02

I have had a busy few days, doing a bit of traveling and spending time with family. I was unable to write a blog post on Friday, so today I will discuss the most active threads since Thursday. The most active thread during that period that I have not already discussed was titled, "Harris Walz interview w CNN" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original title of this thread was actually, "Harris Walz interview w CNN – only 18 minutes", but after a number of requests I shortened the title because it misstated the actual length of the interview. The controversy over the length of the interview is a story in itself. Former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump and his supporters devote a huge amount of time and effort to trying to convince the public that they are not being treated fairly. In this instance, soon after the announcement that Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz would be interviewed by CNN, Trump supporters began circulating on social media the claim that the interview would only be 18 minutes long and that a full transcript would not be released. This, they claimed, was evidence that the interview would be cleaned up to hide the fact that Harris is, according to them, unable to articulate a complete sentence or connect two thoughts together. The original poster apparently based this thread on those inaccurate claims, but attributed the misinformation to CNN. As it turned out, the interview was longer than 18 minutes and a full transcript was released. A recurring phenomenon that has really started to bug me is that right-wingers will post false information and left-wingers will accept those falsehoods as fact and defend them. In this instance, posters immediately began defending Harris for giving an 18 minute interview and not making a full transcript available. This only helped to spread and confirm inaccurate information. My rule of thumb is to assume by default that anything posted by conservatives is wrong, either intentionally or simply because they don't know any better. Instead of posting knee-jerk responses defending lies about Democrats, liberal posters should take a minute to check whether the information is true or not. As for posters' reactions to the interview, they were about what you would expect. Conservatives had plenty of criticisms. According to them, Harris looked down too much, did not speak coherently, and had lots of help from Walz and Dana Bash, the interviewer. Liberals, of course, thought that Harris had done great. There were a few posters who claimed that their vote had been influenced one way or another but most people simply had their previous opinions reinforced. There was almost as much discussion about Bash as there was about Harris and Walz with conservative posters trying desperately to demonstrate that she was biased in favor of Harris. Several liberal posters also believed that Bash was biased, but against Harris rather than in her favor. Another manufactured controversy involved the fact that Walz was included in the interview. Right-wingers argued that this was unusual and showed that Harris could not be trusted on her own and needed Walz to babysit. In fact, interviews including both the presidential and vice presidential nominees are common and have been conducted by all recent nominees.