This week, we’re watching the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. The first defense move was to argue that he could not even be impeached.

NPR reported this week that one constitutional scholar has a problem with how he was cited in the Trump team’s defense brief.

His argument was that Presidents could, in fact, be impeached under these circumstances, but Trump’s team said he said the opposite.

I would never let my students get away with that.

A friend of a friend posted something dumb, a claim that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wants to ban the Lord’s Prayer, followed by said prayer.

One of her friends told her it was fake news, a debunked story.

She asked why she shouldn’t post it anyway, since so many find comfort in the prayer.

When her friend replied that she shouldn’t post it because the first part is a lie, she said, “lol.”

A glance at her page, one I’d never gone to, confirmed the worst: she’s a Republican who bashes liberals and the mainstream media, who thinks misinformation on Covid shouldn’t be banned by Facebook, presumably because she believes the disinformation.

I unfriended her.

But I can’t stop thinking about it.

I thought about all the times my friends and I have fallen for an outdated or untrue story.

But each time, we’ve thanked the person who fact-checked us, apologized, and either edited the post or taken it down.

Not this woman. Not this particular Republican. Not this particular Christian.

Another of her friends added a separate comment, responding to the lie: “Amen.”

It’s harder and harder to tell what’s real on the internet.

Check out this story by Vox, about a white Republican who seemed to be pretending to be a gay Black man–which isn’t the strange thing about the story.

Update: Amber Ruffin has a great video about this story, one of her “Amber Says What” segments on Late Night with Seth Meyers.

Ever since Melissa and I started working on our textbook, we’ve been paying a lot more attention to what our students do and don’t know about source use.

Before, I was guilty of thinking they knew the basics or that they would pick them up, the way I did, along the way.

They don’t know the basics, which is why I’m so glad I take the time to teach the fundamentals.

Recently, I created a 50 question true/false pre-test, just to gauge where they are.

I’m not reproducing all of the results here, but the data should help explain why, when we say, “you have to use academic sources” or “you have to use reliable sources” or “you have to use peer-reviewed sources,” they don’t follow instructions.

This is from two classes of upper-division UCD students:

Reliability

50% of the students think Google Scholar only shows reliable sources (they don’t know about predatory journals).

Peer Review

50% think all academic sources are peer-reviewed.

64% think everything in a peer-reviewed journal is peer-reviewed (this is why they cite book reviews in journals, instead of articles in journals, half the time).

Citing

52% think they only have to cite quotes, not summary and paraphrase, to avoid plagiarism.

60% think “common knowledge” is a fact everyone knows.

Rhetoric

67% believe the appeal to ethos is about appealing to morality (it’s credibility).

What’s an academic source?

50% think anything they get via the university library is academic.

52% think all class materials (lectures, PowerPoints) are academic.

52% think fact-checked news is academic.

64% think dictionaries and general encyclopedias are academic.

67% think poetry is academic (33% think novels are too).

One question defined the difference between as academic and nonacademic sources as one of audience. Academic sources are for academic audiences.

62% marked that as false.

I hope they do better on the post-test!

Apparently, some of the people who refuse to wear masks during the pandemic are carrying cards around, which threaten businesses if they refuse to serve the mask-less person.

The card claims that the person holding it has a disability and thus doesn’t have to wear a mask.

Those of us who are disabled (and those of us with critical thinking skills) know that’s not how disability accommodations work.

If someone really couldn’t wear a mask, the accommodation wouldn’t be to simply let them in; it would be to make sure they can still access the goods. Thus, they might give their shopping list to an employee and have them brought out.

My students who need accommodations don’t get to just skip the exams; we figure out a way for them to take it with modifications.

However, you don’t need to know ANY of this to know that this card is bunk.

Some of this information is true. That is the ADA number, and the ADA does have guidelines and penalties.

However, this card is a lie.

The DOJ symbol is not authorized; this card is not government-approved.

The person who would show this is hoping you won’t look closely.

If you did, you might notice that the word “poses” is spelled incorrectly, and that government agencies don’t end in “.com.”

What is FTBA, anyway?

It’s the “Freedom to Breathe Agency.” I went to their website, so you don’t have to. There’s almost no information, just a picture of two kids enjoying the sunshine and some vague claims about freedom and America. It’s not clear at all that it’s about flouting pandemic policies.

But that’s what it’s about, and it’s counting on its visitors knowing that.

They’re not good at clarity, not good at spelling, not good at logic, not good at science, and not good at empathy.

But they’re a great example of why evaluating sources is essential!

I was catching up on my Colbert this afternoon, wanting especially to see the interview with Jon Stewart. They talked about the election, the virus, and our overdue reckoning with institutional racism.

As part of the latter, they drew attention to how two white guys were talking about racism, and how some white people can only hear about racism from other white people.

Jon mentioned that he, Jessica Williams, and Jordan Klepper had a bit in which Jessica would talk about racism, Jordan would shut her down, Jon would restate Jessica’s point, and then Jordan would agree.

The best Daily Show with Jon Stewart video that does this is “Helper Whitey,” a discussion about the confederate flag. (ooooh, timely too)

Karlissa actually tackles this ridiculousness in our new book. When discussing ethos, we should remember that some people, those not inclined to agree with you, will dismiss you for having too much ethos. Too many whites don’t believe black accounts of racism. Too many men don’t believe women’s accounts of sexism.

And that’s why we all have to speak out. I’ve seen white students’ resistance fade a bit when I talk about white privilege, just like I’ve seen some men’s shoulders go down when another man embraces feminism.

This shouldn’t be how it is.

But it is.

Speak up; speak out; speak loud.

This isn’t going to surprise anyone who isn’t a Fox News viewer, but it’s worth noting.

This Washington Post article discusses three scientific studies, showing that Fox News viewers, regardless of age, race, sex, party, were less informed and more likely to believe conspiracy theories about the virus.

While many of the examples in Karlissa’s book on sources are funny, this newer one is definitely not.

The lies disseminated by the network are directly affecting people’s lives, literally. Viewers were less likely to follow government guidelines for safety. One study “provides evidence that those behavioral differences are contributing to the spread and mortality rate of covid-19 in certain areas.”

In the last week, Fox News has been having problems being, well, news.

This Rolling Stone article details several problems, with Fox using images from one city in a story about another and outright altering images to make police look innocent and to make the Seattle protest look scary.

Some of their errors are unintentional, however.

Last Friday, a reporter quoted Reddit, saying the post showed divisions in the Seattle protest.

Except it was a joke.

From Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

In Karlissa’s new book on source use, we have a section about how satire news gets mistaken for real news sometimes.

But we didn’t think a “news” source would fall for such obvious satire.

We would, however, believe it if they called us all “bloody peasants” behind our back while they misrepresented our desire for an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We’re also fairly certain they would totally make Trump king for life on the word of some moistened bint.

[Update: I don’t want to have a whole new post every time Fox alters data, so I’m just going to add examples here.]

Fox News cut Donald Trump out of an infamous picture of Jeffrey Epstein (with their significant others).

Fox News got a defamation lawsuit against Tucker Carlson’s show thrown out after arguing that their audience knows Carlson spews bullshit. The judge agreed it’s bullshit. I contend that some of their audience believes the bullshit, especially since Fox News tells its viewers they’re the only reliable source.

Karlissa’s newest book just came out. We got an email yesterday saying the publisher can confirm the first class adoption.

And Melissa gave a fantastic interview about it.