In an age when we are inundated with information from all sides with little time to carefully digest all of it, it should not be a surprise to find that people often read just the headline and the opening sentences of an article before deciding that they agree with the contents and forward it to others. Twitter is making an attempt to discourage this practice.
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I think that it has become very clear that Facebook is the source of much of the dangerous disinformation that is spreading rapidly across the world. And this can result in real harm. One example is that of Erin Hitchens, a 46-year old woman who died from complications of covid-19 because she and her husband thought the virus was a hoax and so they disregarded all the recommended precautions. Her husband now regrets their foolishness.
A Florida taxi driver, who believed false claims that coronavirus was a hoax, has lost his wife to Covid-19.
Brian Lee Hitchens and his wife, Erin, had read claims online that the virus was fabricated, linked to 5G or similar to the flu.
The couple didn’t follow health guidance or seek help when they fell ill in early May. Brian recovered but his 46-year-old wife became critically ill and died this month from heart problems linked to the virus.
…Erin, a pastor in Florida, had existing health problems – she suffered from asthma and a sleeping disorder.
Her husband explained that the couple did not follow health guidance at the start of the pandemic because of the false claims they had seen online.
Brian continued to work as a taxi driver and to collect his wife’s medicine without observing social distancing rules or wearing a mask.
They had also failed to seek help as soon as possible when they fell ill in May and were both subsequently diagnosed with Covid-19.
…Brian said he and his wife didn’t have one firm belief about Covid-19. Instead, they switched between thinking the virus was a hoax, linked to 5G technology, or a real, but mild ailment. They came across these theories on Facebook.
Stuart Varney is, along with Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs, Donald Trump’s most devoted hosts on Fox News and in a recent show he was visibly upset when Paul Romer, a former chief economist of the World Bank, called the people who speak about economics for the Trump administration, such as White House economics advisor Larry Kudlow, ‘liars for hire’ and that they should not be believed. When Varney remonstrated with him, Romer did not back down.
It used to be that American political party conventions involved some genuine uncertainty about who would become the party nominee and spirited debates about what the party platform should contain since that was supposed to (at lest in theory) set the party’s agenda for the next four years. But those days are gone. Nowadays the nominee is known well in advance and the party platform is also decided on and approved in advance. The last bit of suspense, the nominee’s pick for the vice-presidential slot, is now also announced in advance. Conventions have become infomercials consisting of fulsome praise for the nominees and criticisms of the rival party and candidates.
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As predicted, the Trump campaign has wheeled out the birther charge against Kamala Harris. The playbook for such things is very familiar. Someone publishes an article pushing a lie or a dubious theory and then Trump points to the article as ‘raising concerns’ while not explicitly endorsing the idea. This enables his spokespersons to deny that he is promoting birtherism while promoting birtherism. The strategy is utterly transparent.
The birtherism case against Barack Obama was based on the preposterous idea that he was not born in the US. In Harris’s case, her birth in California is not being challenged. This latest incarnation of birtherism as published in a Newsweek op-ed by John Eastman, a professor of law at Chapman University, suggests that Harris may not meet the constitutional requirement for eligibility since her parents may have been in the US on student visas at the time she was born. This argument has been dismissed out of hand by other law experts and staff at Newsweek were so outraged that this was published that they publicly protested and after three days the magazine kinda, sorta apologized but did not withdraw the article.
Wow. A reporter (I'm not sure who he is) asks Trump, "after three and a half years, do you regret all the lying you've done to the American people?" Trump quickly moves on to the next question. pic.twitter.com/DHn3UvXHnN
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 13, 2020
The person who asked the question says that he had been waiting a long time to be called upon so that he could ask it.
I have also been wondering when a reporter might reprise Joseph Welch’s famous words to senator Joe McCarthy that are now seen as signaling the beginning of the end of that demagogue’s career: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” This shocking public rebuke to a US Senator, delivered by Welch in his sad and gentle voice, was a pivotal event that exposed McCarthy to the whole nation as an overbearing, reckless, and lying bully and started his rapid decline.
A good time to pose that question would be now in response to Trump’s attempts to stir up birtherism against Kamala Harris.
Over the weekend Trump stormed off from a press conference when a female reporter kept pressing him about why he keeps claiming credit for an action that Barack Obama did when he was president back in 2014. Jack Shafer writes that there is a pattern here.
It starts with a reporter, usually a female reporter, asking President Donald Trump hard, tenacious questions at a news conference. Trump’s jaw seizes up, rattled and dumbfounded by the questions that he can’t or won’t answer, he abruptly ends the presser by saying, “Thank you, very much” and stalking out of the room.
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These two writers and columnists have both left their positions, decrying what they claim is an atmosphere of intolerance for their views in their respective workplaces. Sullivan has quit New York magazine while Weiss has left the New York Times. Weiss was also one of the signatories to the ‘cancel culture’ letter. It should be noted that they both resigned and were not fired, but in leaving both wrote the kind of self-pitying ‘people are being mean to me’ screeds that prominent people say when they are criticized.
This article describes what led to their respective departures.
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He explains why they are attractive to some people who fall prey to them and what methods might work to wean the people you know away from them. Since I do not use social media, especially Facebook where most of them get propagated, some of the theories he spoke about were new to me.
When I first read that a group of 153 well-known writers, politicians, artists, and intellectuals had signed a letter protesting ‘cancel culture’, my skepticism quickly got activated. It is fine when famous people write letters protesting injustices perpetrated against the powerless but when they protest actions taken against members of their own group, it warrants careful examination. My apprehension was increased when I found that Thomas Chatterton Williams was one of the organizers of this letter and that people like Malcolm Gladwell, David Frum, and J. K. Rowling were among the signatories. Williams is a columnist for Harper’ Magazine which published the letter, and I have found his opinions to be somewhat right-wing and establishment-friendly.
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