So 2016 has come and gone, and what a trail of
wreckage it left. Today started out stormy in my neck of the
woods -- there's a 30-foot-long tree limb, knocked down by the
wind, in our backyard -- but it turned into a brilliant and
lovely day, as if to proclaim, "Hey, it's the very first
Monday of a brand new year, and the world should look fresh and
new and bright and happy!" But in reality there is no such
thing as a clean slate just because the calendar turns over to a
new year. It doesn't work that way. In reality Leonard Cohen is still dead
(as are Princess Leia and her mom and a host of others). And even
worse, Donald J. Trump is still the
not-my-president-elect.
Granted, more rational heads have pointed out that 2016 was not a record year for celebrity deaths, and that despite the horrors of 2016, lots of good stuff happened too
(and hopefully Drumpf and his wrecking crew won't be
able to reverse all of it). Even so, Leonard Cohen is...
well, you know. And Drumpf... well, you know. Not to belabor a point or anything.
But let's get down to business. 2016 also stands out as the year
that fake news finally came into
its own (which arguably played a part propelling the Orange
Blowfish to electoral victory). And the mention of fake news
brings us to the point of this post.
On several occasions on past blog posts and on
Facebook, I have cited the fact-checking/mythbusting site Snopes.com, and have defended it against its many
critical-thinking-impaired detractors who proudly and defiantly
proclaim that (1) they never trust anything they read on Snopes;
and (2) anyone who does believe or cite Snopes is a gullible
sheeple or an idiot. I have written that although I don't
consider Snopes infallible, even as I don't consider any source
infallible, I believe it to be a reliable source and a good
starting point for doing one's own research about silly social
media memes and too-bad-to-be-true Internet rumors.
Accordingly some folks might be wondering if some recent Snopes buzz --
regarding founders David and Barbara Mikkelson's highly
contentious divorce, David Mikkelson's remarriage to a former sex
worker, and a couple of Snopes fact checkers' political
affiliations, kinky proclivities and (oh, the horror!) pot
smoking -- constitutes an elephant-in-the-room situation
for my Whirled.
Indeed, there's a whole lot of what I see as completely
unjustified schadenfreude bubbling up in the fever swamps of the
alt-right and the conspiracy industry, some of whose true
believers have jeered at me and called me an idiot (or a paid
shill of George Soros/Hillary Clinton/the New World Order) for
being a Snopes fan. It's not a stretch to imagine some of them
snickering at me -- and at other Snopes supporters -- right about
now.
I'm sorry to disappoint any detractors, but I welcome that
elephant and am more than happy to discuss it. The reason I
haven't addressed the issue before now is that I was preoccupied
with the holidaze, work deadlines and other stuff related to my
real life. Now that I have a bit of a breather, let's talk about
the Snopes "scandal" that has so many right-wing haters
and conspiracy nutcakes foaming at the mouth (and perhaps
secretly masturbating -- admit it, Lenny).
The big story was "broken" by the notorious right-wing
UK tabloid The Daily Mail, aka The Daily Fail (here's that link again). This,
I feel compelled to point out, is the same tabloid whose online
tentacle is a co-defendant in a $150 million lawsuit by incoming First Lady Melania
Trump. The suit concerns a story about
suggestions (mere suggestions, mind you, not accusations) that
Melania might have once been a sex worker herself, as in
"paid escort." (Here's a link to that September 2016 complaint.) The Mail retracted and apologized (or apologised, as
the case may be), but the suit has gone forward. Melania made her first appearance in court on December 12, 2016.
Anyway. The headline on the Snopes story is as lurid as one might
expect from The Fail:
EXCLUSIVE: Facebook 'fact checker' who will arbitrate on
'fake news' is accused of defrauding website to pay for
prostitutes - and its staff includes an escort-porn star and
'Vice Vixen domme'
As per its usual practice, The Fail precedes
the actual article with a bulleted list, for the benefit, I
suppose, of people who are in too much of a hurry, or too
reading-challenged, to wade through the typo-ridden main article:
Facebook has announced
plans to check for 'fake news' using a series of
organizations to assess whether stories are true
One of them is a website
called Snopes.com which claims to be one of the web's
'essential resources' and 'painstaking, scholarly and
reliable'
It was founded by
husband-and-wife Barbara and David Mikkelson, who used a
letterhead claiming they were a non-existent society to
start their research
Now they are divorced -
with Barbara claiming in legal documents he embezzled
$98,000 of company money and spent it on 'himself and
prostitutes'
In a lengthy and bitter
legal dispute he is claiming to be underpaid and
demanding 'industry standard' or at least $360,000 a year
The two also dispute
what are basic facts of their case - despite Snopes.com
saying its 'ownership' is committed to 'accuracy and
impartiality'
Snopes.com founder David
Mikkelson's new wife Elyssa Young is employed by the
website as an administrator
She has worked as an
escort and porn actress and despite claims website is
non-political ran as a Libertarian for Congress on a
'Dump Bush' platform
Its main 'fact checker'
is Kimberly LaCapria, whose blog 'ViceVixen' says she is
in touch with her 'domme side' and has posted on
Snopes.com while smoking pot
Now let me say right off that I am not
suggesting at all that The Fail made this up from whole cloth.
I'd been wondering for some time whatever happened to Barbara
Mikkelson, whose work from past years still appears on Snopes but
who is no longer named as one of the founders. I have no problem
believing that there was an acrimonious divorce between David and
Barbara (I'd heard some vague buzz about it some time ago), nor
am I particularly shocked that David Mikkelson took up with a
former sex worker who is now a website admin at Snopes. As for
one of the fact checkers being in touch with her "domme
side" and insinuating that she has smoked pot while posting
on Snopes.com... yawn. Would anyone be scandalized by a blogger
or journalist posting while enjoying a glass of wine?
The embezzlement accusations are more serious, but that's between
the Mikkelsons and their lawyers. And frankly I don't know enough
about the details of the case to make a comment. I'm not trying
to let Dave Mikkelson off the hook for anything, and if I were
going to take sides I'd be inclined to take sides with Barbara at
this point. But if you read The Fail's report you will notice
that they did not provide a link to the actual legal documents
that were cited in the piece, although they did display what
presumably are screen shots of snippets of said documents. So I
can't really address the documents or the conflicts they
supposedly describe with any authority. And neither can you, and
neither can the writers on any of the alt-right hate sites that
picked up the story, unless any of you have actually read all of
the documents.
And the alt-right/conspiracy nutter sites did indeed take this
story and run, and run, and run with it.
The alt-right blog Zero Hedge was even less subtle than The
Fail with its headline:
Snopes Co-Founder Embezzles $98,000, Drops
Weight, Leaves Fat Wife And Marries Actual Whore
And this piece, which appears on racist, hatemonger and
conspiracy nut Jeff Rense's site (though not authored by Rense
himself), is downright pornographic.
You can almost see the writer, "journalist" Yoichi
Shimatsu, salivating. Shimatsu is a yuuuge believer in the idiotic Pizzagate fake scandal, and so apparently is Rense. Here
are the two of them blathering on video.
The stupidest and most evil man in Scamworld, Not-Doktor Leonard
Coldwell, who is a passionate Snopes hater (and Trump lover), curated a piece from the right-wing Daily Caller for his
"blog."
And not surprisingly, the self-proclaimed king of the (fact)free press, Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, bubbled over with righteous glee about the Snopes dramas, with this headline:
Prostitutes for the
Presstitutes: SNOPES fact-checkers revealed to be actual whores,
fraudsters and deviant left-wing fetish bloggers
Naturally, Mikey inserted himself into the
drama.
Facebook recently announced it would
rely on SNOPES to “fact-check” news articles to make sure
Facebook operated with high integrity standards and full
transparency. In reality, the announcement was a
thinly-veiled attempt to censor independent
journalism by labeling real news “fake
news” with the help of all the left-wing (actual) whores
and fraudsters at SNOPES.
Now, Mikey's sites are prime examples of fake news, pseudo-science, conspiracy lunacy, dirty
SEO tricks and right-wing
propaganda (regarding the latter, so
much for political neutrality, which so many of the
Snopesophobes, including Adams, claim is missing from Snopes).
His Natural News site was once described by a blogger on the
Rational Wiki site as being the Daily Mail of Alternative Medicine. So it stands to reason that he might feel threatened
by Facebook's attempts to crack down on the phonies. But hey,
Mikey, you want "deviant?" You want "fraudster?" Have
you taken a look at your pudgy little pal Lenny? For that matter,
have you delved into the personal lives and private and public
failings of the "independent journalists" whom you
claim to be the real guardians of truth and morality? No, I didn't
think so.
But I digress. Where Natural News is concerned, it
seems that Snopes can give as good as it gets. So it's perfectly understandable that Mikey would hate
them so much.
Perspective
Let's look at this a little more closely. First off, the
disagreements between two people involved in a rancorous divorce
do not necessarily invalidate those people's efforts in other
aspects of their lives. So The Fail's snarky bullet point (i.e.,
"The [Mikkelsons] also dispute what are basic facts of their
case - despite Snopes.com saying its 'ownership' is committed to
'accuracy and impartiality'") is irrelevant. Even if it is
true that Barbara and David Mikkelson can't agree on the
"basic facts" about their personal affairs, this does
not invalidate the fact-checking and mythbusting work done over
the years by the Mikkelsons, Kim LaCapria, or any other Snopes
"staffer."
And the "whore" that the right-wingers are jeering
about -- David Mikkelson's new wife, Elyssa Young -- is not a
fact-checker on Snopes; she is just an administrative assistant.
Not that being a sex worker would render someone incapable of
being a fact checker, but I think the haters are making much too
big a deal out of Young's position (ahem) at Snopes.
In fact The Fail seems to be making much too big a deal out of a
lot of things about Mikkelson's new bride. Take this bullet point
(please): "She has worked as an escort and porn actress and
despite claims website is non-political ran as a Libertarian for
Congress on a 'Dump Bush' platform."
Elyssa Young was an unsuccessful Libertarian candidate in 2004 --
nearly 13 years ago. But again, she was
not then and is not now (to my knowledge) a Snopes fact-checker.
And even if she had been, and assuming that she allowed her
Libertarian tendencies to influence her work, that would have
actually made the common allegation that Snopes has a
"liberal bias" even sillier. Libertarians may skew
liberal on certain social issues, but they're pretty much in sync
with the right wing and the Tea Party on everything else.
Then there's the much-criticized Kim LaCapria, who is often
described as the top fact-checker on Snopes. The alt-right haters
have long accused her of leftist tendencies, though quite a few
of her stories have debunked left-wing memes and have effectively
defended people such as Donald Trump. Now the haters are drooling
over the fact that she has some sexy web sites and that she
claimed to have posted on Snopes after smoking pot. Meh. LaCapria
clearly has a life apart from Snopes, and if that offends you,
hey, don't visit her web sites. If you think her work is affected
by her pot smoking and you don't trust her because of that, keep
in mind that her pieces on Snopes, like all the articles on the
site, provide links to other sources, so you can do further
research on your own. So c'mon, put down that bottle of bourbon,
Lenny, and learn to use the Internet for something besides
reinforcing your own biases.
The big but
I did find one critical piece about the Snopes
"scandal" that made a few valid points about Snopes and
its fact-checking methods. This article by Kalev Leetaru on Forbes.com is worth reading, although I think that Leetaru, like
other critics, made too big a deal out of Elyssa Young's past
political activities. I think he also reacted too strongly to
David Mikkelson's reluctance to divulge details of his personal
legal troubles.
But at least Leetaru made an effort to reach out to Mikkelson,
and he made some excellent suggestions about how Snopes could
improve by being more forthcoming about its assessment process.
So while I don't expect either Barbara or David Mikkelson to air
all of their personal dirty laundry to the world, I do think that
there's room for improvement on Snopes.com.
Separating real fake news from fake
fake news
I don't want to veer too far off-track from the
main point of this post, but since fake
news has become such a force, and
fighting fake news has now become a thing as well, and Snopes has
been front and center in that fight since long before "fake
news" became a trending topic, here's another piece that bears sharing. It's partly about how the fake-news perps and
believers have gone all Pee-Wee Herman ("I know you are, but
what am I?") on their accusers in the mainstream media.
Some
supporters of President-elect Donald J. Trump
have also taken up the call. As reporters were walking out of
a Trump rally this month in Orlando, Fla., a man heckled them
with shouts of “Fake news!”
Until now, that term had been widely understood to refer to
fabricated news accounts that are meant to spread virally
online. But conservative cable and radio personalities, top
Republicans and even Mr. Trump himself, incredulous about suggestions that fake
stories may have helped swing the election, have appropriated
the term and turned it against any news they see as hostile
to their agenda.
In defining “fake news” so broadly and seeking to dilute
its meaning, they are capitalizing on the declining
credibility of all purveyors of information, one product of
the country’s increasing political polarization. And
conservatives, seeing an opening to undermine the mainstream
media, a longtime foe, are more than happy to dig the hole
deeper.
And that's a pretty dangerous trend. I only
hope that Snopes can survive this latest round of attacks so it
can continue to be a force in the fight against fakery. We need you now more than ever, Snopes.
Carry it on
Snopes.com started out as a hobby on the old-school newsgroup
circuit -- in those ancient days before social media and really,
even before blogs -- and over the years it grew from there. It is
possible that at some level its founders may have always
considered it a hobby, albeit a lucrative hobby. But at some
point along the way Snopes managed to also become a legitimate
and much-cited source of information about misinformation,
perhaps surprising its founders more than anyone else. Yet to my
knowledge neither Barbara nor David Mikkelson ever pretended to
be infallible or to be experts in anything.
This October 19, 2016 piece on
the Webby Awards site gives a more balanced perspective about
Snopes' history.
And here's a December 25, 2016 piece in the New York
Times about Snopes and David Mikkelson.
You might also be interested in this December 2015 Washington Post interview
with David Mikkelson, in which he
discusses, among other things, Snopes' role as a political
reporter and fact-checker. (Keep in mind that even though the vast majority of the right-wing bitching and whining and griping about Snopes is based on its political content, Snopes did not start out as a political site, and it still reports
on many topics besides politics.)
As far as I'm concerned, Snopes remains a legitimate source of
information, despite the allegations about hookers and pot
smoking and yes, even despite the allegations of David
Mikkelson's embezzlement. I hope the Mikkelsons get that latter
bit worked out soon and that they can get on with their lives.
Is Snopes a perfect source? Of course not. Is there room for
improvement? You bet (see Forbes.com article linked to above).
But let's separate the salacious from the serious, the voyeur
fodder from the valid criticism about Snopes' methods. Even
though in his private life David Mikkelson may be a complete
sleazeball, and although some of the Snopes "staff" may
be involved in kinky activities on their own time, Snopes, with
all of its imperfections and juicy non-scandals, still beats the
pants off of the army of alt-right wingnutters and misinformation
mongers such as Natural News, Breitbart, Alex Jones, WorldNut
Daily, The Daily Caller, Pamela Geller, Stormfront, Jeff Rense
and, of course, anything by Leonard Coldwell.
And one more point: I find it utterly astounding that many of the
same people who are so scandalized by David Mikkelson's private
life, and those of some of the Snopes staffers, apparently aren't
scandalized at all by the garish, lurid spectacle that is Donald John Trump. Just saying.
* * * * *
Now more than ever, your donation is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning.
Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit
card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to
scrivener66@hotmail.com
or to cosmic.connie@juno.com
If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank
you!
For years I have been a fan of the urban legend
and conspiracy theory debunking site, Snopes.com. And let's get one thing straight before you start
lecturing me about being a Snopes worshiper: I don't consider
Snopes infallible, any more than I consider any other information
source, online or off, to be infallible. But it appears to me
that the Snopes folks are generally diligent researchers, and
certainly are a far more credible source than the
"alternative" media sites that thrive on selling
largely baseless fear and outrage to the conspiracy crowd. (I'm
talking to y'all, Alex Jones, WorldTruth.TV, Before It's News, et
al.)
At the very least Snopes is a reasonable place to embark upon
your own path of inquiry whenever someone shares a meme on
social media that seems too bizarre or funny or horrible to be
true, or -- equally as important -- that fits too neatly into
prevailing social and political biases (even and especially your
own). Whenever this happens, which it frequently does, I first
check the link in the meme to make sure it's not a satirical/fake
news site like National Report. If
it is truly being presented as serious news, then, yes, I will
very often go to Snopes first, because more than likely they've
covered it. But I generally don't stop at Snopes, although I may
end up sharing the Snopes page on threads where the meme is being
presented as real news.
Snopes, as many know, began as a hobby in the mid 1990s for a California couple named David and Barbara Mikkelson. As far as I know, the Mikkelsons have never pretended
to be anything but what they are: a couple of hobbyists whose
hobby grew into an obsession and a web presence with a huge
following. Except for the "huge following" part, I can
very well identify with the whole hobby-turned-obsession thing,
because I've been hammering away at this Whirled for more than nine years now. The
important point to stress is that despite the frequent claims of
their detractors, the Mikkelsons have never pretended to be
experts or authorities or the last word on anything.
But here's one thing they have accomplished: again and
again Snopes.com has made fools of conspiracy fans and followers
of the "alternative" (read: nutcase) media. And this, I
suppose, is precisely why said fans and followers work so hard to
counter and "expose" Snopes and paint Snopes fans as
the fools. In doing so, however, the conspiracy fans invariably
make themselves look even more foolish. But that doesn't stop
them, and there remain large numbers of people who passionately
hate Snopes and whose wrath often encompasses Snopes fans, whom
the anti-Snopesers accuse of being stupid, gullible, uneducated
or lazy.
Liberal, schmiberal
One of the frequent complaints about Snopes is that they have a
"liberal bias," and the corollary to that claim is that
Snopes is being secretly funded by one or more nefarious liberal
organization(s) or some other special interest group. Back in
March 2013, the Skeptoid blog published a credible post debunking the "liberal bias"
accusation. (It was cross-posted on the Skeptical Libertarian blog the following month.)
That article, written by Eric Hall, was a response to the
infamous (in some circles, anyway) "Snopes got snoped"
article that is STILL going around the Internet and is frequently
hauled out to discredit Snopes and try to make the conspiracy believers look smart and the people who consult Snopes look stupid.
The original source of the article was the aforementioned
conspiracy-fan site WorldTruth.TV. But
the article appears to be gone now from
the original site, although numerous other enthusiastic bloggers
picked it up. You can read it here and on several other sites.
Eric Hall's cross-posted Snopes-defense piece makes a very good
point that I too have attempted to make numerous times in
discussions about Snopes' credibility as opposed to that of
WorldTruth.TV:
A larger look at the site called
WorldTruth.tv reveals something very hilarious. The claim
that Snopes shouldn’t be trusted because it is only run
by 2 people (the Mikkelsons) comes from a website run by 1
person who only identifies himself as Eddie. From
WorldTruth.tv’s “about us” page:
My name is Eddie and WorldTruth.TV is
my way to share all the knowledge and information that I
have acquired and been blessed with in the last 32 years
of my journey on this planet.
WorldTruth.TV is a website dedicated to
educating and informing people on regular basis with
well-researched articles on powerful and concealed
information. I’ve spent the last 32 years researching
Theosophy, Freemasonry, Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, the
Bavarian Illuminati and Western Occultism. I remember
when I first learned about the “Truth” and it wasn’t
pretty. I remember learning about how the mass media lies
to our faces consistently. About how the educational
system only teaches the youth what they need to become
obedient workers.
###
I have to rub my forehead every time I
read it. The website making a claim Snopes cannot be accurate
because they do not have a large team is supposed to be
trustworthy when being run by one person. If someone can make
sense of that logic, please feel free to comment!
A more recent (April 2014) effort to defend Snopes appeared in the Houston Press,
courtesy of Jef Rouner. Take a few
moments to read it if you will; it's worth it. I'll wait. Not
that Jef's effort has had any effect whatsoever on the die-hard
Snopes detractors, who still apparently imagine themselves to hold the
factual, intellectual and in many cases the moral high ground.
Health Nut goes nuts over Snopes piece
Take "Health Nut News" blogger Erin Elizabeth (please).
Last month she got all bent out of shape because, she says,
Snopes misrepresented a couple of things she had written about
the much-buzzed-about holistic doctors murder "conspiracy" (note: the link is to a blog post that takes a
skeptical view of the "conspiracy"). Erin is, among
other things, the personal and business partner of alt-health
guru and osteopath Dr.
Joseph Mercola. (Here are some skeptical links about Mercola, and I also wrote about him on a post last year (see
under, "Joseph Mercola: sitting pretty at the top of the
alt-doc heap").)
Given her partnership with Mercola and her role as a
natural-health blogger, Erin clearly has a stake in fanning the
flames of the dead-doc drama. Don't get me wrong; I'm not making
light of anyone's death, nor am I discounting Erin's distress
over the loss of anyone who may have been a friend or associate,
but there seems to be something more going on here. It centers
around Erin's insistence that she has been careful to avoid any
mention of a conspiracy regarding the high numbers of
"suspicious" deaths among alt-health doctors,
practitioners and advocates. She's just calmly reporting, don't
you know. But to me, reading even one of her posts about the ongoing saga makes it pretty clear that she is playing on the
conspiracy theme. You don't have to use the word
"conspiracy" to do that.
Here is the July 21, 2015 Snopes article with which Erin took
issue. The article was not written by
one of the Snopes principals, Barbara or David Mikkelson, but rather by a
longtime Snopes board participant named Kim
LaCapria.
And here, if you can access it, is the link to the Facebook thread on which Erin shared
her video explaining how Snopes done her wrong. (I'm sorry that I can't seem to find a more
universally accessible (e.g., YouTube) link.) In her video Erin
seems a tad overwrought, declaring that the Snopes piece might
just be the most irresponsible piece of journalism she has seen
this year, or perhaps even in a whole decade. She is shocked,
shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you! And shocked (in case you didn't get
it the first three times).
Mostly Erin seems shocked about the Snopes article's insinuation
that she is spreading "conspiracy" rumors, but she also
spends an inordinate amount of time in the video quibbling about one of the missing doctors'
home state: Montana or North Dakota? She even insinuates that the
confusion over the doctor's residence, exacerbated by Snopes,
might be a reason nobody can find him. As well, Erin seems to be
royally pissed off because she has been misquoted and
misrepresented by other journalists -- not Snopes, as it happens,
but even so, she is laying most of her outrage on Snopes for this
video.
That video wasn't the first time that Erin has dumped all over
Snopes. She previously huffed that they are doing a disservice to
the health world. Here's an August 2014 rant.
The big headline is:
Many quote “Snopes”
like they’re scientists or doctors, but they’re just 2 ole
couch potatoes who may be coerced by special interest groups
To bolster her accusations, Erin posted a much-shared picture of
the Mikkelsons sitting on a couch, with a clearly overweight
orange tabby cat perched behind them.
Again I think it important to emphasize that as far as I have
ever been able to see, the Mikkelsons have never claimed to be
anything but what they are: two folks interested in researching
various unbelievable claims. Unlike some of the pond scum (no
offense to ponds or scum) that I have written about on this blog,
they haven't masqueraded as doctors or scientists. And I
doubt if most people who cite Snopes do so believing that either
one of the Mikkelsons is a doctor or scientist. That headline
seems to be a reflection of Erin's own defensiveness at work.
And as for the ad hominem accusation of being "ole couch
potatoes," the Mikkelsons have never claimed to be health
nuts either, as far as I know. The well-known picture of the
Mikkelsons, which admittedly isn't very flattering, is frequently
shared by people who seem hellbent on discrediting them. It
appears to be a candid photo taken in a moment of levity. Maybe
they now regret ever allowing it to be taken or shared; I don't
know.
But I do know that as the "Health Nut," the youthful
looking and attractive Erin Elizabeth has a very carefully
crafted public persona, and my guess is that she is quite picky
about the pictures of herself that she allows to be shared
publicly. She seems to be unnecessarily rubbing it in that she's cute and the Mikkelsons... not so much.
Moreover, she describes herself as having "a
passion for the healing arts for nearly 25 years" and as
being "an author, public speaker, and advocate for healthy
living." But when it comes right down to it, having a passion and taking that passion public
really doesn't make her an expert of any type -- except,
of course, the self-described and relentlessly self-aggrandizing
sort of expert. The
New-Wage/selfish-help/McSpirituality/alt-health world is full of
those.
Not-Doktor Stoopid joins in on the Snopes sniping
(again)
Recently Snopes came under fire yet again from the
stuck-on-stupid contingent, and Leonard Coldwell, former
b.f.f. of serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, gleefully joined in.
You've met Lenny on this blog previously, and are possibly still
trying to rinse your eyes out and clear your mind. I'm sorry to
stymie your cleansing campaign, but he has been such a vociferous
detractor of Snopes that he belongs in this post.
Lenny is a proud follower of the tradition of Snopes
detractors making themselves look stupid in an attempt to
discredit Snopes. Recently, for instance, he shared links to a
hoax article -- which was plainly labeled as such -- about the
supposed arrest of Snopes co-founder David Mikkelson. Here is the original link,
though Lenny shared a link from someone else who had
picked up the article on their site. However, on the second site
the piece was also clearly labeled as satire.
Not only was the article to which Lenny linked tagged as
satirical, and not only was the photo of the "arrest"
plainly a bad Photoshopping job (you'd think that the
Snopes-haters would recognize Mikkelson's face from the standard
Snopes-couch-potato shot), but there are also numerous silly cues
within the text that it is not to be taken at all seriously. I
mean, really: "attacking the messenger?" "Shooting
the piano player?" (Actually it was a player piano, which
makes the story even more blatantly silly.)
But Lenny, a long time Snopes loather, posted the announcement of
David Mikkelson's arrest on Facebook as if it were real news,
accompanied by his customary arrogant and semi-literate
I-told-you-so message. He even aggregated the hoax article for
the blog on his main web site, presenting it as actual truth. It
stayed up on that site for several days, and during this time I
tried twice to write a public comment to the post, explaining
that the article was satirical. Here are the two comments I tried
to post (as usual, click on pics to enlarge):
Neither of my comments was published, though as you'll see in the second screen grab, Coldwell did publish an apparently
supportive comment from a reader (who was obviously using a fake name) who claimed not to be surprised
by the "news." But the article now seems to be gone from Coldwell's site. Not a word of apology to his readers, though, and as
of today, his "I told you so" post
is still on his Facebook page:
As the old saying goes, "The more things change, the more
they stay the same." Here's Lenny from two years ago,
blathering about the "trailer trash" that runs snoops
[sic]:
So deeply does Lenny despise Snopes that he has
been known to throw temper tantrums on his social media whenever
anyone dares to cite a Snopes article. A couple of years ago he
practically had a meltdown when my pal Julie Daniel, whom I have
yet to meet in person but who has become someone I consider a
close friend nonetheless, cited a Snopes article to counter
Lenny's hysterical sharing on Facebook of the meme about Obamacare and compulsory RFID chips. At least I think that was the meme. It was one of
those silly things that are constantly surfacing and resurfacing,
anyway. Lenny quickly turned his Eye of Sauron upon Julie,
writing, "I know who you are!" as well as publicly
issuing what appeared to be several threats to her. She was
actually concerned for her safety for a while.
As it turned out, Lenny apparently thought Julie was I, writing
under one of numerous aliases (he has publicly and falsely
accused me of using more than 70 fake names and accounts to
defame and destroy him). But I am not Julie, and Julie is not I.
We, do, however, share a contempt for Lenny as well as a respect
for Snopes.com.
If, after reading all of the evidence that they are not
evil incarnate, you're still prejudiced against Snopes yourself
for whatever reason, below is a list of alternatives. For your
own sake, always check out wild rumors before sharing them on or
off the Internet. And for gosh sakes, don't rely on WorldTruth.TV
or anything with the name "Leonard Coldwell" in it as
your source.
TruthOrFiction.com
FactCheck.org (mostly
focusing on U.S. politics)
Politifact (mostly focusing on U.S. politics)
The Straight
Dope
The
Skeptic's Dictionary
Update 24 May 2016: I
just now discovered a wonderful blog, Just Bad For
You, by novelist, screenwriter, children's book author and
critical-thinking advocate Jeffrey E. Poehlmann, who is currently
fighting cancer. On this April 2016 post he
discusses, among several other topics, the dead-docs conspiracy
tale and Erin Elizabeth's role in fanning the flames (see under
"Murder, Black Ops and Cover Ups by Big Pharma").
* * * * *
Now more than ever, your donation is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning.
Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit
card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to
scrivener66@hotmail.com
or to cosmic.connie@juno.com
If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank
you!
