Chain Email Myths

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I received a chain email today with a great article entitled "Obama, the Affirmative Action Candidate."  The email claimed that the article was printed as an editorial in the Washington Post, noting that even this extreme liberal rag had finally seen the light.

I found this hard to believe, so took some of the verbiage from the article and googled it.  There were no links to the Washington Post, but there was a link to American Thinker, where the article actually appeared.  Just as I suspected, the Washington Post had not suddenly "seen the light" and begun criticizing the biggest empty suit since Millard Fillmore.

People who start these chain emails always seem to get some important fact wrong.  Great conservative screeds are wrongly attributed to dyed-in-the-wool liberals like Robin Williams, George Carlin, Andy Rooney or Bill Cosby.   Maybe the wrongful attribution is an honest mistake, or maybe it is designed to give greater weight to the screed by associating it with some beloved star.  In any case, it behooves us to take chain emails with a large grain of salt.  They are almost always wrong.

The American Thinker article, written in August 2011, is spot-on in its description of Obama.  He is the ultimate affirmative action baby, ushered through ivy league universities on the basis of his skin color, not his grades, and sent to the senate and ultimately the presidency, on the same basis.  He is a talentless hack for whom society has provided a paved highway to an undeserved success.  As for beloved stars, Obama's mediocre career can best be compared to a role by Peter Sellers, in the film "Being There."  Here's how "Rotten Tomatoes" describes that film (see anyone you know?):

Having lived his life as the gardener on a millionaire's estate, Chance (Peter Sellers) knows of the real world only what he has seen on TV. When his benefactor dies, Chance walks aimlessly into the streets of Washington D.C., where he is struck by a car owned by wealthy Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine). Identifying himself, the confused man mutters "Chance...gardener," which Eve takes to be "Chauncey Gardiner." Eve takes him to her home to convalesce, and because Chance is so well-dressed and well-groomed, and because he speaks in such a cultured tone, everyone in her orbit assumes that "Chauncey Gardiner" must be a man of profound intelligence. No matter what he says, it is interpreted as a pearl of wisdom and insight. He rises to the top of Washington society, where his simplistic responses to the most difficult questions (responses usually related to his gardening experience) are highly prized by the town's movers and shakers. In fact, there is serious consideration given to running Chance as a presidential candidate. Both a modern fable and a political satire, Being There was based on the novel by Jerzy Kosinski and costars Melvyn Douglas, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as Eve's aging power-broker husband. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi 

Emphasis added.

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