Maybe I\u2019ve mentioned this before, maybe even a hundred times, but I have a 96 year old father who forwards me the emails he gets from his buddies, most of them probably nearly as old as he is, what we\u2019ll generalize and call \u2018angry white males\u2019. Yesterday I got one that headlined Who the Hell is This? which was mostly a recounting of every misinformation ever written about Obama, his wife, his daughters and whether or not they were really Americans, really lawyers, ever went to the colleges they claimed to have attended, even if they had proof of their birth certificates. Including the kids.<\/p>\n
I used to send him fact checks on the stuff he forwards, but my suspicion is he never really reads the replies. Nevertheless, I figured he sends me these screeds to see what my response will be, which in the past was sometimes fairly wild. But the old man is going on 97 and the last thing he needs is vitriol coming back at him from his oldest son. My brother gets the same emails and just hits Delete. Probably the smart response. <\/p>\n
Today he asked me if I\u2019d read that email he sent regarding the Obamas and what did I think. I said I think it\u2019s old news, Dad, the guy is long gone. \u2018Yeah, but pretty interesting, wasn\u2019t it?\u2019 he commented and I realized he believes these crazy conspiracy theories. \u2018No,\u2019 I said, \u2018they\u2019re not interesting, they\u2019re bullshit, Dad. I don\u2019t have time to go through 20 goofy accusations but half of them, when Obama was President, I sent you fact checks that showed these were phony baloney.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Okay,\u2019 he said, \u2018but the other half sounds kind of right.\u2019<\/p>\n
My old man has very short term memory, the emphasis on very. Even if I spent hours fact checking and sending him the results, what would be the point? Next email he gets, we can start all over again. What I think is that most people have short term memory, mostly self-induced. They believe, like Dad does, why would anyone send this stuff out if it wasn\u2019t true. And anyway, it sounds true so isn\u2019t that close enough? <\/p>\n
Donald Trump questioned Obama\u2019s birth certificate and now he\u2019s been elected, at least once, maybe eventually twice, by folks who believe what he tells them when obviously he isn\u2019t telling the truth, isn\u2019t factual, isn\u2019t honest about much of anything. I wish it was as easy as fact checking, just send them a memo with a Snopes attachment saying FALSE. Between you and me, I can hardly wait to hit 96.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maybe I\u2019ve mentioned this before, maybe even a hundred times, but I have a 96 year old father who forwards me the emails he gets from his buddies, most of them probably nearly as old as he is, what we\u2019ll generalize and call \u2018angry white males\u2019. Yesterday I got one that headlined Who the Hell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[2205],"class_list":["post-12227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-you-cant-handle-the-truth-lies-lies-and-the-liars-who-tell-them"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12227"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12228,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12227\/revisions\/12228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}