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8:35 a.m. - 2010-08-01
RUMOR HAS IT
So the other day I got an email forwarded from a friend with the heading "I Am Proud to Forward This"--already a sign that something was probably amiss. Content consisted of patriotic pictures of American servicemen standing before cemeteries, before white crosses in the ground, before cemeteries at sunset...You get the idea...combined with text to the effect that the ACLU was suing in Federal court to remove crosses from being displayed in military cemeteries, claiming a violation of First Amendment rights.

Usually my response to emails of this kind is to either click the Forward button and send it to even more people--empowering the chain mail multiplier effect--or delete it.

But the recent controversy involving Sherrod in the USDA and the attempt to smear her a a racist has made me realize just how much worse the prevalence of rumor and disinformation has become in our digital age.

So I did what I and everyone else who receives a politically motivated email ought to do: I took a few minutes to research its content. And what I found was that there was no evidence of any ACLU lawsuit. In fact there are no military burial grounds in the USA with crosses as grave markers. Indeed the burial stones at Arlington National Cemetery are rectangular. Crosses do mark the graves in some European cemeteries where American GIs were buried during the two World Wars of the 20th Century, but no American lawsuit would have an impact on European practice.

I did a cut and paste of a photo from the Arlington official website showing the rectangular markers and sent it via return email to the Proud American who had sent the rumor to me in the first place.

A day or two later another person on the first senders list wrote that she had researched the same rumor on snopes and found it to be untrue. So you go, girl!

Its too easy to click forward without thinking or assessing. Its too easy to call yourself patriotic without taking any risk or doing any work. America provides every one of its citizens with the opportunity for a taxpayer-supported education through high school, and we have the responsibility in turn to put that education to use. A bit of critical thinking now and then would be a good start.

 

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