I know. This is sort of like announcing dog bites man. But the concerted effort by the right to discredit President Obama needs to be addressed. For more than two years, emails have circulated blaming Obama for a variety of unpatriotic and even sacreligious acts. Of course, theyre not true. But thats never stopped the wingnuts.
The real problem is that intelligent, well-meaning individuals receive the emails, read them and, like sheep, follow the email instructions to pass the email along to everyone they know.
The most recent example Ive received is an email entitled Snopes Confirms. It contains a message that President Obama has directed the U.S. Postal Service to remember and honor the EID Muslim holiday season with a new commemorative 44 cent first class holiday postage stamp. And it encourages readers to boycott the stamp and to pass this along to every patriotic American you know to get the word out. Of course, some of my friends did just that.
The problem with the email is that it is only partially true. There is a stamp honoring the Muslim holidays but President Obama had absolutely nothing to do with it. If any of the readers had been curious enough to check Snopes or FactCheck.org, they would have discovered that the stamp was first issued in 2001, and that President Bush encouraged Americans to purchase the stamp in order to reach out to the patriotic American Muslim community and let them know that we dont hold them responsible for the actions of a few extremists.
Of course, that didnt make news.
But the mere fact that the stamp was re-issued while President Obama is in office is used by the right as proof that Obama is a Christian-hating, anti-American Muslim. This sort of thing has to stop. Americans who receive this trash must take the time to check the validity of such emails and respond to the sender with the truth as I did. Now doing so may have cost me a friend. But if so, I dont care. After all, what kind of friends mindlessly pass along information that isnt true? Or worse yet, what kind of friends assume you believe as they do and share such evil, hate-filled messages as this?