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Snopes’ 25 Hottest Urban Legends Gets Remarkably Political

by Philip Bump | 11:21 pm, December 4th, 2009

» 18 comments

If you have older relatives, and they have email accounts, I’d guess that you’re pretty familiar with Snopes.com. It’s likely that, for the first few months of their sending you urgent messages about free Applebee’s dinners or gang members threatening people’s lives, you dutifully found rebuttals from Snopes to pass on, intending to limit occasion for embarrassment when they send such things to others.

Then you realized that embarrassment is an emotion powerless against the potency of sheer terror. That no matter how often you demonstrated the fraud behind these emails and ones exactly like them with different brands and new murder plots, still the emails kept coming. Perhaps you even flagged these relatives as junk mail. Important note to a core readership: no one in my family ever caused me to feel this way.

Snopes is the tireless and passive scold of the Internet, calmly assessing any and all madness regardless of provenance, and ensuring that the truth is told. It stands patiently in a corner of the Internet, a stationary Diogenes called into action primarily in moments of spite.

The offspring of a California couple with a penchant for urban folklore, the site originally focused on the sorts of nonsense mentioned above – rumors about people trying to give you free things or trying to rape you. As a result, that’s traditionally what was most common on the 25 Hottest Urban Legends page.

And then came Barack Obama.

As I write this, nearly a quarter of the hottest urban legends deal, in one form or another, with rumors disparaging the President. There’s the claim that a judge ordered Obama to prove his citizenship. The one about the size of Michelle’s staff. That the Fort Hood shooter was on Obama’s Homeland Security Task Force. The President didn’t salute at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. A list of unpatriotic actions regular American Joes noticed. That Obama introduced a Muslim stamp.

That last one is a two-fer for hot topics. Two other rumors on the list bear the fingerprints of the Christian Right: one relating anti-Muslim sentiment in Australia, another claiming that atheists are trying to ban religious television. And, of course, there’s an extensive, vitriolic letter disparaging Nancy Pelosi – which, unfortunately, is legit.

That nearly all of these rumors are debunked by the site is not the point. The point is that these are the “hottest” topics – the things that site visitors care the most about. What also matters is how certain misinformation is deliberately skewed to stain Obama’s reputation. The stamp, for example, was a function of the Postal Service, but Obama is included to further link him to the Muslim faith. Likewise the Fort Hood shooter – he attended Homeland Security seminars, but under Bush.

A natural question, of course, is how these grass roots smears on the President stack up against his Polar opposite (capital intended). In a search of the site, which turns up only mentions of the name, “Obama” appears 196 times, “Palin,” 24. The name “Bush”, by contrast, which refers to either of the preceding Presidents, appears 338 times. (At his current pace, Obama will have nearly 500 rumors on the site by the end of his first term, if you figure that his 196 appeared in 2008 and 2009.)

The next argument from one seeking to diminish the impact of these numbers, then, might be to question why the site is so eager to defend the President – to ask, in essence, if it is biased. Wikipedia has the response:

Snopes receives more complaints that it is too liberal than that it is too conservative, but insists that it applies the same debunking standards to all political stories. FactCheck reviewed a sample of Snopes’ responses to political rumors regarding George W. Bush, Sarah Palin and Barack Obama, and found them to be free from bias in all cases. FactCheck noted that Barbara Mikkelson was a Canadian citizen (and thus unable to vote in American elections) and David Mikkelson was an independent who was once a registered Republican. “You’d be hard-pressed to find two more apolitical people,” David Mikkelson told them.

(The FactCheck piece is here.)

What is the takeaway? It’s hard to compare this Top 25 list with years gone by; among other reasons, Archive.org is blocked from indexing the site. It’s clear, though, that there is an enormous amount of interest in misinformation about the President. This comes as little surprise to observers of our national political discourse. But one can’t help but feel disheartened.

The silver lining is this: at least people are asking if these rumors are legit. At least people are wandering into the unloved, neglected portion of the web where Snopes lingers to see if that hard-to-believe story they’ve heard about the Commander-in-Chief is accurate. For what it’s worth, at least the stories are debunked.

It likely does little good. Even in the world of those who blindly loathe Barack Obama, terror outweighs the embarrassment of being wrong. There’s little recourse for any of us besides marking the purveyors of these dishonest, inaccurate claims as junk, and hoping they don’t pop back into sight.

Where’s the “Junk Mail” button on my TV remote, again?

George W. Bush, Michelle Obama, Philip Bump, President Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Snopes

m

196 Obama rumors in just one year. That’s quite amazing. These falsehoods saturate among ignorants. Thank god for Snopes.
Cecelia

“The next argument from one seeking to diminish the impact of these numbers, then, might be to question why the site is so eager to defend the President – to ask, in essence, if it is biased.”

Speaking of bias, THAT is an extremely biased way to characterize what is a logical inquiry into the point you are making and what should be a question that any journalist would ask.

Your particular answer is a non sequitur. It does not follow that the Snopes folks would be less likely to treat rumors about other political figures in an impartial manner, simply because they were assiduous champions of this president.

It does not follow that being a champion of a particular president makes one “political” or “ideological”. It was entirely possible that among Pres. Kennedy’s admirers, were those who were that simply because they were proud that he was the first Catholic president, or the youngest president to that date, etc.

The Snopes folks could well be particularly pleased and proud that our country has its first mixed-race president, or an especially elegant and good-looking presidential couple, etc and are particularly eager to set the record straight.

In order to answer the question you site above, you’re going to have to compare the relative importance of the rumors that the Snopes site has examined for Pres. Obama and contrast them with their work regarding other presidents.

Merely doing a quick search of the site, on only two issues that I could remember as having fueled a barrel of rumors about Pres. Bush and his administration (Blackwater and ’04 election malfeasance in Ohio) I could find nothing addressing either on the site.

There may be something there that I’ve overlooked, but that’s the sort of analysis you need in order to back your premise that Pres. Obama has been the subject of more rumors than other recent presidents.
http://www.uselessbeauty.com Vidiot

Why am I not surprised at the continuing gullibility of the wingnuts? You know, if you don’t like Barack Obama, there are certainly enough policy-related things to use as points of attack. But this kind of straw-man lying about him and credulously passing along things that don’t even pass the laugh test are largely what gives teabaggers a bad name.
Cecelia

huh Why would Snopes even need to expose rumors “that don’t even pass the laugh” test?
http://www.uselessbeauty.com Vidiot

Because the clueless and the gullible keep forwarding them around, forcing rational people to slowly and clearly debunk them.
Cecelia

Well, then we’ll chalk you up for believing that in defending the president from even the most obviously flawed rumors, the Snopes folks have gone above and beyond what they did for previous presidents.

Thus the number of debunkings on their site.
http://www.uselessbeauty.com Vidiot

I have no opinion, nor have I done any research, on whether the Snopes folks are treating Obama differently from previous presidents, and I said nothing of the case. Thanks for reading carefully, though.
http://www.sailrabbits.com Magister

@Cecelia: I really don’t think you can prove political bias because Snopes didn’t have anything on two rumors that you heard. One would think that somebody would have to ask them or a rumor would have to become widely reported before Snopes gets involved, so maybe they just never heard your two rumors.
Cecelia

Well, since Mr. Bump mentioned that point as being made by some people in his piece above, it was natural to assume that a suggestion that rumors about Obama were ridiculously simplistic, might in effect be bolstering this rationale for the high number of Snopes Obama rumor debunkings.
Cecelia

Magister,

I never made an argument that the Snopes site was politically biased. I made the argument that the whole question of political bias was specious in this matter.
http://www.sailrabbits.com Magister

@Cecelia: I apologize for misunderstanding your point, but I don’t actually see where Phillip claims that Obama is the most -rumored about President. In fact, he says that the site is fenced-off from archive.org, so that would make it difficult to prove.

I interpreted this post to be a good puff-piece on an admirable site, nothing more.
And, I found it very enjoyable.

As to why “Obama” comes up in a search more than “Palin”: Just this morning, I linked-out a study from Pew which found that President Obama has been the subject of 6,775 news stories thus far this year, while Sarah Palin is the 5th most popular subject at 362.

I’d say that not only is the sitting President the more important topic and the target of rumors from around the world, but he’s also understandably, the natural subject of more communication in every form.
Cecelia

Magister,

Then why would Mr. Bump make a comparison of Obama rumors vs. Bush rumors? Why would he then go on to anticipate and rebut an argument that would put that number into a different perspective?

“A natural question, of course, is how these grass roots smears on the President stack up against his Polar opposite (capital intended). In a search of the site, which turns up only mentions of the name, “Obama” appears 196 times, “Palin,” 24. The name “Bush”, by contrast, which refers to either of the preceding Presidents, appears 338 times. (At his current pace, Obama will have nearly 500 rumors on the site by the end of his first term, if you figure that his 196 appeared in 2008 and 2009.)

The next argument from one seeking to diminish the impact of these numbers, then, might be to question why the site is so eager to defend the President – to ask, in essence, if it is biased.”
http://www.sailrabbits.com Magister

@Cecelia: Whoops!

I realized after posting my comment that Mr. Bump’s extrapolation based on 196 does imply that Obama could become “most-rumored”, but that would only come to pass, if the rumors stay on the current trajectory and it also be a function of the expanding internet

Okay – I’ll shut-up now, but obviously that wasn’t my takeaway from the piece.
http://www.sailrabbits.com Magister

I realize that I promised to shut-up, but now that I have everyone to their respective floats for this evening’s holiday parade and have had a couple of minutes to relax, I see that I thoroughly embarrassed myself by not posting the comment I originally logged-in to say, but instead, I decided to participate in the ongoing conversation and ended-up way off-base.

Apologies and my kingdom for an edit button.

With that said, I had originally intended to say that Presidential rumors have most likely always been popular on the site because the President is a commonality and as is stated in the lede – A lot of people respond to emailers with a link to Snopes and the site is often cited in blog posts.

Not everyone gets an email about a pyramid scheme, but because we all have an interest in the President and all Presidents have ardent supporters, there’s more motivation to point people toward the truth.
http://www.pbump.net Philip Bump

I suppose I may as well comment here.

I’ve been visiting Snopes for years, and have never seen politics so over-represented in the hottest legends. I think that is a function of who the President is – though, since I can’t see old lists, I can’t prove that. So I presented what evidence I could, and am glad to see that it has prompted discussion.
Cecelia

Mr. Bump, don’t you think you should first attempt to see the old lists before you characterize an obvious consideration (albeit one that does challenge what is sheerly YOUR opinion) as having come from nothing other than a desire to minimize the issue?
http://www.sailrabbits.com Magister

@Phillip: The new and “different” of President Obama could be the reason that some rumors exist, but I think the popularity of the website and the proliferation of the rumors probably has more to do with having more web access, worldwide.

Back during Reagan’s time, I might have heard something about the guy, but I really could only tell the fellow down the street and maybe my mother. Back then, you couldn’t type out a rumor, send it to ten friends all over the globe, who would send it to ten others.

IOW: The internet itself has made it easier to spread rumors and because we’re only a few years into anything approaching universality, it makes sense that newer subjects would be the focus of more internet-based rumors.

Not to mention that because of this universality, snopes is available to more people and if you think about it, we have no idea how many of their clicks is coming from a remote village on the other side of the world.

It’s really been only the last few years that the ‘net has spread to every demographic in this country and to the far corners of the globe. Naturally, some internet users are more sophisticated than other users and one might imagine that the less sophisticated weren’t early adopters. The internet has become more widespread; Blogs use snopes to post “look at those idiots” kinds of things and the blogospere has really exploded in the past four or five years.

When Bush Jr. was new, considerably fewer people had access to the internet compared to today and when Clinton was new, the few of us who had access were running Veronica searches of the gophersphere(?) and Snopes didn’t exist, so I don’t know what anecdotal evidence from one website is likely to prove…

(Though again, I thought it was nice article)
Denoferth

At the
risk of becoming the butt of democratic name-calling I suggest you compare
Snopes’ coverage of Mr. Clinton verses President Obama. You will, I wager, find
them, not surprisingly, similar.