Original sources

"OUTRAGEOUS!!!!" "CAN YOU BELIEVE IT????" "UNBELIEVABLE!!!"

Fake virus warnings, missing children found ten years ago, precocious children dying of dreaded diseases who curse you to hell for not forwarding the email, threats real or imagined to our national security and freedoms of religion and speech... since I seldom see anything new in these, I have to wonder how carefully these are read before the emails are dutifully forwarded (as instructed at the end of every missive) to everyone in one's address book. Most of these can be easily debunked by a careful reading of the email itself. The rest can be debunked by spending a little effort and a little time by going to the original sources helpfully cited in the email themselves. Or of, course, by forwarding them to me, but as my friends and family have discovered, I tend to get a bit snarky in my responses, so it might be easier on your tender feelings to do your own research.

Of all these offending emails, the ones I find most irksome are those with a political nature. I might very well disagree with the political figure or group a particular email vituperates against. What bothers me is that the emails are so full of misinformation, quotes taken out of context and in many cases, outright lies. And I cannot help but to wonder how much the originator truly misunderstood the situation and how much they carefully cherry-picked their information in order to deliberately discredit a person or group, and incite hatred, knowing that from there people would react emotionally instead of intellectually, and unknowingly spread those lies.

The current round of myths coming into my inbox concern our current administration and its policies. First let me say that I don't agree 100% with the current administration, just like I didn't with the previous one, or the one before, or the one before. I have my own reasons for disagreeing, based upon what I actually have heard and read. So if an email tells me some horrible thing is in this section and that line of the health reform bill, I look it up - and I don't find that particular phrase, neither where the email told me to look for it nor in a word/phrase search of the entire document. Those things are not in there. There's plenty that is unacceptable to me, but no one ever puts those things in an email to forward on, possibly because they are not nearly as scary as the made up stuff. Likewise with the emails I got about the previous administration's Patriot Act bill - the scary stuff that came in to my inbox was not contained in that bill. The same goes from quotes that a president or senator or congresswoman supposedly said in some news conference; in looking up the original source, one finds that they did say something silly or boneheaded, but it wasn't what the email said it was, nor as incendiary.

Since this blog is supposed to be about books, I'll get to my point by mentioning two bestselling books: Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope". One recent email I received started out insisting that every true and concerned American should read these two books, and offered up "direct" quotes from the two books which showed racism, religious bigotry, and power madness.

Well, I did. Read the books, that is, or at least I listened to the audio versions. Not because the email told me to, but because I wanted to know where the man was coming from, for my own understanding, even before I got the email. Anyone want to guess where I'm going with this? Every single one of those quotes was taken out of context. Every single one. One was truncated, another merged with another quote with all the parts in-between left out. All had doomsaying conclusions drawn from them, which conclusions themselves took great liberty with the actual words quoted.

People read book reviews because they haven't time to read every single book out there. So they put their trust in a reviewer who may or may not interpret the book the same way they would. The reviewer may or may not have the same values as the reader, or the writer for that matter, would could in itself color their judgment when reviewing.

My point is this. Regardless of what you feel about a person or their ideals, don't let someone else make that decision for you. Do not assume that a quote is as "direct' as it purports to be. Look it up. You don't have to spend the money on your own copy, even; there are these wonderful institutions known as Public Libraries which will allow you to peruse to your heart's content for free. The information is out there, but it isn't necessarily going to come to you when you're plugged in. I cannot say that reading either book has improved or sullied my opinion as it was before; I still agree where I agreed before and disagree where I disagreed before. I never thought our President was the Messiah; I never thought he was the anti-Christ. But I do understand why he believes as he does. And I got there from reading from the original sources.