Sometimes you just don't know who to believe.
For the last month, I've been working on a drawing of Abraham Lincoln. He appealed to me as a drawing subject because of his interesting face, but also because I've always held him up in my mind as a hero. I admired his humble beginnings (raised in a log cabin), his reputation for honesty (doing pro bono work as a lawyer), and his courageous stand for what he considered the truth.
So I've been reading about his life. And I've been finding some strange articles, books and documentaries. People with axes to grind are accusing the Great Emancipator of being a racist. Some homosexuals are portraying him as gay because he slept in the same room with a man, something that was common at the time. Next thing you know, I'll be reading in Martha Stewart's Living that he was secretly a fabulous interior decorator who just never had the opportunity to exercise his repressed talent in matching wallpaper to couch cushions!
I recently found this Geico commercial on YouTube utilizing the reputation Abraham Lincoln had for honesty: It's worth a chuckle, but the comments posted after it where what interested me. Some people actually wondered if this was vintage footage.
When we rush to believe something negative about someone, and then repeat it without checking if it is true or not, then we participate in the slander.
We have this incredible ability to mass communicate now, but we have to remember that "with great power comes great responsibility." For me, this means being extra careful before I blog about something, to try to make sure I've got my facts as straight as I can. But another part of this is the responsibility that each one of us has to care for each other, to protect each other's back.
There are lots of falsified claims floating around out there, particularly concerning those in history who cannot rise up to defend themselves. We must rise up to defend them. The unscrupulous may believe that today, those long-deceased will easily become pawns in some modern culture war, but all the original documents (diaries, letters, primary sources) are available for anyone (who has access to a computer) to consider. The biographer is simply offering an opinion on those public facts. Blindly listening to and accepting their opinion is akin to visiting the Grand Canyon and then asking a stranger to describe what it looks like instead of looking with my own eyes.
When I was a kid, fact-checking was difficult. I either had to go to a library and check out a book in order to find the truth, or I had to find an expert and ask them. It may have taken days, weeks or even months to get the answers to questions, especially if someone didn't want me to know the answer. But now we can check anything at a moment's notice.
When was the first petroleum well drilled? Look it up. What year was Mark Twain born? Google it. What is the chemical composition of cholesterol? Check out the Wikipedia article. If you need more detailed information, it only takes a few minutes longer to look up doctoral dissertations and scholarly papers on almost any topic under the sun. What did George Washington really think? Check out his letters in the Library of Congress website. They're scanned in in his own handwriting.
OK, I'm stepping off my soapbox now. But before you believe all the "new" information out there, I urge you to do a little research. Understand though that the search for knowledge is addicting.
For the last month, I've been working on a drawing of Abraham Lincoln. He appealed to me as a drawing subject because of his interesting face, but also because I've always held him up in my mind as a hero. I admired his humble beginnings (raised in a log cabin), his reputation for honesty (doing pro bono work as a lawyer), and his courageous stand for what he considered the truth.
So I've been reading about his life. And I've been finding some strange articles, books and documentaries. People with axes to grind are accusing the Great Emancipator of being a racist. Some homosexuals are portraying him as gay because he slept in the same room with a man, something that was common at the time. Next thing you know, I'll be reading in Martha Stewart's Living that he was secretly a fabulous interior decorator who just never had the opportunity to exercise his repressed talent in matching wallpaper to couch cushions!
I recently found this Geico commercial on YouTube utilizing the reputation Abraham Lincoln had for honesty: It's worth a chuckle, but the comments posted after it where what interested me. Some people actually wondered if this was vintage footage.
When we rush to believe something negative about someone, and then repeat it without checking if it is true or not, then we participate in the slander.
We have this incredible ability to mass communicate now, but we have to remember that "with great power comes great responsibility." For me, this means being extra careful before I blog about something, to try to make sure I've got my facts as straight as I can. But another part of this is the responsibility that each one of us has to care for each other, to protect each other's back.
There are lots of falsified claims floating around out there, particularly concerning those in history who cannot rise up to defend themselves. We must rise up to defend them. The unscrupulous may believe that today, those long-deceased will easily become pawns in some modern culture war, but all the original documents (diaries, letters, primary sources) are available for anyone (who has access to a computer) to consider. The biographer is simply offering an opinion on those public facts. Blindly listening to and accepting their opinion is akin to visiting the Grand Canyon and then asking a stranger to describe what it looks like instead of looking with my own eyes.
When I was a kid, fact-checking was difficult. I either had to go to a library and check out a book in order to find the truth, or I had to find an expert and ask them. It may have taken days, weeks or even months to get the answers to questions, especially if someone didn't want me to know the answer. But now we can check anything at a moment's notice.
When was the first petroleum well drilled? Look it up. What year was Mark Twain born? Google it. What is the chemical composition of cholesterol? Check out the Wikipedia article. If you need more detailed information, it only takes a few minutes longer to look up doctoral dissertations and scholarly papers on almost any topic under the sun. What did George Washington really think? Check out his letters in the Library of Congress website. They're scanned in in his own handwriting.
OK, I'm stepping off my soapbox now. But before you believe all the "new" information out there, I urge you to do a little research. Understand though that the search for knowledge is addicting.
So true!
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