first, sinclair died in 1984. see cached google link below. i could find nothing in the search engines that crawl news stories. (daypop.com and moreover.com) it's a hoax b/c of prefatory comments, to wit:
>This, from a Canadian newspaper, is worth sharing.
it's not in a Canadian newspaper, to my knowledge. Emails that don't source are _always_ suspect. (i occ send stuff here, unsourced. that's b/c they're from haxor underground or from people who don't want their email address logged on to archives.)
>America: The Good Neighbor.
>
>Widespread but only partial news coverage was given recently to a
>remarkable editorial broadcast from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair,
OOOOPS a contradiction! now it's been broadcast. in lacanian speak: slippage! :) (see, i'm actually a fan, and love the eclecticism, just critical jeff)
Information on Gordon Sinclair's pro-American editorial, including a RealAudio link -- http://www.snopes2.com/quotes/sinclair.htm
google archives ( i love google!)
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:k5i6_XkXgi8:www.snopes2.com/quotes/sinclair.htm+sinclair+%22questionable+quotes%22&hl=en
>a
>Canadian television commentator. What follows is the full text of his
>trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional Record:
well, it ain't in recent congressional record. it may be somewhere but again, what this thing is doing is referencing something official sounding in order to authorize what it says so that people will unthinkingly pass it along. was there malice behind this? probably not, since most don't start as malicious. still, someday i'd like to hunt down one of these people and ask what is on their mind, if they have one.
something i'm working on now:
According to Barbara Mikkelson Internet hoaxes and urban legends often begin as misheard news stories. They are then "transmuted and then embellished by every recipient. What someone thought they heard becomes 'fact,' and there is a least a faint aura of plausibility. Nowadays, it takes no effort. It arrives already packaged and ready to go you just send it off to 20 of your friends.''
A good example is that of the "dying child" hoax: for every e-mail forwarded, the child will receive a donation of a few cents. The American Cancer Society was besieged by inquiries about one such child, "Jessica Mydeck." The girl, however, never existed. Generosity on the Internet can certainly have negative unintended consequences as thousands of individual decisions are made each day on the basis of "it can't hurt" thinking. In fact, it can hurt: The American Cancer Society spent inordinate amounts of money and time dispelling the rumor. Surely it was energy better spent on other tasks.
------------------------------------------------- The telephone: speech without walls. The phonograph: music without walls. The photograph: museum without walls. The electric light: space without walls. The movie, radio and TV: classroom without walls. - Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media ----------------------------------------
You've Been Glurged!
Ingredients: 2 cups of chicken soup 1 cup of sugar
1. Pour two cups of chicken soup (homemade or canned) into a container. 2. Add 1 cup of sugar. 3. Stir. 4. PASS IT ON TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!
Yuck!
That was the effect Barbara Mikkelson of Snopes.com hoped for when she described a glurge as the combination of chicken soup and a cup of sugar.
What's a glurge? According to Mikkelson, it is the moniker bequeathed to a certain subset of "inspirational story" e-mails sent by generous, kindly denizens of the Internt. The message they convey is warm and fuzzy, feel good all over. Chicken soup for the soul, as they say: "It's supposed to be a method of delivering a remedy for what ails you by adding sweetening to make the cure more appealing, but the result is more often a sickly-sweet concoction that induces hyperglycemic fits. "
But glurges, for some people, have a bitter aftertaste. They typically encourage the reader to pass the message on in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Some people want to be associated with the 'warm fuzzies' conveyed in the mail and feel others need the inspirational message. Still other glurges outright exhort the recipient to forward the message suggested that those who don't will suffer some undisclosed retaliation or bad luck, while those who do will be blessed by Lady Fortuna.
Identifying Glurges:
A glurge has at least three different parts:
¨ The Hook captures your attention with an appeal to your emotions or to fear. ¨ The Threat in which the hoax author outlines the unfortunate consequences that might befall the reader. ¨ The Request is the heart of the chain letter, without which it cannot survive. It tells you to pass copies of the letter along to other people in order to avoid the bad things that may happen. A chain letter cannot continue to exist without The Request to keep passing it on.
Separating fact from fiction isn't always easy to do. It's especially difficult when you aren't familiar with the subject matter. It's also difficult when you feel strongly about a topic.
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