The Internet's New Alternate Reality 869
Hugh Pickens writes "Tim Rutten writes in the LA Times that when President Obama released his long form birth certificate last week, one of the striking things about the reaction to the president's calm and — to reasonable minds — entirely persuasive appearance in the White House briefing room Wednesday was the rapidity and ease with which so many leading birthers rejected the evidence he presented. 'Until very recently, if every professional news organization in the nation examined a charge and found it baseless, it was — for all intents and purposes — dropped,' writes Rutten. 'Today, the growth of the Internet has drained the noun "news" of its former authority. If you don't like the facts presented on the sites of established news organizations, you simply keep clicking until you find one whose "facts" accord with your beliefs.'"
Re:Birthers still unconvinced Obama white enough (Score:2, Interesting)
I'll admit its racism, but not against blacks, black/white mixes or islams. Against Pacific Islanders. If you've never been to the wrong side of Oahu and been beaten by coconuts + stabbed with fishing spears just for you're skin color you have ZERO right to speak about the state (this isn't a hard thing to accomplish, just go there and it will happen - the hardest part is not getting chopped up and thrown in the waters along the rockier parts of the coast).
Anything coming from Hawaii is total horseshit - I know the legal system there, it doesn't work, hell, I've had a Hawaii license for about a decade, suspended and I've been pulled over at least 70x in other states, the issue is they don't share records. Anything they might share is absolutely bogus, typically originating from some stoner who wants to get the paperwork of their desk to cut out early (forgery is quite common, and if you need to do any paperwork with them you will know this already). Hell, the fuckers still cannibalize people on some islands, and even on the island of Oahu (thats the main one) were hunting and eating eachother up until the 30's when we took over (yet they still claim they deserve independence from the US to anyone visiting there). Hawaii was the worst mistake the US ever made (Vietnam included) - if only state-ship could be revoked, we'd all be better off accepting them into the US the way we did Guam.
Suggesting ANY number of those fuckers would collaborate to forge a birth certificate for someone is no stretch of the imagination - and as ignorant a posting as this may seem to anyone who hasn't lived there - go for a few years and see what happens - maybe you'll see reality in time to regret having voted for him a second time.
Re:Shock, horror (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, that's the rule -- and it's entirely nuts.
The president is *elected* I see no legitimate reason whatsoever that some person born abroad should not be eligible to be president. Infact, it'd make more sense if one would insist that to be eligible for president, one must hold *ONLY* American citizenship. (the current rules don't have any ban on a two-citizenship person becoming president, aslong as one of the two is American, and he's born with it)
What's the rationale for disqualifying someone who, for example, was adopted by American parents at age 2, while ALLOWING a child born to (for example) an American/Norwegian couple who grew up in Norway, yet moved to America at age 20 with dual citizenship.
I'd argue that the latter has substantially stronger ties to a foreign nation, if that's the concern. (if not, I don't know what the concern is)
The constitution does indeed say what you claim, but seems to me it's a dumb rule.
Noise from a dying institution (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, boo hoo! Another hack writer whose livelihood is threatened by the rise of alternative media. Here's what I see going on: Alternative media exposes the myth that the big news organizations are "reputable". Anybody remember Dan Rather? Someone gave him an obviously counterfeit letter about George W. Bush, and day after day he defended the letter as truth. Finally it became obvious that good ol' Dan was nothing more than a Democrat political operative, and everything he'd ever said became suspect. His career died, and rightly so. I'm guessing there are a lot of other "reputable" news employees that are scared to death by that. This is just their latest outburst.
Re:Where did the lost authority come from? (Score:2, Interesting)
http://whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf [whitehouse.gov]
If it's fake it's a very bad fake. For example there's stuff like one number being antialiased but the rest aren't.
My company's receptionist does a better job at scanning stuff to PDF.
So what's their excuse?
This level of incompetence is hard to distinguish from malice.
But the positive side is (Score:4, Interesting)
that this can work both ways.
A day after President Obama made his joke about Michele Bachman being born in Canada I found someone on Yahoo Answers seriously asking if she was born there. Muhahahaha
Re:Blame where blame is due (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the traditional mass media has done plenty to damage their own credibility. Why blame the internet?
Their credibility was an aberration to begin with, and really only came about because of big business got in bed with big government during the 1920s. The syndicates, naturally, wanted to get stories ahead of the smaller papers and came to a cozy agreement with politicians not to say anything too outrageous. The politicians were only too happy to comply, and this pushed the smaller, noisier papers to covering local matters. The syndicates were able to promote themselves as being the voice of authority, the peak of which came with Walter Cronkite.
Re:kind of like religion (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course the idea that a god existing makes anything more meaningful is also pretty funny if you think about it.
What would then be the "reason" for that god existing for example?
In the end there is no meaning other than what you create for yourself. Most find it easier to copy their meanings from others - and the larger a group is, the more convincing their meanings appear..
IOW, religions have always exercised the same sort of alternate-reality support as this story describes as "new" for the Internet Age.
When you immerse yourself in a subculture that believes X, it becomes easy to believe X and hard to be motivated to ask questions that challenge X. It doesn't matter whether your source of authority is FOX News, David Koresh, or the Pope - it works the same in each case, and depends on surrounding yourself with people who suckle at the same tit.
Re:kind of like the police (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was in religious studies, I took a sociology class called "The True Believer" that dealt with this phenomenon. In short, the True Believer exists in religion, politics, in movements and causes of every kind. For the True Believer, his/her cause has surpassed reason and become a matter of faith. Anyone who questions it has become a mere obstacle to test their faith. Any evidence to the contrary is false simple by virtue of that contradiction.
Any attempt to sway a True Believer is pointless. A True Believer can only be swayed by a serious personal crisis or epiphany, a "Road to Damascus" moment that shifts their faith radically. And when they do change, it's usually just to move on an embrace some new cause to be a True Believer in.
Re:kind of like the police (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, but people are stupid. I've actually had someone tell me that Steven Colbert was a conservative and his program was meant to be a counterpoint to John Stewart. Yes, he actually believed that Colbert, an obvious parody of Bill O'Reilly was serious.
There actually was a fun study awhile back on the Colbert Report. The more conservative a person was the more likely they were to think that Colbert was a serious conservative, the more liberal the more likely they were to think we was being purely sarcastic.
Basically, it is amazing how much cognitive biases color the world.
I used to live in a very liberal college town, and people routinely called me a fascist, neo-con freemarketeer. Now I live in a very conservative city and I'm a leftist, socialist, Mao worshiper. I've been called an "evangelical" on atheist boards (for disagreeing with pure materialism), while every single one of my religious friends think I'm a godless heathen.
I'm guilty of this too. One of my friends I haven't seen since high school came back from Afghanistan where he worked as an interrigator, and espoused being a Libertarian. I quickly dismissed him as being some flavor of Tea Party loon. After a bit of discussion I realized that we have a fair bit in common, though we disagree on core issues. He probably though I was a leftist pinko.
We only see the world in black and white, and it colors our perceptions of others. If you don't agree with my subjective opinion you must be diametrically opposed to everything I see as "good and true", and therefore the enemy. Sadly we let this trend take over, and it has become the whole basis of our debate. It isn't about whats best for people, its about furthering my ideology and banishing those I view as being its enemy.
This is why I completely stopped watching broadcast news. This is why I dread the upcoming primary season. This is why Slashdot is even getting tedious... here, as the perceptions go, you either are a Tea Partying, evangelical with a giant Ayn Rand tattoo; or a Communist, Pinko, Commie red only in favor of the government taking over everything. There is no middle, and this no room for actual conversation.
If I had one wish, it would be for the rebirth of rational civil discourse, or at least a higher standard of it.