Snopes has rightfully earned a lot of respect over the years on the web for their hunger in finding the truth about urban legends and chain e-mails. They have a way of getting to the bottom of things that’s both admirable and interesting and they document their research very well on their site. Many times I’ve gotten one of those obnoxious e-mails that tells me not to drink Pepsi because the company kills gerbils and grinds their teeth up to make cans and I’ve found the truth on Snopes.
The one continuous thing that annoys me about Snopes is that they will not allow any attack on a Democrat to go unchallenged, no matter how ridiculous. They’ve been a reliable source of Democratic mythbusting while utterly ignoring the continuous stream of anti-Republican attacks, and that has tainted my view of them and their integrity over the years. I don’t care if you debunk myths, but do it easily. For example, despite the fact that they’ve spent numerous posts debunking attacks against John Kerry (who, by the way, served in Vietnam) and Barack Obama’s lack of a legitimate birth certificate (have you seen it? I haven’t!) they never once even looked into the ridiculous claim that Dick Cheney was benefiting from his Haliburton pension (he isn’t). They spent a whole post on Al Gore’s claim of inventing the internet, only to arrive at the determination that it was a misinterpretation (apparently “taking the initiative in creating something” isn’t the same as inventing it; who knew?). They sure didn’t like that one.
In their zeal to jump to Barack Obama’s defense they posted an item this week that, had I not been aware of the date, I would’ve been convinced was written on April Fool’s day.
A prophecy that a black man would inhabit the White house “when pigs fly” ties the Obama presidency to the swine flu.Times of crisis prompt people to search for meaning as they struggle to come to terms with frightening events well beyond their power to control, or even influence. We hunt for portents to see if scary current events might have been foretold, Flying pig because if they had, we can at least draw some measure of comfort from a sense of history unfolding as preordained.
[...]
Just at the tail end of those hundred days, news of a novel strain of swine flu broke. While it is still too soon to tell how virulent this incursion of H1N1 might be, or how widespread the contagion will become, the World Health Organization and many nations (including the U.S.) are taking seriously the potential for a pandemic that could cost a great many lives.
Many did not feel the U.S. was ready to elect an African-American to its highest office. Such disbelief could well have been couched in a variety of colloquial terms, including “It’ll happen when pigs fly.”
And yet, the U.S. did elect a black president. Also, while porkers did not actually take to the skies within his first hundred days in office, one could say that ‘swine flew,’ especially if a bit of license were taken with the spelling of the second word.
Snopes actually examined whether or not there was a prophecy about pigs flying and a black President.
I’m not one to tell people how to spend their time. If Snopes wants to look up old slang sayings and see if they apply to politicians, then by all means, it’s their time and their welcome to spend it that way. I think Robert Byrd is as crazy as a craphouse rat, so if they’d like to do a double-blind clinical study of craphouse rats and see how crazy they are, then compare them to a psychological evaluation of Robert Byrd, they can do exactly that.
I just don’t get why this was worthy of addressing, but put in the context of Snopes’ rabid defense of people like Al Gore and John Kerry, it isn’t really that hard to believe.
(Oh, and Snopes? GFY for blocking copy and paste; anyone who’s been on the internet for more than 20 minutes can bypass that bit of stupidity. Fair use, assholes).