Those Dang Minnesota French!

As I promised, I wanted to post a few links about the rumor of a French-owned Target Corporation that will not support the US military.

As I said before, I greatly despise the spread of misinformation. I also strongly despise the way the US media and citizenry blindly latch on to any anti-patriotic propaganda they can get fired up about all while forwarding these stupid emails without verifying the information contained.

Just to make it absolutely clear:

• Target does support the military.
  
• Target Corpration was founded and is still based in the twin cities area of Minnesota - far from Quebec, let alone France.
  
• Target also supports many other causes - local, public, and of various interests, especially in education, charity, and the environment.
  

The person who had forwarded this to me second-hand was upset about my correction and felt, "If you disagreed with me, all you needed to do was delete it from your mailbox."

I completely disagree! As I told her, "I just hope you actually had the decency to then spread the truth to refute the lies you so willingly spread."

I like how I explained my feelings to her (although she didn't like it at all): "What I really, really hate is the continuous, unverified spread of lies and misinformation by people who should know better. This is one of my BIGGEST pet peeves and pisses me off to no end. If I have to pay hell (or &&**, as she previously wrote) for correcting lies, so be it." She later declared she wouldn't correspond with someone who would dare use "THE 'P' WORD!"

I closed with what could be a future blog entry for me: "While I understand what's wrong with not supporting the men and women in the US armed forces, just what is wrong with France? Should we send the Statue of Liberty back? Why don't you worry more about how we spend so much money on Chinese-made products, taking jobs away from Americans and giving money to a violent, totalitarian regime that our own government - Democrat and Republican - caters to?

But maybe I shouldn't add that part - talk about flame bait! Good thing there's no comments on this blog.

Oh, and for full disclosure - I love shopping Target. Affordable design and quality for the most part. Better looking clothes, nicer electronics, a cleaner store, and more helpful employees. I actually had the privilege to work at a Target briefly, although my personal pace is too slow for that environment.

FW: Email forwards drive me nuts

People love to forward emails, don't they? It's not that I really mind - it's just a few kb of space and sometimes I actually do check them out and delete them.  What burns me the most are these political emails full of lies and misinformation which people don't double-check.

I actually got into a brief email argument with an acquaintance who had forwarded that stupid email about Target not supporting our troops and being owned by the French. I will post my reply to that in my next post.

My current rant is about the whole "Barack Obama is a closet radical Muslim" email that my wife has received twice. I guess people know better than to send it to me. The link I've given is Snopes.com's take on the email - they're a really good resource.

What's really funny is that, as Snopes notes in the link, the email actually claims that the information had been confirmed via Snopes.com. As Snopes says, "It's our guess that whoever included that bit was counting on folks to not check, as our article says the opposite...."

I could repeat what Snopes and other sites say about this half-and-half concoction of drunken lies and savory truth, but instead I'll just post the links and make you do the work.

Google search for "barack obama muslim"
Snopes about Obama and the national anthem
About.com concurring with Snopes' take, with a few more links (many of them also in the Google search).

I just need to say this: Don't spread something you didn't check into. Don't put your name on it unless you want to rise or fall by it. There's a reason why television, radio, and print media often state stuff like, "The opinions cited herein or those strictly of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this company, its stockholders, the board of directors, the founders, or the web gnomes who actually coded it for you to read. Blah blah blah...."

And if you ever send me a forward or a link without verifying the truthfulness of its reporting, do not be surprised if you get a reply full of links and corrections. Also don't be surprised if I'm not very tactful or nice about it. I have a very intense dislike for the spread of unverified "facts".

Of course, don't be surprised if I don't do or write anything in response, either. I don't keep up too much with the forwards I'm sent - my Mail program has a folder with 270 unread messages (and counting). Although emails with hot potatoes like "muslim", "Obama", "French", "American", etc., tend to make me want to either read or immediately delete them, depending on my mood.

And, by the way, no, this is not a plug for Barack Obama. While I am strongly motivated politically, I'm not going to stump for one candidate or another here. There's enough crap - good and bad - out there about the candidates. Just make absolutely certain you check your sources... especially before you send something to me... or, you know... VOTE!