So I guess Snopes has debunked too many right wing lies?

[ck4829]

Right winger said that Obama had people who are the cause of the current economic crisis helping him with his campaign.

I found this to be not true, but made the "mistake" of using Snopes as a source.

Soon every single right winger was saying something about Snopes, about how it was unreliable or whatever.

Earlier on, we may have seen one or two righties dismissing Snopes before, but they did it en masse.

Anyone else experience something like this, and when did it start, did they all pass around a chain mail saying not to use Snopes or something?

[annabanana]

1. It's just that pesky "truth" has a liberal bias, you know. . . n/t

[mkultra]

2. any site the repeatedly reports the truth

will eventually be the subject of rw smears.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

3. Exactly right.

Attacking Snopes is the new black on the right. Assault the truth, assault the guardians of the truth...it's all the same thing.

[mikelgb]

4. probably hit talk radio and fox

[Maestro]

5. They just don't like facts so unless the source

is Drudge, the infotainment channel Faux News or Rush, they don't like it or support it.

[Richard D]

6. They are like lemmings

Following each other blindly. All it takes is an announcement from one of the high priests of conservativism and they all turn into perfect parrots. Try mentioning Wikipedia as a source. Or the New York Times.
Morans.

[DS1]

7. some send emails which links to snopes directly countering their argument

with the hopes that just seeing them post the link to snopes must make it legit, because nobody would post something that disproved their claim


morans

[SpiralHawk]

8. Homelanders HATE facts & truth

as the record shows, over and over.

[lady raven]

9. There IS a "snopes is in the tank for Obama" email going around. Check it out...

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/internet/a/snopes_exposed.htm

[Taverner]

10. Truth has a known Liberal bias

[amdezurik]

11. there is a viral email going around

that purports to "out" snopes as not a hulking empire of investigators out there looking into everything possible to report on (uh, whatever) as opposed to a couple who run it and update it in their spare time from their house, you know like 90% of all web sites. the problem with the email is ASSumes people are too stupid to scroll down in the snopes FAQ section and see where that is mentioned, and has been for the last decade or so it has been in operation.

You see this highlights a basic difference between freeper types and liberals/progressives. freepers only accept info if it has the stamp of approval of some doofus sitting in a granite building.

[rucky]

12. It's true. FOX News has debunked Snopes as a reliable source.

dude, they always attack the messenger when we tell them something they don't want to hear.

Now they even say "check Snopes" in the RW emails, counting on you not checking if they say that. But when you do check, you find it's false. They don't care. The people who believe that shit only want to fool themselves, and other like-minded self-delusional types in their echo chamber. They can just cover their ears and sing real loud - and that's how they handle the truth.

[MiniMe]

20. I got a few emails that had the "check snopes" and provided a link too

And I went and checked Snopes, and it didn't say what they said it did at all. I did a reply all to the email and said "I did check snopes and it doesn't say what your email said it did, it says ___" whatever it said. I actually got an apology from one of those emails. I avoided the snark of saying something like "don't you even check what garbage you send out?", I just send the reply correcting the information. Sometimes no snark is better.

[Cerridwen]

13. How do they feel about the "National Review?"

You know, the late will buckley's stomping grounds.

They have a very positive article about the owners of snopes.com and the history of how it came to be. My understanding is that Barbara and David Mikkelson lean to the "right." I guess they ain't far enough to the right?

Here's the link to the National Review article. Maybe that link should start accompanying the snopes links.

[sellitman]

14. The truth is left wing lie.

Or something like that.

[sellitman]

15. Dupe

Browser hang up.

[leftofthedial]

16. they hate the truth, no matter where it comes from.

truth to a "conservative" is like sunlight to a vampire.

[alfredo]

17. I remind them that unlike the e-mail he sent, Snopes shows the source

in links and in some cases, direct quotes.

[crim son]

18. Yep.

I ran into it during the campaign. Apparently there is no longer any source of "truth" as repugs choose to view it.

[LostinVA]

19. The Snopes founders/owners are Republicans

[Lasher]

21. Yes, I've seen it. The claim is debunked at other fact checking websites.

TruthOrFiction.com:

Snopes.com is a secret tool of the Democratic Party to promote Barack Obama- Fiction!

Summary of the eRumor:
An eRumor about Snopes.com accusing them being owned by a flaming liberal and this man is in the tank for Obama.

The Truth:
In October, 2008, stories began circulating via forwarded emails that the popular urban legends site Snopes.com was owned by liberals and was "in the tank" for presidential candidate Barack Obama.

As with many forwarded emails, the criticism did not include any example of what the writer of the email claimed was the difference between what Snopes.com reported and what Barack Obama had actually said.

Snopes.com is an excellent site that has become an authoritative source for information about urban legends and forwarded emails. We regard David and Barbara Mikkelson, the founders and operators of Snopes.com, as colleagues and professional researchers who have earned a good reputation for what they do.

We can give a unique perspective on this story because we do the same kind of work as Snopes.com and have sometimes been the target of similar criticism.

We've got a collection of emails that have come to TruthOrFiction.com accusing us of being "right wing whackos" as well as "liberals" and "communists." We've been suspected of being owned and operated by both Republicans and Democrats. We've been called "Christian propagandists" as well as "atheists pretending to be neutral." We occasionally receive emails that have elaborate theories about who "really" owns us and what our "real" motives are.

The bottom line is that if you try to report the truth, there will be those who don't like the truth you've reported and who will develop suspicions about why you did.

That, in our view, is what is happening with Snopes.

The 2008 presidential campaign has been one of the most intense and unique in our nation's history and has prompted more political eRumors than any presidential campaign in our experience, especially about Barack Obama.

These anti-Snopes emails have probably been prompted by someone who does not like Barack Obama and does not like the fact that Snopes (or TruthOrFiction.com for that matter) has debunked some of the emails that are not true about him.

One of the versions of the eRumor mentions TruthOrFiction.com and recommends our site. We appreciate that, but we want to say for the record that we've had nothing to do with this eRumor about Snopes.com and we condemn it.

Full TruthOrFiction.com article here

About.com:

Summary: Forwarded email alleges that the urban legend debunking site Snopes.com is 'owned by a flaming liberal' who is 'in the tank for Obama' and cannot be trusted to provide reliable information.

(Example of bogus email)

Comments: Apparently it never occurred to this anonymous emailer to cite even one alleged instance of Snopes.com promulgating "half-truths" or "lies" under the guise of valid information. So much for the email's credibility.

That such a scurrilous attack should be mounted against the oldest and most popular fact-checking site on the Web in the waning days of an election year characterized from beginning to end by baseless Internet smears is doubly ironic.

Let's examine the unsupported accusations.

Is the owner of Snopes.com a liberal?

Is it true that "Snopes.com is owned by a flaming liberal" and that "this man is in the tank for Obama"?

Well, first off, Snopes.com is owned by two people, not one. They are husband and wife David and Barbara Mikkelson.

Second, the Mikkelsons' political views are between them and the ballot box. I don't know what they are; you don't know what they are; certainly the author of this email doesn't know what they are. According to a boilerplate statement issued by the site, "Neither of the operators of Snopes.com has any affiliation with, has ever made a donation to, or has ever publicly expressed support for any political party or candidate."

Anyone who has proof to the contrary should come out with it.

More here

Edit to pimp the DU Propaganda Debunking Group: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=284

[unpossibles]

22. I had some dumbass I can't stand decry that factcheck.org is biased

right after posting a link from WND!

LOL.

Apparently, the wingnuts think anything which disagrees with their propaganda is biased, and anything which agrees with what they're told is unbiased.

[Sebastian Doyle]

24. You should remind them that factcheck was founded by a Reaganite Republican named Annenberg.

Granted, it's the same Annenberg that had a foundation with those two "terrorists" Bill Ayers and Barack Obama on its board, but that's beside the point.

[unpossibles]

27. thanks! I did

He sent me this link: http://yankeephilip.blogspot.com/2008/09/factcheckorg-impartial-independent.html

my reply:

That website has a bias against legibility and itself does not even pretend to be unbiased or in any way reputable. They mainly seem to blather on about Annenberg's funding of the Brady thing, at least that's what I gathered before my eyes started bleeding from trying to read it. Jesus.

Anyway, I wonder if you could figure out why a good friend of the Reagan's would support the... what was it called? Oh yeah! The Brady Bill! Hmm. Now what was the connection between Brady, Reagan, and guns? I know there was something there, but it's slipping my mind.

The dude worships Reagan too! lol. What a tool. On the bright side, I did not like the guy when I first met him, so discovering his politics was amusing and not surprising.

[Cleita]

23. Not to worry. The RW can't stand facts, truth and reality.

I'm sure they did pass around a memo to all their sycophants trying to discredit Snopes.

[grannylib]

25. FACT is the biggest of the four-letter f-bombs to a conservative

Facts are so rarely on the side of conservatives.

[CitizenPatriot]

26. Oh, yes

I had a rip-roaring argument over this wherein I used FactCheck.org and Snopes to verify a few widely accepted truths (i.e., reality -- which campaign was more negative and which campaign misrepresented the truth more?) only to have the person yell at me that those "liberal" media sites are not reliable. Or, to put it their way, "Everyone knows Snopes is in the tank for Obama!" said with LOUD screech, red face, distorted and crazy eyes- the whole thing.

They really are desperate tin-foil hat-wearing, denial-laden, misguided sad little things.

[Libertyfirst]

28. Fact the RightWingnuts! Fact them all! Fact them till they holler! n/t

[Odin2005]

29. I find it hilarous, disturbing, and sad how much post-modernist thinking has infected the Right.

It seems like now days when you crush thier arguments with facts the more educated ones respond by sounding like some crazy postmodernist nut saying there is no objective reality. :eyes:

[Born_A_Truman]

30. Yes, I got that reply once

that Snopes "wasn't always accurate" ... especially since this person was always forwarding stuff that, uh, wasn't accurate.