There was a minor scandal this week involving the forces of light and darkness mucking around with Barack Obama's Wikipedia page. America's citizen scholars kept adding stuff exposing the president as a Kenyan sleeper spy with a fake birth certificate. Wikipedia, under orders from ACORN and Al-Qaeda, kept erasing it. Our friends in the crankosphere picked up the story as more evidence that they were always being silenced and, as usual, they won't shut up about it.
Here's the line that came and went:
"There have been some doubts about whether Obama was born in the U.S. after the politician refused to release to the public a carbon copy of his birth certificate and amid claims from his relatives he may have been born in Kenya. Numerous lawsuits have been filed petitioning Obama to release his birth certificate, but most suits have been thrown out by the courts."
This, of course, is just crazy talk. And you can see why it got scrubbed. It's not Wikipedia's job to peddle paranoid hearsay. That's Townhall's job. Wikipedia's job is to be written at a seventh grade reading level and be about half as useful as the Columbia Desk Encyclopedia on all subjects except Joss Whedon's Firefly.
It also turned out that the reporter who was blowing the whistle on the wiki-perfidy was the same nincompoop who had had the lines inserted in the first place.
And "Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories" has its very own Wikipedia entry that goes on and on and on and on.
So the scandal blew over.
But here's how I was personally touched by the story:
This sad sack shell of a human being named Meg Whitman wants to be governor of California. I wrote a post pointing out that her qualifications for high public office include a pattern of management positions in companies that run Asian sweatshops. To my childlike delight, this observation was added to her Wikipedia entry. Then, to my adultlike chagrin, the observation was removed.
And someone cut the brakes on my Civic.
No they didn't.
Because it's not the Pentagon Papers. It's just Wikipedia.
When you do a Google search for an American politician, the first two results are the site they run themselves and Wikipedia. Everyone knows this Wikipedia page is constantly rewritten by the politician's staff and constantly unwritten by the Asperger cases who police Wikipedia like it's their job.
But it's not a conspiracy. It's not even censorship. It's just the way things are.
By the way, I'm not lying about the sweatshops. You could look it up.
--
Extra Credit
From the "Educational Excellence" entry on Meg Whitman's own, authorized, wonderful semi-literate website:
"We must not only respect great teachers; we must reward them. We should focus resources on delivering the best classroom instruction to all children, regardless of where their station in life."
To which our former president might add:
Regardless of where their station in life, rarely is the question asked: Is they learning?
Seriously, I feel I have to defend WP. It is intended to be ENTRY level research on everything from astrophysics to local bands. Obama's entry probably should have a quick note that some people have conspiracy theories about him with a reference to pro- and anti-conspiracy sources. But it is not meant to be a political final word.
http://www.colboard.com/viewtopic.php?p=414798&highlight=#414798
it's this little verse at the bottom of the post:
"However, there may be some strategy behind it. That Wiki needs to face some Darwinian rigors along the way is a logical consequence of the universe of our civilization of semi-brutes.
So many are the lost libraries,
full of books brought to light by innocent souls.
Ashen flesh finds little dignity,
and the paper of the Tree
is persecuted as well."
Wikifiefdom.
"To my childlike delight, this observation was added to her Wikipedia entry. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meg_Whitman&oldid=262436135#Criticism Then, to my adultlike chagrin, the observation was removed. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meg_Whitman&diff=263786406&oldid=263466570"
An allegation on Huffpo is pretty weak as a source. If the January 6 post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-kelly/the-shenzhenian-candidate_b_155638.html had provided links to the sources of the information, it well might still be on Wikipedia. Of course, if the Asperger's cases were really on the case, they would have dug up the sources themselves.
Surely if you have evidence that your facts about this governor are correct, the obvious and adult course of action would be to present that to Wiki if you're really terribly keen to have your comments about her included on WIki?
Seems very simple really.
They're right to do it that way. Anyone can claim to have evidence, and present some gobbledygook that they claim is evidence. It would be hopeless for people to try to sort it all out on Wikipedia.
http://downlode.org/img/medieval/astronomer.jpg
:-)
Check my satire column... Does Bill need any more writers? Seriously. I need a job.
http://www.examiner.com/x-2895-LA-Political-Satire-Examiner~y2009m3d14-Glenn-Beck-saved-my-life
I believe that's called "competition."
You want to see a so-called "objective" (by GOP standards) article on the President?
http://www.conservapedia.com/Barack_Obama
I think Michelle Malkin wrote most of it!
I tried doing a search of a couple of good solid “conservative” subjects such as one might expect to find in any decent encyclopedia: William Shakespeare and Julius Caesar. The articles I found on Conservapedia have no in-depth content on their lives or the milieu they lived in. Try to imagine an article on Julius Caesar in which none of Caesar’s campaigns are recounted, or his writings discussed. In Shakespeare’s case only summaries of the plays are provided; no sources, no histories, no questions on texts, no famous performances, nothing. On Conservapedia, the article on Hamlet is one page long. On Wikipedia by contrast, the entry for Hamlet prints out at 25 pages, 9 of which are notes and references.
If one is looking for an angry screed such as the Obama article, then this is the place to go. However, as a reference tool, which is what an encyclopedia is after all, this site is absolutely worthless.
I imagine that in the long run conservatives have figured out that it would be easier to try and debase and co-opt the content of Wikipedia than it would be for them to make their laughable Conservapedia a credible information source.