Not Me Either

Evils of the Internet The internet has turned everyone into a sleuth. Some more like the fumbling Inspector Cleuseau. The internet doesn't fact check- for that they depend on you, and there are various fact checking sites. Some urban myths are hilarious and Scopes will give you the real scoop. Hint- I don't really think Ann Coulter has an Adams Apple and having met her once at Cornell I can say she has been female since at least college. Anyone doing 'research' on someone thinks all they have to do is a google search now. This can be deceptive- I for one, have a really common name and in greater DC alone there are at least 12 of us. One of us is a realtor (mostly in Northern Virginia) one is a cop, one is a cop with now a petty criminal record over something having to do with her not paying a renewal fee on some license, one is a pastor nationally, and who knows what the other 10 or so are doing. There are even a few with my same middle initial. I don't know if they all have my same middle name of Louise. This can be all problematic. Websites have facebook facts about many Cynthia L. Butlers - none of whom are me. Some look decidedly more dark-skinned than my freckles, one even is another attorney with a small firm and another God Bless her, looks like a MegaPastor with a litany of spirited books to her credit. Her, I want to meet! My face is intentionally not on the internet. I have had a few demented clients and more demented ones I refused representation- I don't want them putting a hit on my facebook page. My favorite same name internet confusion culprit is a woman who must be a grandmother who signed up as Cynthia L. Butler.blogspot.com (drat! I wanted that URL!) to display grandkiddies photos, and her photo slot is filled with a horse head. Nice. Send that one to the background check guy on a new job:-) But all this is to say kiddies, when doing research- you need to fact check. You can't believe everything you read just because the name looks the same. That might have convinced you in the past but it doesn't always work. It's the other guy who you totally missed reading about because you were sure it was the wild one you found. Finally, remember there is such a thing as PhotoShop. A good Vogue photographer can make Hillary look electronically like twiggy and me like the Queen of England. If they are an Italian Vogue photoshopper, my thighs are skinnier than my arms and my leg bone isn't mysteriously connected to my hipbone. Saddam Hussein's weapons of Mass Destruction were destroyed--or maybe buried in the sands. Not on the back of a flatbed in a photoshop taken to the UN to justify taking out a tyrant. Could have been a beastly tyrant, but do the means justify the ends. I don't like lying photographs any more than I like lying people. Photographs don't lie, people do. Guns don't kill, people do. And then there was Connecticut.