WCMessenger.com: We need to break the chain of inaccurate e-mails

Chain letters have been with us a long time. Now they come at us from every direction on the Internet. I've never been superstitious nor one who relied on something approaching ritualism (and not really holy) to bring luck. To me, chain letters belong in the trash.

Many of the "snail mail" letters of old were based on acquiring money. You know, "send this to 24 of your closest friends within 24 hours and you'll get $24,000 in return." Then, the U.S. Postal Service decided that such chain letters constituted something of a "chance" for participants with little hope for the implied huge success, and banned them.

Those snail mail folks only managed to slow chain letters but, for the most part, eliminated those promising financial gain. So chain letters took on a new form - happiness, success, passes through the Pearly Gates and other nebulous promises that didn't break the "chance" descriptions from the Postal Service.

Then, along came the Internet and a whole new chain letter broadside. With few legal ramifications, big promises began to rain down on us once again.

However, a brand new e-mail twist visits no small amount of angst upon this new communication and information tool of the masses - the three "P's" of patriotism, politics and polarization, fields not mutually exclusive.

The promises of "chain letters" suddenly changed to something akin to threats or, at best, accusations and admonishments. We're now besieged with material, a great deal of it unfounded statements propagated as truth about wars, political races and, yes, money and finance. All of it has a political flavor.

I love the ones about "don't be a traitor, support our troops." The implication, of course, is that if you oppose the war in Iraq and urge bringing our young soldiers home so more of them won't be killed, you must be a traitor.

That of course is aimed at throwing off the opposition to a war which many opponents feel was based on false intelligence reports of weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi support of terrorists.

Our e-mail inboxes are filled to overflowing with messages of "patriotism" and "support" that we are to pass on to a dozen or so of our acquaintances in order to "save our troops."

One that really piqued my negative interest recently had to do with education and "radical Muslims."

And, yes, there are radical Muslims (as opposed to peaceful Muslims, the vast majority) who are devoted to the destruction of Jews and Christians. We must defeat the radical Muslim effort.

The e-mail called for me, and all of you, to rise up in support of Judaism and Christianity because the UK (United Kingdom, Britain, England or whatever you want to call the Brits' country) had banned teaching the Holocaust in all their schools because they did not want to offend the Muslims (the most radical of which say the Holocaust never happened). A little research found that ONE school's history department in ONE town in the northern "UK" had decided not to teach about the Holocaust for whatever reason. Further investigation revealed that the "rumor" began in September 2007 as the University of Kentucky (UK) banning the teaching of the Holocaust. The university quickly issued a press release pointing out that they did indeed teach the Holocaust history as a separate course. Then, the rumor switched to that other "UK."

The person who forwarded the e-mail to me is a great guy who is a kind, loving person who has a deep faith and strong patriotism. He just accepted the message as something about which patriots should be concerned and that they should pass the message around as a way of combating the "movement."

That, it seems to me, is the whole premise of a lot of today's chain letter e-mail - taking advantage of well-meaning, caring, patriotic people who blindly accept such disturbing information.

Being a journalist and a history buff, someone trained in checking out and verifying information, I knew a place to get an accurate report on that "rumor" or "urban legend."

Snopes.com had the correct information regarding the Muslim/Holocaust rumor. Snopes is the most accurate source I know of for tracking down "rumors" and "urban legends." The Snopes Web site is run by a family tired of all the inaccuracies on the Internet.

They promise to exhaust all sources to verify or disprove information, regardless of the aim of the message.

Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editor-publisher. He can be reached by e-mail at wwebb@wildblue.net