Onion Story Gets Blown Out of Proportion 641
A 3-year-old Onion video titled "Martial Law Plans Revealed?" has swept across the internet recently, and taken the gullible along with it. The video has some preaching from the highest mountain top about the evils of a government turning fascist, and an equal number explaining until red in the face what The Onion is.
That's "Blue" (Score:3, Informative)
You mean "blue in the face". Red would imply embarrassment. Those would be the other folks, not the ones getting blue in the face.
The original video: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Internet Stupidity Test (Score:5, Informative)
Poe's Law at it's best (Score:4, Informative)
Poe's Law points out that it is hard to tell parodies of fundamentalism (or, more generally, any crackpot theory) from the real thing, since they both seem equally insane. Conversely, real fundamentalism can easily be mistaken for a parody of fundamentalism.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe's_Law [rationalwiki.org]
Re:Internet Stupidity Test (Score:5, Informative)
So what do we say about the idiots that saw the faked Shirley Sharrod video up on breitbart.com and rushed to denounce her and the NAACP as racist, when in fact the original video shows the exact opposite? And by idiots, I mean both the smug race baiting liars that put this up, the Obama administration that pressured for her resignation, and the NAACP itself for falling for a breitbart/Faux news lie in the first place and denouncing her. Brietbart is the guy who destroyed ACORN with false accusations and edited video, it's what he does, and yet, the idiots in the Obama administration and the NAACP fell for it. They walked right into his trap. See, if it never came out that the video was faked, it's a win if the administration and the NAACP do not react. But since they did react, why, simply reveal the video was fake and denounce them as idiots for falling for your trap.
People will believe anything. If we had to appoint guardians for every nut-job that believed a patently obvious lie, there wouldn't be enough non-nut-job guardians to go around.
Re:Suckaz (Score:3, Informative)
That is a false equivalency, very few in the left wing believe 9/11 was an inside job, and they are roundly denounced by the rest of us. The right wing, however, holds some very crazy beliefs very strongly.
# 39 percent of Republicans believe Obama should be impeached, 29 percent are not sure, 32 percent said he should not be voted out of office.
# 36 percent of Republicans believe Obama was not born in the United States, 22 percent are not sure, 42 percent think he is a natural citizen.
# 31 percent of Republicans believe Obama is a "Racist who hates White people" -- the description once adopted by Fox News's Glenn Beck. 33 percent were not sure, and 36 percent said he was not a racist.
# 63 percent of Republicans think Obama is a socialist, 16 percent are not sure, 21 percent say he is not
Story continues below
# 24 percent of Republicans believe Obama wants "the terrorists to win," 33 percent aren't sure, 43 percent said he did not want the terrorist to win.
# 21 percent of Republicans believe ACORN stole the 2008 election, 55 percent are not sure, 24 percent said the community organizing group did not steal the election.
# 23 percent of Republicans believe that their state should secede from the United States, 19 percent aren't sure, 58 percent said no.
# 53 percent of Republicans said they believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be president than Obama.
Re:Suckaz (Score:2, Informative)
Doh.
Meant to include that both idiots will ignore facts when they conflict with the elaborate conspiracies that they have concocted in their heads.
Didn't I just see an article somewhere (maybe here) in the last week or two which stated that real, actual, honest-to-goodness facts can often cause horribly misinformed people who believe something that is totally incorrect to to feel even more strongly that their misinformed belief is right?
I can't seem to find a link to it in my browser history but I'm certain I saw it.
Re:Suckaz (Score:4, Informative)
To be fair, online gullibility and hysteria does tend towards a right wing bent.
One [snopes.com], Two [snopes.com], Three [snopes.com], Four [snopes.com], Five [snopes.com], Six [snopes.com], just for this month alone. The left is not immune to the chain-email urban legend phenomenon (e.g. talk of the draft a few years back) but it is the right, especially the religious right, that excels at propogating misinformation.
Re:Suckaz (Score:3, Informative)
I believe this [slashdot.org] was the article you refer to.
Re:Suckaz (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Suckaz (Score:5, Informative)
Really? This poll was all over the news two months ago, everyone was commenting on it. Google 'poll of right wing beliefs' if you need a citation, this isn't wikipedia and I'm not your research assistant.
Re:Suckaz (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Suckaz (Score:3, Informative)
Well, then you can use an addon to block content from there, or reroute it to 127.0.0.1 or 0.0.0.0 via /etc/hosts or c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Re:Internet Stupidity Test (Score:4, Informative)
Idiot. She was explaining how we all have racial biases, and how class is more important than race, how she and that poor white farmer had more in common than she does with a rich black guy, how she overcame her racial biases and helped the guy out after the white lawyer she sent him to screwed up, and how the farmer and his wife are now friends of hers. The wife even went on air to defend the lady.
Re:minor but important point (Score:3, Informative)
Bullshit. She was explaining how she overcame her racial biases and helped the farmer after the white lawyer she sent him to screwed up. The farmer's wife even went on air to defend the lady.
Re:Suckaz (Score:3, Informative)
There's lies, damned lies, and statistics.
In this pool the question is somewhat unclear.
The question could go either: Did Bush have the intelligence warning that there is going to be an imminent attack on US but didn't do anything about it? (my answer is Yes, just google 'Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US') OR Did US government orchestrated the destruction of WTC? (Then my answer is a definite no.)
Anyway I don't think that the belief that US government might be behind 9/11, given that how the administration lied about the invasion of Iraq, is as misguided as anything that contains words 'Obama', 'secret', 'terrorist' and 'muslim' in the same sentence.
Re:Suckaz (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJd_vm9VhpU [youtube.com]
was my favorite interview - congrats to the camera man for that shot setup..
Re:Suckaz (Score:2, Informative)
>>>
Re:Suckaz (Score:4, Interesting)
>>>it seems like a whole lot of people on the right have been duped.
Oh here we go. You (and other posters) slam the right as gullible or stupid, and you get modded "+4 insightful" or "interesting". I'm tired of feeling as if I'm in a "hated class" just because I have strong convictions about following./obeying Constitutional Law. (I'm also tired of being accused of being racist.)
The left has their fair share of dummies but discussing them will get me modded (-1 troll) or (-1 flamer) or whatever. ----- Like the Leftist Congressman talking about the "island tipping over" if too many soldiers are stationed there. ----- Or another Left Congressman talking about how the Pelosicare bill is legal because the "Good and Plenty" clause of the constitution allows it.
LINK - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYfGCMORVoY [youtube.com]
Re:Wait, wait... there are some morons on Facebook (Score:4, Informative)
Isn't "slow news day" what Idle is for?
Re:Suckaz (Score:4, Informative)
>>>Bush got treated badly because of the way he mismanaged the office of President. Obama is being treated badly because he's part-black, because he's not a wacko
No. He's being treated badly because he's Bush Part 2. Bush increased the national debt +0.5 trillion per year, while Obama made it jump +1.5 trillion in just. The CBO projects +1 trillion every year until 2020. So Obama is increasing the debt at double the rate Bush did.
Obama's broken promises:
1 - Stop snatching people off streets. Provide a Right to fair trial. (No longer have Miranda rights even for U.S. citizens.) (Can be held indefinitely w/o trial)
2 - Right to Privacy (They now spy on us via warrantless wiretaps and track our cellphones) (Patriot Act renewed by Obama.)
3 - No interrogation. Close Guantanamo. (Revoked - now they interrogate American citizens too.)
4 - End the war. (Now it's been extended two more years.)
Obama's not being criticized because of his color, but because he lied to us. It wouldn't matter if he was as pale-white as Bill Clinton - he'd still be disliked by those of us who Fear government (and for good reason - study history).
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Informative)
What is so difficult to understand about that?
Maybe it's difficult to understand because you're wrong [wikipedia.org].
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
It's derived from the same place we get the word nigger.
The two words are not derived from the same place.
Definition and history of "niggardly". [reference.com] Possibly Scandinavian origin, 14th century.
Definition and history of "nigger". [reference.com] French and Spanish origin, 17th century.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, you're over-sensitive and ignorant. The words are not etymologically related. Two seconds of research could have told you that. Niggardly comes from the same root words as "niggling details", Niggle comes from the Old Norse word "Nigla" which means, "To fuss about small matters."
However, the more inflamatory term comes from the Latin "niger," meaning "black".Although it is more likely to come from the Americanization of the Spanish version of "negro", namely negero.
Not only do they not come from the same source, they don't even come from the same root language.
Do Italians get to declare a racist epithet when someone yells out "Swap" because it's close to the sound of "wop"? I'm of German descent, can I complain when someone talks about their "route" because it's close to "kraut"?
Words mean things, and even the head of the NAACP said that people who take "niggardly" as a racial slur need to be given a dictionary.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
And why would black people have a problem with the word niggardly? It's derived from the same place we get the word nigger.
False.
Niggardly: From the Norse word nigla - "to fuss about small matters"
Nigger: From the latin Niger - "Black" through Spanish, Portuguese, or French.
They are false cognates of each other, words that sound the same but have different meanings and origins. It's entirely possible that given how common your misinformed view is that there are people who say 'niggardly' in a racist way, but from a purely linguistically and historical view there is nothing racist about the word. Ignoring that fact and calling everyone who uses the word racist is dishonest at best.
Re:Suckaz (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Informative)
What is so difficult to understand about that?
The fact that's it's just plain wrong?
You just proved you did not read the explanitory page offered to you.
And why would black people have a problem with the word niggardly? It's derived from the same place we get the word nigger.
From that linked page:
"Niggardly" (noun: "niggard") is an adjective meaning "stingy" or "miserly", perhaps related to the Old Norse verb nigla = "to fuss about small matters". It is cognate with "niggling", meaning "petty" or "unimportant", as in "the niggling details".
"Nigger" derives from the Spanish/Portuguese word negro, meaning "black", and probably also the French nègre, which likewise has become a racist insult in American culture. Both negro and noir (and therefore also nègre and nigger) ultimately come from nigrum, the accusative case of the Latin word niger, meaning "black".
So the words have different origins, different meanings, they just sound similar.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
And why would black people have a problem with the word niggardly? It's derived from the same place we get the word nigger.
Wrong. This is the problem. Just because words might sound similar, doesn't mean they come from the same place.
Nigger [etymonline.com]'s earliest appearance in English was in the 16th century, coming from the Spanish word Negro as a pejorative for blacks.
Niggardly [etymonline.com] comes from Niggard, which first appears in the 14th century and is likely to come from a Swedish word, which just means "stingy".
Re:minor but important point (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the video was from March of this year (2010) - Sherrod was relating an event that took place in 1986. Just trying to keep the facts straight (an impossible task, I know)
Fine piece of disinformation you got there... (Score:5, Informative)
For fuck's sake, they used Communists as an excuse to form the Axis. [wikipedia.org]
Oh, and this little anecdotal piece of history [wikipedia.org] should give you a clue just HOW Nazis treated Communists.
And if you are particularly dense about believing in YOUR lies instead of proven truth... [slashdot.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camps#Camps_before_the_war [wikipedia.org]
The first camp in Germany, Dachau was opened in March 1933,[5] The press statement given at the opening stated:
"On Wednesday the first concentration camp is to be opened in Dachau with an accommodation for 5000 persons.
'All Communists and--where necessary--Reichsbanner and Social Democratic functionaries who endanger state security are to be concentrated here, as in the long run it is not possible to keep individual functionaries in the state prisons without overburdening these prisons, and on the other hand these people cannot be released because attempts have shown that they persist in their efforts to agitate and organise as soon as they are released.'[5]
But yeah, sure...
Nazis were cooperating with Communists AND putting them into concentration camps at the same time.
Shit.. those must have been some awkward meetings.