It must be annoying to be Penn Jillette right now — not that much mind you. He's wicked hilarious, probably has lots of money and he can get stuff off high shelves.
But, dang! As a smart guy who's built a successful second career being a hardcore skeptic, it's got to be irritating getting blamed for tweeting the faux Martin Luther King Jr. quote following the death of Osama bin Laden, one destined for viral infamy. You know, this one:
"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Confounded Internets! Always making people believe stuff that isn't true. How long must we fight before we can get your mom to bookmark Snopes — let alone Penn Jillette, co-host of Showtime's chicanery-busting show "Bullsh*t"?
Mind you, Jillette is just one guy out of jillions — albeit a guy with 1.6 million Twitter followers — who retweeted that sentence actually written by Jessica Dovey, a 24-year-old English teacher in Japan and posted to her Facebook profile right next to an actual quote from King's book, "Strength to Love."
This is what Dovey posted, quotation marks and all:
I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." MLK Jr.
Somewhere in the cut n' paste, quotations were lost, the first sentence retweeted, people got suspicious and Jillette got blamed — even though he did correct himself via Twitter, the same outlet he used to first send the erroneous quote.
Many overly outraged by this error were quick to blame the gullible, newfangled InterWeb for another quote many found appropriate to the news about bin Laden, one that was immediately misattributed to American's No. 1 quote machine, Mark Twain:
"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."
As others were quick to point out, that was said — pretty much — by Clarence Darrow of Scopes Monkey Trial fame, though as CNN's Doug Ross observes, it's quite possibly a Darrow/Twain mashup:
"I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction," were Darrow's precise words.
Meanwhile, Twain was all, "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
Alas, if there's even one person out there (and there's way more than that) that still believes Bill Gates is going to email him or her a bunch of money from a company Gates doesn't even work for anymore, we will keep accidentally on purpose making stuff up that we will then proceed to believe.
But we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves, as the Atlantic's Megan McArdle sagely points out in her excellent piece "Anatomy of a Fake Quote":
We become invested in these quotes because they say something important about us — and they let us feel that those emotions were shared by great figures in history. We naturally search for reasons that they could have said it — that they could have felt like us — rather than looking for reasons to disbelieve. If we'd put the same moving words in Hitler's mouth, everyone would have been a lot more skeptical. But while this might be a lesson about the need to be skeptical, I don't think there's anything stupid about wanting to be more like Dr. King.
What's more, we've been making up quotes long before Al Gore invented the Internet. (Get it?!)
We even screw up quotes from made-up situations. Just as Cary Grant never said "Judy! Judy! Judy!" in any film and Humphrey Bogart's brooding Rick didnt' whine, "Play it again, Sam," Sherlock Holmes, pompous fictional character that he is, never told his companion, "Elementary, my dear Watson."
This is exactly why we need sites such as Snopes.com and shows such as Penn & Teller's "Bullsh*t." Which is why Jillette gets a mulligan, and the rest of you need to bookmark Snopes.
Seriously, what are you waiting for?
More on the annoying way we live now:
- Malware alert: Bin Laden death photos? Stay away
- NSFW: Hitler reacts to bin Laden news
- Bin Laden's death unites Internet town square
- Facebook: Cthulhu hat a bold choice for royal wedding
Helen A.S. Popkin only recently learned that "gullible" is not in the dictionary. Join her on Twitter and Facebook, won't you?