Your Opinion: Errant quote depicts danger of phony emails

Dear Editor:

Jim Dyke attributed a quote in a recent cartoon to Thomas Jefferson (Feb 16). It demeaned the poor. If you fact-check the quote, you will find it is not attributed to Jefferson by any reliable source. This takes about one minute.

The source appears to be a conservative email hoax of which there are many. Phony quotes from famous beloved Americans are popular. Also popular are emails to warn us of many looming and insidious government plots mostly involving Obama. For example, Obama opposes the Keystone Pipeline because Warren Buffet doesn't want it competing with his rail business. Obama is allegedly on Buffet's payroll. In reality Buffet is in favor of Keystone.

Another email alarms us that page 107 of the Affordable Care Act establishes "Dhimmitude", a Sharia Muslim dictate. Any Christian who refuses to buy health insurance, would have liens against their assets and hard prison time. There is no such thing on page 107 or anywhere else in the ACA bill.

These email warnings go round and round cyberspace; Obama won't recite the Pledge of Allegiance (false) or that he was sworn into office on the Quran (false). He is the anti-Christ as revealed in Revelations (we have been duped!). His Hawaiian birth certificate is a forgery (false). He is going to ban the sale of guns, ammo and Bibles (did this happen yet?). Obamacare denies medical procedures to people over 80 (death panels), it requires microchips put in all newborns and doctors must now ask patients if they own guns (all false). The list of phony emails is long.

It is bad enough that newspapers perpetuate crazy email allegations but it is worse when we elect people who spread this baloney. The newly elected senator from Iowa, Joni Ernst says she believes there is a devious land grab conspiracy by the government to force people from their land on a mass scale, round them up and put them into detention centers in the cities. (The black helicopter crowd.) Heaven help us.

There are hundreds of these emails swirling around all the time spreading hatefulness, distortions and misinformation. Vulnerable people feast on them. Why? It is so easy to fact check. Next time you get one of those nutty emails from one of your right-wing friends and it sounds hard to believe, try fact-checking it. Then do your friend (and all of us) a favor and politely let them know they have been duped.