🚀 go-pugleaf

In the previous article, qwerty <nospam@all.com> wrote:
> > > Exactly!  There is NO WAY to authenticate your assertion
> >
> > There are plenty of ways to check a cite, including the one he gave
> > you.  This one simply requires a little less laziness on your part.
> 
> So, why doesn't he post his cite if it exists and it's so easy?

He did.  He told you it was transcribed in a White House press
release, and he gave you he date.  Believe it or not, that's a cite
that would be accepted in any academic journal or by any scholarly or
news organization in the world.

> Just where did he get this quote to begin with?

He told you that, too.

Not everything is available online.  The Internet does not yet contain
the Sum Of All Human Knowledge, available for access through your web
browser.  If I tell you that page 83 of Koenig's "C Traps and
Pitfalls" proves a point I was making about macros, do you really
think you can just type "www.ctrapsandpitfalls.com" into your browser
and verify (or discredit) the cite?

Here's a news flash for you, junior:  that's not how it works.

Most of us went through a library orientation of some kind in about
third or fourth grade.  When you get to that level of your own
education, perhaps you'll understand.

Have you tried calling the White House and asking them to verify the
content?  They have a whole public relations staff available for
responding to just such queries, you know.  It might take all of ten
minutes and US$2.50 of your time and money to do so.

> > If he made this quote up, he not only spent hours crafting a very
> > realistic White House transcript of a television interview, but he
> > has spent the last several years convincing his confederates in the
> > VRWC to discuss this quote on Usenet and in web pages.  If you do a
> > rudimentary web or Deja search, you'll find it all over the place.
> 
> Sure, I've seen this quote before, but no one has EVER been able to
> provide a cite.  Posters here, including Conservatives, have indeed
> spent hours crafting very realistic, but false, transcripts and
> quotes.

Yes, but that's the great thing about Usenet -- everyone's on more or
less an equal footing.  For every well-known, well-distributed example
of a bogus quote, someone's dedicated a website to debunking it.  A
web search on "Sarah Brady" and "Socialist America" will turn up an
excellent example of this.  (Unfortunately, it will also turn up a lot
of hits on people who still use the quote as if it were genuine.  But
dig for a couple of minutes and you'll find good and thorough
debunkings.

You won't, on the other hand, find any debunkings of this even more
well-known quote, because it isn't debunkable.  We can debate about
what Clinton "meant" by the quote, but no serious person disputes that
he said it.

> > I watched it when it was originally aired.  I remember the quote
> > well, and i remember the heated discussions about same in the
> > political newsgroups.  Yours is the first denial of the quote's
> > validity I've ever seen.  Even the total wack-jobs on t.p.m. et al.,
> > such as the self-proclaimed "weasels," admit that he said it.
> 
> LOL, sure you did.

I of course cannot prove whether or not I watched a particular TV show
8 or 9 years ago, but the latter assertion is easily checkable with a
Usenet feed and/or a search engine.
-- 
  _+_ From the catapult of |If anyone disagrees with any statement I make, I
_|70|___:)=}- J.D. Baldwin |am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also
\      /  baldwin@panix.com|to deny under oath that I ever made it. -T. Lehrer
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