Kind of interesting, after all this talk about how the internet or some such is making people "more skeptical than ever" that quite a large number of people swallow fake quotes and a fake story hook, line, and sinker, without even bothering to check the source . . . as if anything predicated with an internet URL "link" is automatically credible, eh?

So here's a quick lesson, a "teaching moment" as the kids call it these days. Something that's served me well over the years:

1. Check the source, the citation, the "link" or whatever, and

2. If it is not from the The Wall Street Journal, then automatically dismiss the information as false until further notice.

3. If it IS from The Wall Street Journal, then it may be genuine, but try to verify against other sources, especially the New York Times and Washington Post.

4. BOTTOM LINE: Any information not found in the Wall St Journal, New York Times, or Washington Post is almost certainly 100% b.s.

The sad thing is some of the people on that thread probably thought, "Well, that's still something he might have said!" (Which shows a fundamental, perhaps even willing misunderstanding of a Christian man and his values).

As someone who works in the news industry, I can attest that an awful lot of legitimate news stories are b.s. as well, in one way or another. Not in the sense that it's satire that someone just made up, but in the sense that the corporate media always has an agenda beyond simply telling truth. The information in news stories might be accurate (though it often is not) but it's all about how that information is framed and what information and perspectives are intentionally left out. What needs to be understood is that the main role of so-called "legitimate" corporate media is to reinforce the status qou in one way or another, either by reassuring people that everything that happens is normal and can't be legitimately challenged, or by encouraging participation in the system (and discouraging the opposite). Often the very nature of "objective" journalism plays into this, in the sense that whatever the "sides" of the story are must be artificially presented equally (except when it's convenient to discredit a side that is contrary to an establishment worldview). "Objective" journalism promotes a kind of false equivalence between things that may in fact not be equally right.

What I'm getting at is that just because a story is in the WSJ, that doesn't mean you should believe it automatically, or that you shouldn't question their perspective.