Not I

19 June 2012

Through the years there has been a constant barrage of people misquoting me.  They might say, “Last week on CNN you said…”  And I was in some war zone at the time and nowhere near a television interview.  But then it gets picked up, and bloggers do the he-said, she-said, and soon it becomes an erroneous article of faith that I said or wrote something.

Most times, these incidents appear to be honest mistakes.  On other occasions, people have set up fake websites pretending to be me. Just this week, Facebook was alerted to a page using my photo and my name, and the imposter posted as though he were me.  A fake Skype account exists using my name, and it is very similar to my genuine account.  One can only speculate about how much mayhem has been attempted with masquerading email accounts.

Consider this recent message:

“Hey Michael, I read one of your articles and you seemed pretty against Noam Chomsky.  I’m puzzled cause I thought you two would get along.”

Well, this is perplexing. I have never written a word about Professor Chomsky until just now.  This is an example of false attribution.  It may have been accidental, but I do not know.  Bottom line, I did not write this:

Read the complete post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/michaelyon-online/~3/QnAxkP-NL24/not-i.htm