh out on Rutherford. They oppose that “snitch program”, and right now I’m willing to forgive a lot from anyone who feels that way. (Didn’t know this when I posted earlier.)

[stockton]

“Whitehead’s glurge is a slightly different glurge, since it mentions Stockton, but it still omits his reversal of allegiance, a rather key fact.”

I’m happy to inform the teeming millions that I am alive and well, and not a traitor.