Fabricated Quote Gets 18,000 References
The Washington Times became the latest in a series of uninformed sources to use a quotation, purportedly from Abraham Lincoln.
Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.
— President Abraham Lincoln.
The quote has previously been used by supporters of Bush’s war in Iraq to drum up support, as well as by Republican candidate Diana Irey in her campaign against Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania. According to a study conducted by Brooks Jackson at FactCheck.org, the Annenberg Public Policy Center group, a web search brought up “more than 18,000 references to [the quote].”
Problem is, Lincoln never said anything like that.
The conservative author who touched off the misquotation frenzy, J. Michael Waller, concedes that the words are his, not Lincoln’s. Waller says he never meant to put quote marks around them, and blames an editor [at the magazine Insight] for the mistake and the failure to correct it. We also note other serious historical errors in the Waller article containing the bogus quote.
Editor & Publisher has more.
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Terrible.
By Brian Clark on February 15, 2007 2:37 pm
There’s a history of misquotations and attribution, the most famous: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” is always attributed to Voltaire, and yet it was written later, by someone else trying to surmise Voltaire’s beliefs.
By Duncan Riley on February 15, 2007 5:26 pm
One can only hope that Wikipedia will evolve to correct such mistakes and that people will eventuelly learn to double check with Wikipedia before republishing stuff.
By Hans Lysglimt on February 19, 2007 12:35 am