Promoted by Steven D
 By lightseeker2 |
We’ve all gotten one. You know the kind of email I am talking about. It breathlessly lists a long litany of half truths and slanders against Obama and insists that you have to pass it on since the fate of the world, or at least the Republic depends on it. Its a modern form of gossip, I guess.
A new acquaintance collects them for study. I won’t repeat the slanders here since that just pushes them up the ladder when people search for them. My personal favorite is the one that lifts sentences from Obama’s books without page references or any context. |
Cross posted at TexasKaos
An Attack That Came Out of the Ether
Scholar Looks for First Link in E-Mail Chain About ObamaLaid out before Allen, a razor-sharp, 36-year-old political theorist, was what purported to be a biographical sketch of Barack Obama that has become one of the most effective — and baseless — Internet attacks of the 2008 presidential season. The anonymous chain e-mail makes the false claim that Obama is concealing a radical Islamic background. By the time it reached Allen on Jan. 11, 2008, it had spread with viral efficiency for more than a year.
Political hit mail of this type is just one of the ways in which the tradition of civil discourse has been ruptured over the last many years. But, with the growth of email and the internet , it has become a particularly nasty one.
An Attack That Came Out of the Ether
Scholar Looks for First Link in E-Mail Chain About ObamaDuring that time, polls show the number of voters who mistakenly believe Obama is a Muslim rose — from 8 percent to 13 percent between November 2007 and March 2008. And some cited this religious mis-affiliation when explaining their primary votes against him.
Smear emails are one case in which “trickle down” really works, especially among what are being called “low information voters.” That means , for all intents and purposes, the average voter. Policy wonks like me are few at any time in our history, even more so today in the present confusing climate when the MSM have consistently failed to do their jobs.
I call it the “backyard fence smear campaign”. It resembles the old gossip hot line so famous in small towns, except on steroids. My wife has a relative who lives in Louisiana who dutifully passes these on. These things are so outrageous that she has given up even trying to set the relative straight.
What can we do to counter them? At the risk of exponentially increasing the spam already out there, we can fire back, but not with point by point refutations.
I was part of a training exercise for some of our new activists on Saturday. The experience really re-vitalized me. Here is what I told them about answering any smear.
1. Don’t compound the problem by repeating the smear verbally or in writing. ( Yes, I now I quoted the smear in my citation to Professor Allen’s work)
Remember this?
Your Brain Lies to You by SAM WANG and SANDRA AAMODT 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
2 A good response is personal – you speak from your own experiences.
I have been following Obama for several years and what I know is that he stands for ___ [ fill in your favorite thing – jobs, better public education, government that works for people like me.]
As for the lies and half truths you may have received in your email, consider the source. These emails are started by anonymous persons and then spreads like any other piece of gossip. The incompetent crowd who got us into this mess will say anything to save themselves from voters like you and me.As a father, I care deeply about the kind of America I will pass on to my children. [ fill in your reason for caring ]That is why I try to get the facts before I vote. Whatever you think about either candidate don’t base your decision on gutter gossip!
If you wish to see the other side of their claims, go here: http://www.fightthesmears.org/
If you wish to see how this kind of email starts go here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/27/AR2008062703781_pf.html
If you feel so inclined, use a message of this kind to blast back.
If you are interested, here is my list for developing a good political message.It is based on the work of Lakoff and others. See here,here , here and here for that discussion.
Its personal – you are telling YOUR story First you invite a level of trust, then you persuade with fact and opinion. YOU NEVER REPEAT THEIR MESSAGE IN THEIR WORDS!!! (Frames, Brains and Consequences) A good message is credible A good message should be clear and concise A good message connects with a person’s interests and values – it is like having a good conversation. A good message communicates our values A good message, should stay rooted in what we hope for, idealistically believe ( It is about the Dream)