Annoying Chain Emails: One Worth Reading?

I’ve expressed my hatred for chain emails here before (“Annoying FALSE Political Chain Emails “ and “Annoying Chain Emails”). But I actually got one today that made me snicker a bit. I snickered because it was so very accurate as to what I think has been going on with political perceptions and opinions lately regarding the presidential candidates and running mates. And since I like to share but don’t want to needless flood hundred of email boxes with the memo, I thought I would publish it here where my regular readers may actually want to see it. In all the chain or viral emails I’ve received, it’s the only one that passed my worthiness test (which is completely subjective, by the way).

As far as I can tell, the author is not known.

Now I understand McCain and Palin

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....(hope
I'm not offending anyone)

* If you grew up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're
"exotic, different."

* If you grew up in Alaska eating moose burgers, you're a
quintessential American story.

* If your name is Barack, you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

* If you name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

* If you graduated from Harvard law School, you are unstable.

* If you attended 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're
well grounded.

* If you spent 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the
first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter
registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years
as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator
representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of
the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years
in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people
while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs,
Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you
don't have any real leadership experience.

* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city
council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000
people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people,
then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking
executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while
raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're
not a real Christian.

* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your
disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a
Christian.

* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including
the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no
other option in sex education in your state's school system, while
your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible.
If you try to make victimized women pay for their own rape kits.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in
a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city
community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values
don't represent America's.

* If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI
conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until
age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession
of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely adm irable.

OK, "much" clearer now.


By the way, I still hate chain emails.

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Annoying FALSE Political Chain Emails

Back in November, I wrote in this blog (here) about how annoying chain emails can be. They are often forwarded over and over, and you can get the same one several times from multiple people. Sometimes the message plays on your fears – for example, if you don’t forward the email something bad could happen to you. Sometimes the message is spreading false rumors.

It’s the latter that is becoming a problem during this highly charged political season. Today, I receive an email from two separate senders that stating the following:

Hot on the heels of his explanation for why he no longer wears a flag pin, presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama was forced to explain why he doesn’t follow protocol when the National Anthem is played.

According to the United States Code, Title 36, Chapter 10, Sec. 171, During rendition of the national anthem when the flag is displayed, all present except those in uniform are expected to stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart.

“As I’ve said about the flag pin, I don’t want to be perceived as taking sides,” Obama said. “There are a lot of people in the world to whom the American flag is a symbol of oppression. And the anthem itself conveys a war-like message. You know, the bombs bursting in air and all. It should be swapped for something less parochial and less bellicose. I like the song ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.’ If that were our anthem, then I might salute it.”

It took me a matter of seconds to verify that this whole story is FALSE. I repeat: FALSE. It's a hoax. It stems from a piece of political satire published by John Semmens for the Arizona Conservative in October 2007. Yet, months later, people are still trotting out this piece of false garbage in an attempt to smear Obama.

Frankly, I now perceive the people who forwarded me this email as uneducated, lazy idiots who probably don’t even have enough brains to be responsible to vote. Yet, sadly, they do vote, and they probably make their choices based on this kind of false information. Aside from responding to them to set the record straight, I am not sure what else can be done to stop this behavior on a wider scale. But it does need to be stopped. It’s easy to drop acquaintances off your list of contacts when they send emails like this, but it’s almost impossible to cut off a family member if that’s who has sent the email. (It wasn’t a family member in this case.)

All I can do us strongly suggest – especially to those Republicans and/or bigots out there (they can be mutually exclusive) – that to avoid looking like complete idiots, do your homework and check out those chain emails before you send them on. Why? Because while one may be looking to make a political candidate look stupid, it’s the person sending the email that looks like the dummy.


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Annoying Chain Emails

Do you have a friend or family member who sends you chain emails? You know, the emails that look like they’ve been forwarded over and over to what appear to be the entire email address book of several people? Usually the email has some story that sounds hard to believe, or it tries to elicit a negative emotional response. I can’t tell you how many I get each day - it's just too many.

What I find particularly annoying are the emails where the person hasn’t bothered to check the validity of the story he/she is forwarding. Sometimes these emails seem to purposely contain misleading information in order to inflame the recipient’s emotions. It usually takes less than 30 seconds to do an Internet search to find if what is stated in the email is true, or a hoax. Most of the time, it’s the latter. A word of advice: if you get a chain email, before you send it along, check first to find out if it’s true (snopes.com is a good site to use). If it’s a hoax, reply back to the person who sent it to you and tell them about their error. Then delete the email without forwarding it to YOUR entire address book.

Even worse are the chain emails that tell you to “send the email to “X” number of friends”, and if you do, you’ll have some sort of “good fortune” within “X” number of days. Or, the emails that say the reverse – if you don’t forward on the email, some catastrophe will befall you. Not only should you delete those emails, I strongly recommend you delete the person who sent it to you from your list of friends. (Note: if a family member sent you an email like that, you’re on your own!)

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