Saturday, September 24, 2005

Snopes.com and Andy Rooney

Ahh. Finally found something to share with whoever is checking this out.

I have been receiving email about Andy Rooney's political views and supposed '60 Minutes' commentary for years now, and I'd like to set the record straight. This is driving me nuts. First, here is the reference to what I'm about to summarize: http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=andy+rooney&getit=Go&sp-a=00062d45-sp0000000
0&sp-advanced=1&sp-p=all&sp-w-control=1&sp-w=alike&sp-date-range=-1&sp-x=any&sp-c=
100&sp-m=1&sp-s=0

Please do not forward any more junk about Andy's 'views'. There is only a couple that are actually true:

-TRUE: Andy Rooney and the French (it's about the French not having the right to protest what the U.S. is doing in Iraq)
-TRUE: Andy Rooney re: Pat Robertson and Mel Gibson.

Otherwise, some idiot appended Rooney's name to the following views and now are needlessly clogging inboxes everywhere:

-FALSE: Andy Rooney explains his political views (re: guns, racism, tattoos and piercings, etc.)
-FALSE: Andy Rooney suggests ways to cut down on junk mail and telemarketing phone calls.
-FALSE: Andy Rooney on any of the following: Monica (as in Lewinsky), vegetarians, prisoners, fabric softeners, phone-in polls, cripes, Grandma, answering machines, award shows, pregnancy, ads in bills, life cycle, etc., etc., etc. Several of these are actually from comedian Sean Morey.
-FALSE: Andy Rooney 'in praise of older women.'

Every time I receive anything forwarded to me, I cross reference on snopes.com. It is the best reference for checking the validity of almost anything that lands in my inbox. 90% of the time, these emails are false and they go straight into the trash. Once I even sent a politely composed email to a friend who had a habit of forwarding junk email to me and told her that she'd been busy forwarding stuff like this for nothing. She was stunned. I don't know why. There are liars everywhere and I'm not surprised they've learned to use the Internet.

I even get doctored photos or mislabeled photos. I have an email that is stuffed full of photos that claim to show pictures of Hurricane Katrina.
*First of all, these pictures are taken in the middle of corn fields. I didn't know New Orleans was big on farming these days.
*Second, the storm cells only covered a few miles. Hurricanes cover much more ground and you normally can't see the sky during one.
*Third, one picture is clearly showing a tornado. All the photos show supercells in some form of development or some tornadic activity.

Don't even get me started on the photo of the snake that swallowed a human. It ain't true, folks.

1 comment:

Becky said...

Yes, you are right about the 1st amendment. I agree wholeheartedly with ignoring anything that comes into my mailbox, but my point is that there are false emails floating around and people are blindly forwarding them everywhere. I'm just annoyed that someone stuck Rooney's name on there (unfairly for him) and passed them as his views when in fact they are not. I'm not opposed to even going anonymous, but I suspect that his name was appended to these so that these views (whoever they belong to!) will reach farther and wider.

There are valid points in there. I'm just chagrined about people' assumptions that these things are 100% true, not the actual content per se...so, in any case, thanks for posting. I'm hoping more will come to discuss :-)

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