What do panhandlers and disinformationists have in common?  Read on and find out.

 

I saw a man sitting at an intersection today wearing camouflage pants and matching boonie hat, (woodland style for those who know what I’m talking about).  I’ve seen him there before on several occasions despite the neatly lettered cardboard sign he always holds that tells us he’s a disabled Vet passing thru.  Passing thru alright, from one town to the next begging off the generosity of suckers.  I believe anyone capable of writing signs as neatly as he does, keeps his “uniform” from fading or deteriorating too rapidly over the years while living on the streets is more than capable of working at any one (or more) of a dozen places up and down the main drags of the area’s cities that are almost always looking for help.

 

He’s not the only one, I see a number of people routinely popping back up at the same intersections every few months looking for something for nothing.

 

Then there is my “friend” I started talking about in February in my article “Have you been saved?”  I’ve seen her around again in several locations in the past month.  Still begging rides off people and no doubt questioning their eternal salvation while putting down other religions.  You would think after all these years I’ve been seeing her out there she would have obtained a car by now, or at least taken advantage of the cheap transit buses for women and the elderly.  Perhaps this is her way of proselytizing while keeping her expenses down.

 

Another one of my peeves are the firemen and clubs and churches that like to invade busy intersections their busiest times collecting for their various causes, further holding up traffic and putting safety at risk as they walk in and out of the lines of cars shaking their collection cans and trying to make eye contact with you, because of course you know once you make eye contact you’ve just invited them over.

 

Another form of madness I can do without is this widespread campaign of disinformation that is going on.  No, I’m not talking about some kind of conspiracy or government plot to keep us all out of the loop.  I’m talking about those damn email forwards and “pass-it-ons” that well meaning folks are getting and sending out to everyone in their address books without checking out the stories.  Now those “I’m your friend, are you mine?” and cute kitten and puppy emails are one thing, but those that are supposed facts such as this dandy that tells us Dell is selling computers to the public with built in keystroke loggers for the Homeland Security department.  (It’s not true)  Then there is the two year old notice about Mars Spectacular coming closer to earth than it will again for 60,000 years.  Sorry, you’ll have to wait until then to catch it.  Or you can wait until October 2005 when it will be close to earth, but not as close as it was in 2003.

 

The easiest way to check out a piece before propagating the myth is to select and copy a sentence or phrase from the email and paste it into a Google search box.  You should come up with a number of results, including several for Urban Legends type sites. Snopes, Urban Legends, Scambusters are some of the top contenders, but there are many, many more sites out there trying to stop the madness.  Check out the stories before you pass them on.  In many cases there IS a bit of truth to the stories, or perhaps they are true, but outdated or facts “adjusted” to suit one of the previous perpetrators.  Snopes is a great site that really digs into the facts, they even tested the “16 Uses for Bounce Dryer Sheets” and reported their findings.  They’ll state which stories are true, false, outdated or misrepresented.  You might even learn something more interesting than the story you set out to prove.

 

What do panhandlers and disinformationists have in common?  Well meaning people like you and me who think we’re doing a service without thinking it through.  Time to use our brains before they turn totally to mush and quit supporting beggars and spreading disinformation around.

 

And for those who think giving money to the “homeless vet” is the Christian thing to do, remember that “God helps those who help themselves”.  But don’t take my word for it though. Look it up.