and i'm *still* having trouble getting to snopes, including your link below (connection errors). no idea why. maybe their servers are bogged down with people looking for gordon sinclair. ;-)
j
> From: kelley <kwalker2 at gte.net>
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 15:10:18 -0400
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com, <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
> Subject: You've Been Glurged (Re: gordon sinclair: hoax? no...)
>
> At 01:19 PM 9/13/01 -0500, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>> nope, imo not tring to cash in, again. i think it's americans desperate for
>> foreigners to say that we're ok reaching back thirty years to find someone
>> to say it.
>
> 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/sincla
> ir.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.
>
> <...>
>