From Joelle Stepien Bailard on Facebook on 10/5, passing on material from Tony Michaels’s Facebook page (“The Tony Michaels Podcast: Considered ‘The Rush Limbaugh of the Left’”), also from 10/5:
A Tony Michaels fabrication (see below)
Critique (based on my FB response). Tony Michaels bills himself as “the Rush Limbaugh of the Left”, so some of us will be inclined to hear what he has to say, but there’s no reason to think he knows much about the texts he affects to be quoting from. 18th-century texts — even the relatively plain and direct writing of Benjamin Franklin — show a diction, style, and rhetoric wildly different from modern writing.
In this case, this citation (with the bad guy ‘the villain’ in it) could not possibly have come from Ben Franklin; the OED in 2007 has this to say about the usage:
colloquial (originally U.S.). (Usually with the) a villain or enemy, esp. in a film or other work of fiction (in explicit or implicit contrast with good guy n.).
And it has as its first cite, from 1932:
There’s the routine story about the bad guys and the good guys and the horse that jumps Devil’s Gulch and all the rest of it.
— a passage that suggests the usage was already common in speech for a while before this example appeared in print. But the OED has the noun guy ‘a man, a boy, a fellow; a person’ only back to the late 19th century, so there’s no way we can put the bad guy in Franklin’s mouth, much less his pen.
If there’s a real quote out there, it would have Franklin writing something like the malevolent Man. (Actually, Michaels’s use of the government looks a bit fishy too.) In any case, I can’t find any place where Franklin expresses some version of this thought (though I might have been looking in the wrong places).
What we have here is Michaels formulating the thought, in wording natural to him, and then attributing it to some much-published Founding Father, to lend it a spurious aura of authenticity. That would be deliberate misinformation, first cousin to outright lying, and we should accept it from presumed allies no more than from malign opponents.
Perhaps George Washington did not in fact confess to having chopped down a cherry tree; but many believe he did, because that’s the sort of moral person he was. Perhaps Ponce de Leon did not in fact explore Florida in search of the Fountain of Youth; but many people believe that, because many believe that Ponce de Leon was the sort of person to engage in a great adventure, motivated by lofty goals. Perhaps Haitian immigrants in Springfield OH have not in fact been eating pet cats and dogs; but some people believe that they have been, because that’s the sort of savage animals Haitians are. Perhaps medieval Jews did not in fact drink the blood of infant Gentiles; but a considerable number of people believed they did, because that’s the sort of malevolent monsters Jews are.
I hope you see the problem. Blood libel is a grisly, gripping story, a truly ripping yarn. But it’s a false narrative. And that’s important.
There would be no problem if George Washington, Ponce de Leon, Ohio Haitians, and medieval Jews were characters in stories of science fiction / fantasy; there they can be as noble, as idealistically adventurous, as grotesquely savage, and as malevolently monstrous as the authors want. But then the stories could — surely should — have been framed as about Gregor Washtub, Pussy Lenore, Munchkins from Oz, and medieval goons.
— DK: OK, folks. That screenshot that purports to show an ICE agent zip-tying a black infant in Chicago last week is not AI, as some have claimed, but it is also not from the Chicago ICE raid. It is from a humorous TikTok posted last year by a police officer named Corey Evans Jr, showing him chasing down and “arresting” his infant son after the child got out of the house and ran down the street. [DK posted the Instagram Reels version with his text, and the TikTok in the comments]
What’s happening with ICE right now in Chicago is terrible, but everybody needs to be careful to vet the things we post for accuracy. When a viral image like this turns out to be false or misleading, it gives critics on the right ammunition, and empowers them to dismiss any news or information they don’t like, even if 99% of it is true and accurate. I’ve certainly been guilty of sharing things that turned out to be misleading, even though I try to be careful about checking things. Just be careful, OK?
— AZ: Take DK’s cautions very very seriously. We are being swamped with both images and “news reports” and exemplary stories — some “bad”and some “good” — that are inventions. Many are passed on by people with good intentions, but their longer-term effect is to make others inclined to think that there are no facts, only a host of opinions, and that’s an idea the government is trying to encourage, so that the government (embodied in the person of Our Overord Grabpussy) can claim that ONLY IT is in possession of the truth. Try very hard not to pass on anything you cannot verify the source of — no matter how amazing / moving / appalling it is. Now is the time to cling desperately to the truth, to facts, and to evidence. (You are still free to resist by employing ridicule, invective, silliness, whatever. Though the government will seek to silence you. Steel yourself.)
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