“A Little Bit of Truth” Before I Lie To You

Social media has ushered in this age of “Truth Telling.” Your friend or family member who in person would rather talk about their kid or the latest episode of the Real Housewives of Milwaukee, feels an absolute compulsion to share a political quote or lecture from a famous person the moment they log online. The problem is, these armchair pundits aren’t very good at doing their due diligence.

Almost every day, I get online, click over to Facebook and see someone’s newest political post. I have friends who support Same Sex Marriage and Women’s Rights, as well as friends who are anti-Monsanto and pro-Green Initiatives. On the opposite side, there are posts about the right to own guns and how the welfare state is killing America. I see people expressing opinions as far right as Pat Buchanan and as far left as Arianna Huffington, usually one right after the other.

When expressed in thoughtful, non-incendiary ways, most political opinions don’t bother me. Even views that stand in absolute opposition to my own can have merit as long as the reasoning and thought that brought a person to it is clear. I might disagree with someone’s reasoning or interpretation of the facts, but being able to see how a person came to their conclusions is helpful and informative.

What annoys me most, is when someone stakes out a position and props up their argument with a lie. This can come in many forms. It can be Andrew Wakefield publishing a fraudulent study to claim vaccines cause autism, or the whole Intelligent Design movement’s reliance on bad science and public ignorance.

But in day-to-day life, most lies are more innocent, if no less damning. Frequently I see someone post a link or picture with a quote and they preface it with a comment like, “A Little Bit of Truth.” It’s ironic, because usually the first thing that follows is a lie.

Ben Franklin, Bill Cosby, Ben Stein, Kurt Vonnegut, and Thomas Jefferson are just a few of the countless historical figures and celebrities who have been purported to say something that they never did. It seems, when mixed with the right quote, almost everyone who has ever lived agrees with you.

Some of these ‘attributions’ are harmless. Vonnegut is frequently cited as the writer of the famous “Wear Sunscreen” commencement speech, when it was actually an essay written by columnist Mary Schmich for the Chicago Tribune. No one knows who Mary Schmich is, everybody has heard of Vonnegut, so attribute this sweet, pithy essay to him and people are more likely to pay attention to it. There’s nothing in the article that is particularly political or controversial. It’s just a bunch of good-to-benign advice.

Other quotes and speeches that get falsely tagged to someone famous are usually far more contentious:

• Bill Cosby’s well circulated “I’m 83 and I’m Tired” letter? A lie.
• Ben Stein’s “Confessions For the Holidays” rant? Partly true quotes, but largely a mishmash of thoughts added on the end so as to make a more pointed political argument.
• Did you hear how Hitler used gun control to maintain power and conquer Europe? Well, that’s a lie, too.

There are dozens of these that circulate throughout the year and pop-up just when someone needs them to make a political point. If there’s any one man who should be rolling in his grave, it’s Thomas Jefferson who apparently was simultaneously in support of and opposed to every single political issue, including issues that didn’t even exist in his day.

If something appears online in a neatly formatted graphic with a picture of a famous person next to it, my Spidey-sense goes off. If something is true, why should it matter who said it?

The reason these quotes and speeches get attributed to well-recognized figures is because without the apparent endorsement of someone famous, no one would give a second thought to the angry rant of your dad’s army buddy or the local pastor. We all have opinions, some more eloquently expressed than others. We want our beliefs to appear in the most enticing, easily-digestible way possible, so when someone provides us a nicely arranged block of quotes, we latch onto them.

You might ask: What’s so wrong with misattributing a quote as long as what is being said is true?

Firstly, why should I trust anything you say if the first thing out of your mouth is a lie? I’m a firm believer that if you’ve been proven to be a liar in the past, you’ve lost your right to be trusted in the future. All claims on your part, no matter how small, must be supported by substantial proof.

And secondly, if the person misattributing the quote doesn’t feel like it can stand on its own merits, why should I? In debates, there are two kinds of truths: Facts, and interpretations of reality. Facts don’t need quotes or fancy lettering, they just are. Interpretations of reality, on the other hand, can run the spectrum from being almost as reliable as fact (the Theory of Evolution) to slightly better than fantasy (the Truthers).

If your interpretation of reality isn’t convincing anyone, what can you do? Assign your belief to someone else.

This sort of ‘quote lying’ is just a version of the classic logical fallacy, argumentum ad auctoritatem, or Argument from Authority. If the point of view can’t stand on its own, then just claim it is the opinion of someone more respected and/or knowledgeable and it will suddenly have more substantial weight.

Not everyone who reposts and shares these misattributions is lying, they’ve just been duped. People tend to implicitly trust those who agree with them, so if a friend posts this ‘famous quote’, they assume it’s true and pass it along. But somewhere down the line, if it were possible to trace most of these misquotes back to their origins, we would find the originator, the liar.

We have a responsibility to be more thoughtful and critical in our public discourse, and not just when we are critiquing the opposition. If we aren’t willing to fact-check ourselves and make sure that our opinions are based on truth, why should anyone, especially the opposition, listen to us?

It doesn’t matter if you’re a member of the Democrats or Republicans, Tea Party or Occupy, whether you’re an atheist or a Christian, an MRA or a feminist. If reality is standing in the way of your otherwise profound argument, maybe your argument isn’t all that profound after all.

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