Snopes' Liberal Political Agenda

From ripoffreport.com:

Perhaps you want to discover the origin of an urban legend or verify that the photo of a 45-pound cat someone emailed you isn't a doctored photo. Maybe you want to know if Proctor & Gamble's logo is really satanic. Snopes.com (hereafter “snopes") is good for verifying unimportant stuff like that, but don't count on them being “fair and balanced" when it comes to anything political or religious.

Although Snopes hasn't any political philosophy explicitly stated on the website, snopes' selectivity and analysis of political emails oozes with partisanship. Religious emails don't fare much better and typically get a liberal hatchet job. In a nutshell, although snopes has to reluctantly admit that most of the conservative political and religious emails are “true" as far as snopes can determine, there is always a caveat, disclaimer, footnote, or lengthy oratory explaining why everything from crime statistics to reports from Iraq must be viewed and understood through snopes' lens. Some examples and links follow:

An email made its way around the country recently showing a picture of John Kerry at an anti-war rally with Jane Fonda. If a picture is worth a thousand words, Snopes thinks ten thousand words is the only antidote to spinning this photo that Snopes had to admit was true. Indeed, Snopes has gone into high gear to rescue John Kerry from being associated with the extreme left. Snopes uses extensive quotes from Jane Fonda to demonstrate that John Kerry was not as much of a foaming at the mouth liberal as she herself was [is].

Snopes also quotes extensively from New York Times (and thought better perhaps of using their sources at Pravda and Granma) to prove what the “atmosphere" was like at these love-fests that Kerry participated in and spoke at. A small unexplained B&W photo appears on the right hand side of the screen depicting a cleaner-cut John Kerry being decorated in an apparent attempt to show he did in fact do something noteworthy and wasn't simply a hippie as depicted in the larger, color photo.

Snopes said the derogatory photo “purports" to show John Kerry, only to reluctantly admit in the next sentence that indeed the photo is real. Get your index finger and mouse ready to scroll down the pages and pages of voluminous material on Snopes beseeching you to ignore the photo and get to know the real John Kerry.

Snopes seems to have been exhausted by all the time it spent trying to exonerate Kerry that it lacked the energy to investigate a photo that is also real. In a photo depicting a soldier shaking hands with Hillary Clinton, the soldier crossed his fingers (visible in the photo) to memorialize his displease with being used in a photo-op by the hippie-turned-senator. Try crossing your finger right now the way the soldier did it in the photo. It's not a reflexive position and must have been deliberate on part of the soldier. Hillary made only one trip to see our troops, so it is not a Herculean task to track down the person who took the photo as well as the soldier in it.

Some more food for thought (all links removed by ripoffreport.com):
Verifies quotes from democrats were true but
goes on and on trying to defend democrats.

Attempts to speak to veracity of email urging boycott of Sean Penn and Tim Robbins' movies since they are Sadaam Hussein and Osama bin Laden sympathizers. Snopes says “still under investigation Nov 2003." I could wrap that investigation up in about 2 minutes. Those 2 are bona fide liberals and whackos (or is that redundant?)

You may have received this email yourself. It is an amazing and true litany of accomplishments of the US military in Iraq. Snopes can't seem to utter the words “it's true" so it gets a half green, half red light. It's truth is called into question by “an Iraqi citizen" A link to the criticism is provided, and just to prove to yourself how absurd it is, you should click on it.

A sample: the pro military email rightfully asserts one accomplishment as: the Iraqi judiciary is fully independent. The rebuttal to this fact: “We certainly hope so, but no one is sure about that yet." This invincible evidence seems to be enough to persuade snopes.com that the whole email is suspect and worthy of caution.

Another example: Email lists another accomplishment of the US military as: “All 22 universities and 43 technical institutes and colleges are open, as are nearly all primary and secondary schools." To which the best argument the detractor can come up with is:
“That's true. But every now and then, a school gets a warning about a bomb, so many parents are afraid to send their kids to schools, and when they do so, they will be deeply worried." Again this vague and fuzzy “counter argument" is flawless logic and enough to satisfy the good people at snopes.com that the whole email is dubious and, to be on the safe side, the hapless visitor to snopes.com should remain anti-war and believe that nothing has been accomplished in Iraq. Visit snopes.com for yourself to really laugh out loud. I simply can't do it justice here.

A very similar email went around with quotes from leading Democrats attesting to their belief that Sadaam Hussein did in fact have WMD. Snopes naturally had to admit the quotes were true, but always with the caveat, quickly opined that, “some of the quotes are truncated, and context is provided for none of them." Please! We've all gotten emails like this. You use a quote to get a point across. You can't make people on your email forward list sift 35 pages of Medeline Albright in order to put her quote “in context" Just another example of snopes' “bend-over-backwards" policy to rescue Democrats from their own words.

Meanwhile, don't expect an snopes investigation to proceed much further, snopes is busy crafting explanations for Kerry's $25 million worth of real estate which is one of the biggest whoppers this web site unashamedly pulls.

Like baptism, being a liberal cleanses you from all stain in the mind of snopes. Former KKK member Sen. Robert Byrd got just such a catharsis and gets an open mic on snopes. Email snopes was “investigating" was “Senator Robert Byrd delivered a fiery floor speech condemning President Bush's calls for military action against Iraq." Was it true? Sure was, says snopes, which then proceeds to reproduce the whole speech (for the 9 people in America who want to read it). Instead of a caveat, such as ALL conservative emails get as a matter of course from Snopes, snopes can't contain itself and adds it's own 2 cents, “[Byrd's] eloquence in putting forth his opinions and arguments on this issue has captivated many like-minded members of the anti-war movement." I see a hyperlink to (link removed) coming any day now.

Many emails are forwards from either soldiers, judges, or military officers who are or were in Iraq. They all have the individual's name, hometown etc. in the email. Sue enough, snopes investigates and finds out the person exists and the email is true, but, never quite happy, snopes adds the disclaimer: “although true, the email resembles another email sent by someone else" etc. The reader is left to conclude that plagiarism or some form of falsification has occurred. Nonsense. With thousands of our servicemen and civilians in Iraq, many are bound to witness the same events or accomplishments and report on them individually. Snopes needs a basic course on hermeneutics.

Ron
Springfield, Illinois
U.S.A.


Thanks to ripoffreport.com

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

boo hoo, my guy didn't win. It must be the media.

Anonymous said...

You hit the nail on the head, unfortunately, Snopes is not the only one. Social networking sites are increasingly showing their "Left" side. I did a series on YouTube and Newsvine about their blatant banning of conservative content videos and articles. Check it out if you get a chance. This is part one, you can access the others from there.
http://www.examiner.com/x-1344-Birmingham-Community-Examiner~y2009m1d22-You-Tube-banned-videos-is-it-censorship

Anonymous said...

I also dugg this one.

Anonymous said...

jesus christ, you need an editor ... i was interested to read this story but bailed after paragraph 2. needs to be seriously tightened to half its current length.

Nifty Nick said...

"jesus christ, you need an editor ..." You need a proofreader. I didn't write the article, as I clearly indicated at the begining and the end of the post.

Anonymous said...

When the majority of decent, hard-working American citizens are 'left'... doesn't that make 'left' the new 'center'?

Nifty Nick said...

"When the majority of decent, hard-working American citizens are 'left'... doesn't that make 'left' the new 'center'?"

No. First, that isn't the case. An Obama win is an indication of dissatisfaction, not ideology shift. Second, a majority doesn't shift the middle, that would disregard the minority. The center is the ground between two differing ideological views.

Jen said...

My god, why on Earth does everything have to have a political agenda?

mohunter said...

I think you people are all a bunch of inbred little children, looking for someone else to throw rocks at. Why can't you all just play nice and get along? Left side, Right side it really doesn't matter. One guy wants to drag us kicking and screaming into the New Socialist Republic of North America (aka. NWO) and the other guys just want to get us all blown to hell. Either way we are screwed, so we just as well enjoy the ride and try to get along. It will be a much more peacful decent to the pits of hades if everybody isn't fighting with each other along the way.

Nifty Nick said...

Uhhh... If you want to get along so bad, why are you calling us "inbred little children?" Also, I don't know about you, but I would rather fight against the decent to hell, and prevent that fate. But if sitting on the sidelines, singing cum bi ya is good for you, then have at it. I'll fight the commie bastards while you take a nap in your hammock.

Kristopher said...

I'm not sure I understand your argument that based on this article http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/kerry.asp Snopes.com is displaying a Liberal Bias. At the very top in bold green lettering, it states the photograph is true. It then goes on to explain where the photo came form and what the subjects of the photo have to say about it. It also includes an article from the New York Times Sept 8, 1970 describing the rally.

It is true that the quote from Jane Fonda distancing her self from Senator Kerry does not address the authenticity of the photo, so it isn’t necessary. But you don’t provide any evidence that there is more of a connection there. In essence the worst that Snopes.com can be accused of is “Cherry Picking” their facts, motivated by a desire to limit the impact of the photo. Anyone that reads the snopes.com article, however and then comes here seeking evidence that the photo is more damning than Snopes.com would have you believe is going to be disappointed.

Anonymous said...

snopes.com hasn't been blacklisted yet by the white house like Fox and others, thus, it supports a liberal view and is selective of what it wants its readers to view.

Regina said...

I had noticed snopes biases myself quite a while back. I know that conservatives can be biased but I've never seen so much underhandedness as what is being practiced now by the liberal media.
It's really disheartening. I read something else on snopes today and I just had to google "snopes liberal" just to see how many others had noticed it. I found the article to be very interesting and I believe it's accurate from what I've seen myself.
Sure enough too, there's the comments on here from people making fun and saying silly, mean stuff like "boo-hoo, my guy didn't win, it must be the media."
I feel like I'm back in gradeschool and it's the popular kids who are running everything even though everybody knows that they are a stuck-up, back-stabbing bunch who are struck on themselves. Only the bad thing is, this is not just a nightmare, it's real life and they're fighting real dirty.

Anonymous said...

I simply love that the conservatives actually believe Obama is a liberal, if that was the case then congress would be walking all over the Republicans and passing actual liberal bills not these watered down terrible wastes of time and money.

Anonymous said...

Obama IS a liberal. The majority of Dems in Congress are not.

Anonymous said...

Hopefully, by now, most of the people out there that have come across this post have seen that sites like the New York Times, Fox News, Wikipedia and others that have been used as references for Snopes liberal agenda have come out and publicly stated that news stories created by them to debunk or vilify Snopes were in fact not created by them and their sites have created pages for people to refer to when trying debunk this latest attack on their integrity.

none said...

Snopes posts their sources for review.
Where are the "sources" for this rambling diatribe of a post? If these Snopes posts are so egregious, what is wrong with linking to them as well as the original emails so that one may do their own comparison?


For some reason conservative knuckle-draggers prefer the medium of email. As if that weren't bad enough, these same emails lie about things that are ridiculously easy to verify. Lastly these (mostly) conservative idiots believe it....because email forwards never lie.


I'm glad snopes.com is around. It makes my day to hit the "reply-to-all" button and in one swoop display to all the sender's friends and family just how f*cked in the head they really are.


What can I say, stomping on the views of non-thinking Rush listeners and Fox News viewers has much in common with making fun of those with down's syndrome: it feels wrong, but it's just so much fun.

Unknown said...

I, too, have noticed a very decidedly liberal vein permeating Snopes' verifications. The funny thing is, I wasn't looking for it, nor did I ever even dream that it was anything other than a fact verification website. It's been a while, but an email went around about something this guy shouted during a McCain speech (I can't exactly remember what it was at the moment - racist, or something), but it was very distinct, and Snopes not only misquoted it, but downplayed it considerably.

Unknown said...

@ Doubledown - the links were removed. Says it plainly...
Secondly, lumping all conservatives together as knuckle-draggers makes you as ignorant as you contend that they are.
And your blanket statement that these so-called knuckledraggers "prefer the medium of email" belies your ignorance yet further.
There are idiots in both the major parties, yourself included. Non-thinking Rush listeners are no better than non-thinking Maher listeners.
Besides, if it weren't for those knuckle-draggers, you'd be sitting your sissy ass in some communist section of the Russian Federation of America right now. That, or we'd all be speaking Spanish.
I'm no Reagan worshipper (I'm libertarian), but I recognize his role in the ending of the Cold War. No, boy, YOU need to wake up and think. We need educators and peach pickers, bankers and construction workers, and yes, politicians with differing points of view to keep this country great. What we do not need, however, is close-minded little pussies who think they're the only educated people around. I have two master's degrees. Y usted?

Carl said...

I found this after searching Snopes Liberal after checking another email and once more being astounded bu the obvious liberal bias and inability of admitting this as fact (snopes called a mix even after admitting the truth of the original post and rebuttal which later became the email in question).
Snopes could not resist adding their 2 cents which was quite obviously off base and a child could see this.
What is so sad is all snopes need to do is simply admit their bias and that is all fine (Limbaugh admits his bias, as he does not pretend to be a neutral view, unlike snopes).

See: Snopes; "New Immigrants"

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