I don’t think there’s as much of the lefty stuff out there, but Snopes does debunk it. If you peruse the politics section, you’ll find all kind of “Bush is teh dum” claims and photoshops debunked. Ditto with Palin.
Ah…I missed this:
Well, my idea would be that this seems a bit of an over the top response to a mere question. While I’m sure you would get some positive response to the assertion that I’m ‘stoopid’, I can’t see that me merely asking a question (here in GQ) should bring things to this level.
I’m well aware that glurge type emails are pretty much 100% bullshit…but thanks for pointing that out to one of my limited mental capabilities. I guess I should have been more clear in the OP as to what I was looking for…which was information to debunk the email.
But thanks for your gracious help in answering my question in an unbiased, open and honest way, without resorting to name calling or insults about my intelligence…
-XT
The Democratic Underground posting is from 2003, and the Snopes article was updated at least once since then, in 2005. I assume that’s when they recast the article and put in the information from the 9/11 Commission, since there is now no reference to Moore at all.
On the subject of left wing debunkings:
In fact here’s a whole Bush-related index, debunking a lot of popular jokes and email forwards.
>Considering that the site is hated with a passion by people who spread right-wing glurge emails, this is a really odd tactic to take.
The right cannibalize their own. Its not surprising and we’ve seen it before.
>What gives? Did Snopes correct their correction? Was Moore wrong after all?
More about it here. I think the sticking point is when they flew out. At the time several newspapers were reporting these flights as true. The real problem is that snopes took an opportunity to attack Moore in way unbecoming of a site about myths and facts and silently removed it after people noticed. Its a bald-faced smear on Moore and if they did this to, say, beloved right-wing radio hosts then all hell would break loose. But in this case Snopes really abused their authority, went off on a personal tirade, sobered up, deleted the mess, and tried to sweep up under the rug. Eventually they apologized to Moore, but I notice even the apology is missing from the Flights of Fancy page.
So yes, there is bias here, but it aint a liberal bias like the chain email suggests. Or the editors were just having a really, really bad day.
I mean, this paragraph would be moved to great debates on this site, but it sat on “objective, factual, nobiased” snopes for days:
Pleonast: I don’t see screws. I see grommets, which are commonly provided on these signs. I don’t see a the edge of a second sign, and such a sign should be visible in the other angle. The drive you mention is on the other side of a line of trees from the sign. Who would see it?
http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/PlaneInATree-N6487J.htm
>I’m as liberal as they come, and I dismiss Moore as a loon. (I don’t know that he’s a conspiracy theorist though.)
Im not a big fan either, but he’s not a conspiracy theorist. He’s an entertainer first and a documentarian second, but he didnt deserve to be treated that way and certainly snopes over-stepped a bound. Considering snopes is Republican run, its not surprising.
I consider snopes as flawed as Moore. There’s no monopoly on truth in the world and humans are biased and emotional created by their nature. Giving one source all this credibility is just a bad idea and we have already seen abuses with their treatment of Moore. Truth hunters are best off for more opinions instead of just having a knee-jerk reaction to check snopes.
Yes, indeed. It was all too easy to read such a long post and forget that you were merely quoting. After a while it seemed like it was coming from you.
I did come down on you too hard, and for that I am sorry.
But in my defense, I was really confused over what your point was. The point of the note you were quoting was that we should do our own research, rather than rely on snopes. But I didn’t see any effort on your part to actually do any of your own research, like that letter itself was suggesting. It was more like “I got this letter - what do you think of it?”, which is not the sort of thing that I’d expect from someone who’s written 13K posts.
According to our search engine here, snopes has been mentioned in 45 threads over the past 6 months in GD alone, and 750 threads over the past 3 years in the whole board. This made me wonder why a veteran like you would be so unfamiliar with snopes that you’d accept the allegation that they’ve been hiding their names.
Anyway, I hope you’ll accept this apology, because I’m leaving soon and won’t be able to post for a while.
Accepted…no worries. I can understand where you are coming from. Like I said, I received the email this morning and being the naturally lazy sort that I am, I basically passed the buck to here to check it out.
-XT
On edit, never mind, Pleonast and squeegee have already brought up the possibility of a double-sided sign.
Sure there is: there’s rivets on the corners of the “American Aviation” sign; if the sign were just bolted to the post, why would those be there, unless to secure it to the sign on the other side. Also, the arrows point different directions; if the signs were just copied/pasted, the arrows would point the wrong way. This is not that hard to fake in Photoshop, but is more involved than just duplicating the signs.
[/QUOTE]
Which is some guys opinion on the internet, no more valid than anyone else’s. I’m sure that sign is still there; someone should just call Meadow Lake Airport and ask them, and the answer would be the only thing that would settle the issue.
The second edge is slight, but it’s there. And you wouldn’t expect to see more from either side, because the two sides are bolted together.
The sign can be seen from anyone driving down the road, from either direction. I’m not sure what your objection is for this point.
Your cite is interesting, but they present as little evidence as you that it’s been photoshop’d. You may be right that it has been, but your argument is not convincing.
Actually, I do see some evidence of tampering. Look at the green arrow sheet in the first photo. You’ll see that the top edge of it is not aligned parallel to the “FLY HERE!” text. It is angled to be higher on the right. Now, looking at the second photo, we see that the arrow plate has the same angle: higher on the right.
The claim that “we finally know” who runs snopes.com was especially funny. It’s good that that statement was early in the email, so I immediately knew what kind of intellect wrote it.
Back before the Straight Dope Message Board, there was the newsgroup alt.fan.cecil-adams. I was a regular there, as was David Mikkelson, who posted under the nom-de-net “snopes.” He was widely known and respected there and on alt.folklore.urban, where I also hung out, and it was widely known what his real name was. This was a long time ago.
I didn’t expect this to turn into a Great Debate!
Meadow Lake Airport is run by a volunteer board. I could not find a phone number. I did find this though, from the airport’s website:
That amused me as well. Gee, finally uncovered their deep dark secret, did we? Huh, I knew about it a decade ago, without doing a lick of investigative work.
Then again, in those days, I was working my way up to the highest post count on their message board, so that might explain a little.
Johnny, to get nitpicky, they don’t claim that the photo was genuine and un-photoshopped. They say it’s true that “Photograph shows small plane crashed into a tree next to a sign advertising flight lessons.” And that is true.
My guess is that they’re pretty busy, and this is a very minor detail that they haven’t bothered to note. The plane did crash next to that sign, but apparently someone edited the photo so you could both notice the sign and see the plane.
Which is what I said.
It’s true they say it’s ‘a product’ of a real event and not an unretouched photo. But what does ‘a product of’ mean to a given reader? That the photo, which is a ‘product’ was taken of the juxtaposition of the sign and the aircraft? Or that the photo was ‘inspired by’ the event and the ‘product’ was manufactured? Going my the airport’s website, the photograph is not ‘true’, because the sign faces the other way. The event is real, but the photo isn’t.
Look at the level of nitpicking here on SDMB. Now think of the people who will go to lengths to discredit snopes. By not pointing out that the image was manipulated, snopes opens themselves up to any number of claims by people who want to discredit them that their accuracy is in question. ‘See? They claim an altered photo is true! So you can’t believe anything about the “so-called” Moon landings!’
Ok, that’s pretty definitive. I cede the point: it’s faked. And in fact, I think in that older thread you won the point as well, and apologies if we’ve just replayed a conversation from the wayback machine.
No worries. The only point I was trying to make is that occasionally snopes can be inaccurate. I didn’t intend to say that they are habitually sloppy and can’t be trusted, just that inaccuracies happen so it’s good to have corroboration. Or as I said earlier in this thread they’re a good source for citations for a debate, but for more serious matters it’s good to have back-up.
Here are some more plane wrecks from the Meadow Lake Airport site. That poor Skylane! 
Hell-BARB was the one who invited me to post there years ago, after I got booted from Hissyfit (one of the boards run by the Television Without Pity people back in the day)
Beware of Doug-I don’t want to touch Pat Boone’s dick whether it’s in a box or not!!! (Although I wonder if that’s where SNL got the idea for the sketch…)
(Oh, and the Freepers once called them stupid for thinking that Mister Ed was a zebra. Oh how it burns…)