Detailed Thoughts on Possibility of Unmasking Phoney-Folksy (and full of clever deception) Emails:

This is an email to Timothy Jost, who appeared on NPR Morning Edition to discuss how "Death Panel" and other wild myths got spread about the healthcare reform act.

(Emails from an unsuccessful attempt in 9/2010 at some anti-propaganda action.)

                                                                                        Sat, 4 Sep 2010
I listened with interest to what you had to say with Julie Rovner on Morning Edition, 9/3. I'm glad you are looking into this matter, but I don't think it is as simple as "People combing the Web found these microchips and saw this implantable medical device registry as an attempt to implant microchips in people," Jost says. "And then the rumor expanded to say that all people who signed up for the public plan that was in that bill would have to have a microchip implanted."

My belief, based on what I've seen, is that these wild rumors get much, and possibly most of their strength from carefully planted disinformation which looks to people like "Email from a friend of a friend". I am 58 years old and have never seen such wide belief in preposterous claims (nearly all of which seem aimed at bringing down the Obama presidency and/or Democrat majority in Congress).

Get an email with extreme anti-Obama claims? Call up Rush or Glenn. See if they can confirm it.

I have a suggestion for the next time you receive an email forwarded by a friend, that seems to have been written by some "concerned citizen" that says the president will make $85 Million from insider trading on the BP oil spill, or that the CO2 level in the atmosphere has been essentially static for the last hundred years (which would mean the vast majority of climate scientists -- essentially a complete community of hard (not social) scientists have been living on lies).

Call up Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck and ask them, and don't accept a vague answer, say "Come on Rush, this is the biggest challenge to the Global Warming hoax ever. You've got to have heard of it, and what do you think. Has Wolfgang Knorr really proved the CO2 level hasn't risen in 100 years or hasn't he? Did Obama really get all his schooling in a Muslim madrassa when he lived in Indonesia or not? To the best of your knowlege of course."

The point is, there is a huge class of right wing rumor mongering that their "star" commentators know better than to go anywhere near. Let them stay under the radar so they will never be refuted in any very public way (yes, there are mediamatters.com and snopes.com and the like, but those are so much ignored by the targets of these email campaigns that they often start off with "I couldn't believe it so I checked with snopes.com and it's true" even when snopes.com is calling it a lie.