

Out of Osama's Death, A Fake Quotation is Born - AndrewMoffat
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/out-of-osamas-death-a-fake-quotation-is-born/238220/

======
tokenadult
The Mark Twain quotation that has been making the rounds today, "I've never
wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure" also
appears to be fake. (That is more to be expected, as Mark Twain is the
favorite attribution for newly made-up quotations in English.) I checked
Snopes for that one, but it's too new to be on Snopes, I think, and anyway
isn't in Google Books either. A response by one of my friends on Facebook to
today's flurry of quotes was this status message: "People believe anything
they read on the internet if it fits their preconceived notions." -- Thomas
Jefferson.

The Atlantic author did some reasonable checking for the purported King
quotation. "Searching Martin Luther King Jr. quote pages for the word "enemy"
does not turn up this quote, only things that probably wouldn't go over nearly
so well, like 'Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy to a
friend.' I'm pretty sure that this quote, too, is fake."

For a book-length work on tracing quotations, which I bought years ago, see
The Quote Sleuth.

[http://www.amazon.com/Quote-Sleuth-Manual-Tracer-
Quotations/...](http://www.amazon.com/Quote-Sleuth-Manual-Tracer-
Quotations/dp/0252016955)

~~~
woodall
I admit to posting that quote on my wall; for same. However, to try and make
up for it I did a bit of research. Clarence Darrow is quoted as saying: "I
have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."
Sounds a lot alike?

------
Tcepsa
Looks like most of it IS an MLK Jr. quote, just not the first sentence. See,
for example, [http://www.quotesstar.com/quotes/r/returning-hate-for-
hate-m...](http://www.quotesstar.com/quotes/r/returning-hate-for-hate-
multiplies-159261.html)

------
zacwest
Penn invented the quote, sort of.

First: <https://twitter.com/#!/pennjillette/status/65132242770464769>

Followup: <https://twitter.com/#!/pennjillette/status/65246380024807424>

~~~
famousactress
Further, he attributes this site:

[http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/23924.Martin_Luther_K...](http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/23924.Martin_Luther_King_Jr_)

[Edit] Sorry, no.. He retweets the attribution, and admits the full quote is
likely false.

[Edit] Further, here is the user who added this quote to the site.. Err, just
2 hours ago. <http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5286778-tatyana>

------
huntero
Google allows you to search up to a certain date. The results up to April 30th
remove much of this latest "resurgence" of the quote, but it's still pretty
much saturated with quotes about Bin Laden, a lot of the dates are just wrong
and confusing Google.

I still don't see anything definitive attributing the quote to MLK

<http://bit.ly/kC6VIR> <\- Google Search to April 30th.

------
MaxGabriel
Interesting, but extremely shallow work by the author. You checked some quote
sites? That's the extent of the research done for this piece? Not taking into
account the idea that they are maybe just misattributing it?

~~~
MaxGabriel
I don't understand why this comment was downvoted. The author, in the updated
post to this article, said "I was wrong."
[http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/anatomy-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/anatomy-
of-a-fake-quotation/238257/)

Unsurprisingly, it was not maliciously intended, it was just misattributed. As
McArdle acknowledges, a facebook user had posted the first sentence, followed
by the King quotation in quotations marks. When retweeted, the quotation marks
were dropped (apparently to fit Twitter's character limit, according to
McArdle).

You might think that its unfair criticism of an author for sharing a quick
thought on a blog, or for making a mistake. You would be wrong. This post by
McArdle is only one of many instances of her doing extremely poor
research/lying in her posts for the Atlantic. An MIT Prof has dedicated pages
upon pages to demonstrating how poor of a journalist McArdle is: "... the key
point is that McArdle makes a lot of stuff up, and hence is untrustworthy
across the board: why should you believe any argument from someone whom,
everytime you check closely, gets even the little stuff wrong — and I agree
with that."

and "It is now...simple prudence to assume that any fact she presents is, as
she puts it, “a hypothetical” unless footnoted and checked."

[http://inversesquare.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/its-not-
that-m...](http://inversesquare.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/its-not-that-mcardle-
cant-read-its-that-she-cant-wont-think-part-one/)

It should come as no surprise that McArdle has whole hosts of people, entire
websites _dedicated to her being fired_. To slack up on McArdle is to tolerate
shoddy journalism not based in the facts.

------
AndrewMoffat
These things are fascinating to me. They're like mind-viruses...hacking our
belief systems so effectively that they spread with amazing speed and ease,
and persist with incredible resilience.

~~~
jerf
You'ce going to love the word "meme", then.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme>

~~~
AndrewMoffat
I had no idea there was so much work on the subject. Thanks!

~~~
count
Astonishingly not mentioned on Wikipedia, is the novel "Snow Crash", which
deals with this _exactly_ as a 'mind virus'.

It's also a great work of science fiction in it's own right (predicting Second
Life, for example).

