Shutdown Madness and Fake Articles

   I just had an unsettling episode. I somehow navigated on the internet to the Onion, a satire magazine on the web that prints nothing true. Everything is satire. Everything is fake. Everything is aimed at the gullible.

    I read a few articles, probably spent ten minutes total reading Onion articles. Then I went back to my usual news reading from Google News. I read an article from Bloomberg Business News, another from Reuters News Service, and a third from CBS News. Suddenly my mind is questioning every news source. I knew MSNBC often exaggerated things but now everything I read from every news source is questionable.

    "Is anyone telling the truth?" I ask myself, especially in articles about the Federal shutdown.

     In the past, I have checked on perpetual emails I receive about politics and other gripes people have and found that many of them are just not true, but now......  now... every article is questionable. Once I received a letter from a bank I use. I didn't believe it, so I checked with the bank. Sure enough it was fake. I only had those questioning, doubting episodes occasionally.

     But after reading the Onion I question everything on the internet. Only ten minutes of reading has convinced me that every article, every post, every email must be checked.

     Double check the source of everything you believe. If you've been believing all those chain emails you get, here's the antidote: Take ten minutes and read the Onion.