As a columnist, James Fennel plagiarizes another person’s work,
and gets canned. Without understanding that the Internet goes
beyond the four walls within which he pens his letters to the
editor, Fennel continues his one person, anti-Obama attack with
Internet-contrived emails with no basis in fact.
Dear Editor,
As a columnist, James Fennel plagiarizes another person’s work, and gets canned. Without understanding that the Internet goes beyond the four walls within which he pens his letters to the editor, Fennel continues his one person, anti-Obama attack with Internet-contrived emails with no basis in fact.
His letter was actually cute as it was so “on the surface outrageous.” Fennel quotes Obama from a Sept. 7, 2008 Meet the Press show … Obama wasn’t on that segment. The interview was with Sen. Biden and Thomas Friedman. It took me two minutes to search the NBC program, go to the archives and check the transcript. So, the first part of Fennel’s letter, even before the quote, was wrong. I next checked Snopes.com for a possible urban legend origination.
Sure enough, parts of Fennel’s letter were right there, pure fabrication, email contrived and passed on to those with the same political vent. In all, it took me no more than five minutes to read Fennel’s letter, get out my laptop, connect to the Internet, search two websites, and determine what Fennel wrote was a hoax which most common folks call, a lie. But, what is the Dispatch doing to verify letters, their origination and/or veracity? One would think that if Fennel sent anything to the Dispatch, there would be someone ready to minimally analyze the comments before publication.
In the future, when Fennel gets posted in the Dispatch, I’m keeping clothes pins nearby for the smell test.
Dale Morejón, Gilroy
Editor’s note: It should have been checked and was not. Our embarrassed apologies.
