I got one of those right wing opinion pieces in my email this morning. Recently I've been a lot more active about responding to the friend who sends these. The emails are usually forwarded, and carry his "forward if you agree, or just delete" disclaimers. I'm sure he means this to be unoffensive, but when so many of these are blatantly false or misleading, I've begun responding.
If someone else has already debunked it, I clip and reply. If there are contradicting facts, but they are scattered, I summarize and reply.
In one recent instance...
In one instance, someone had badly manipulated a picture of Michelle Obama and suggested she must be a pinata. Her "dress" was insanely bright, and she was supposedly accompanying the President to a dinner with the Spanish President. The actual dress (before editing), while still bold was quite beautiful, and the first couple was instead on their way to present a posthumous Medal of Honor to a fallen hero.
Today's email was an opinion piece by Geoffrey P. Hunt in "American Thinker" back on Aug 31, '09. It claimed Obama's presidency was FAILING BIG, FAILING FAST, FAILING EVERYWHERE. It suggested the American People were rejecting Obama's presidency and even used the phrase REPUDIATED, SPAT OUT.
So I did a little looking at tracking polls and observed the following:
RESEARCH 2000 currently tracks Obama’s approval ratings at 54-APPROVE/41-DISAPPROVE.
It's much easier to look at the differential.
So according to RESEARCH 2000, Obama is +13, while Congressional Democrats are 21. Congressional GOP is 44. Looks more like Congress that is failing, but Congress always has low ratings on average. Everybody hates Congress but likes their own Congressman. It’s pretty convincing that Democrats in Congress are beating Congressional Republicans by 10 to 20 points.
Some conservatives don’t like RESEARCH 2000. Although it tends to be pretty accurate, some think it has a liberal bias. So look at Gallop:
According to Gallop, latest weekly tracking shows Obama +3 (48/45). The 4 previous weeks, it has been +7, +3, +7, and +7.
At the same point in his presidency (487 days), Clinton was 2 points better than Obama. At the same point in Reagan’s presidency, he was 4 points lower than Obama. Ford was 3 points lower than Obama and Carter was 5 points lower. At this point in his presidency George W Bush was much higher, riding high on a post 9-11 solidarity. But remember Bush finished at an approval/disapproval rating of 26/70 or -44. Talk about SPAT OUT.
So although some who publish opinions in a right wing opinion journal like "AMERICAN THINKER" might like to believe Obama is self-destructing, it’s because they’ve been listening to their own cheerleaders too long. Since Mr. Hunt wrote this piece (August 31, 2009), Obama has since gotten health care reform and a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has passed the House. His approval rating is exactly where it was in Nov09, and he’s continuing to get his agenda passed. That doesn’t sound like repudiation to me.
The week before 9-11, W’s rating was 2 points lower than Obama’s at the same point. So Mr. Hunt’s analysis was written at a point where Obama’s approval rating was 2 points higher than W’s at the same time.
Quinnipiac is currently tracking Obama at a 47/46 approval rating or +1.
While Hunt’s opinion of Obama’s policies is his own, and he’s welcome to it, he’s utterly wrong about Obama’s presidency being "REJECTED" by the American people. Obama still is approved by more than disapproved – even 9 months after the piece was originally written.
I don't know how others respond to right wing email forwards. Bad facts gall me, and I'm damned if I understand why they cling to espousing a point of view that MUST have lies and misrepresentations as props to remain upright. So I try to respond with fact-checking and debunking. That (by my informal count) gives me an 80-20 edge.
I read today that only 6% of scientists self-identify as Republicans. Am I wrong to attribute that to the tendency of Republicans to live in a fact-free zone, where belief trumps facts?