You have probably seen the buzz online or heard about it form the MSM. The New Yorker Magazine is running a cover which lampoons the extreme lying memes (message viruses) that are all over the net about Obama. Of course one finds these slurs more on the right wing net than anywhere else, but, they are also the currency of the anonymous chain letter so much the darling of the little old ladies with tennis shoes, the naive low information voter and the just plain bored cubicle denizens.
There is, I think, reason to be pissed about this cover, even granting that I get the satire. Will the average low information voter “get it”?
More below.
I am surprised that the sophisticates at the New Yorker don’t read the NYT. If they did they would have seen this article:
Your Brain Lies to You
By SAM WANG and SANDRA AAMODTFALSE beliefs are everywhere. Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found. Thus it seems slightly less egregious that, according to another poll, 10 percent of us think that Senator Barack Obama, a Christian, is instead a Muslim. The Obama campaign has created a Web site to dispel misinformation. But this effort may be more difficult than it seems, thanks to the quirky way in which our brains store memories — and mislead us along the way.
The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer’s hard drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about the size and shape of a fat man’s curled pinkie finger. But the information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally learned. For example, you know that the capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably don’t remember how you learned it.
This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true.
With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength. This could explain why, during the 2004 presidential campaign, it took some weeks for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Senator John Kerry to have an effect on his standing in the polls.
Even if they do not understand the neuroscience behind source amnesia, campaign strategists can exploit it to spread misinformation. They know that if their message is initially memorable, its impression will persist long after it is debunked. In repeating a falsehood, someone may back it up with an opening line like “I think I read somewhere” or even with a reference to a specific source.
[snip]
Psychologists have suggested that legends propagate by striking an emotional chord. In the same way, ideas can spread by emotional selection, rather than by their factual merits, encouraging the persistence of falsehoods about Coke — or about a presidential candidate.
Journalists and campaign workers may think they are acting to counter misinformation by pointing out that it is not true. But by repeating a false rumor, they may inadvertently make it stronger. In its concerted effort to “stop the smears,” the Obama campaign may want to keep this in mind. Rather than emphasize that Mr. Obama is not a Muslim, for instance, it may be more effective to stress that he embraced Christianity as a young man.
Consumers of news, for their part, are prone to selectively accept and remember statements that reinforce beliefs they already hold. In a replication of the study of students’ impressions of evidence about the death penalty, researchers found that even when subjects were given a specific instruction to be objective, they were still inclined to reject evidence that disagreed with their beliefs.
[snip]
In 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the Supreme Court wrote that “the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” Holmes erroneously assumed that ideas are more likely to spread if they are honest. Our brains do not naturally obey this admirable dictum, but by better understanding the mechanisms of memory perhaps we can move closer to Holmes’s ideal.
Remnick is no innocent, he has seen this all before.
[Referring to an Atlantic Monthly cover of Al Gore with vampire fang ]
FIELDS (7/20/00): There’s been lots of talk about the vice president among my shipmates and nearly everybody thinks he’ll make a formidable candidate and the race will be close. But they’re puzzled over how Al Gore has quickly become a man not to like. A magazine cover depicts Al Gore with a sinister vampire tooth overlapping his left lip. It’s not a flattering picture, and this is not the cover of National Review but Atlantic Monthly.[snip]
Alas, poor Remnick! He had a chance to object during Campaign 2000. But here’s what the brave fellow said in real time, confronted by a twenty-month killer:
MATTHEWS (2/15/00): You know, up in New Hampshire recently, I went around—and I was cruel, but I went around and asked a lot of reporters who they think, of the four major candidates, the four front-runners, two on either side, would lick the floor they were standing on at any given moment, every quarter inch of it, every square inch of it, to become president if that’s all that required? And everyone agreed there would be only one person who would do that. And you know who I’m talking about?
REMNICK: Yeah, I think you mean Gore—
MATTHEWS: Right.
REMNICK: But that’s a very eleg—elevated discussion you were having up there. I can only imagine who was at the bar, Chris.
MATTHEWS: But it captures a certain—it captures a certain essence of ambition here that may not be lacking—may be lacking in some of the more intellectual discussions. He really wants this job in the worst way.
REMNICK: Oh, I think he, it—it’s clear that he really is, is, is really hard after it, and he’s campaigning the way he looks lately, which is very trim.
MATTHEWS: Yeah. He is pretty buff.
[snip]
This is the way disinformation spreads, though the Remicks rarely seem to know—or care. Kelly deliberately floated an image of Gore as he wanted voters to see him; Remnick has floated a similar image, saying he thinks his brilliant work will (somehow) take distortions apart! Maybe he really believes this will happen. More likely, Remnick’s cover will keep deception alive. Sorry, this isn’t a rational process, though Remnick doesn’t seem to have heard.
I might add that Fox News wasted no time jumping on this.
So, you make the call.
