Oh, no, not again!
It's that infernal Lincoln Kennedy super conspiracy theory meme that endeavours to get people chilling up and down their spines with i-dunno-what exactly, and spreading the misinformation far and wide, of course!
I have little to no interest in the subject and didn't know where to begin debunking and mangling with there being so many items tossed out in one big list of supposedly mind-blowing stats.
This meme is full of useless bits of trivia and a lot of it is only partly true, some is all out false, and the few true statements really aren't so amazing after all.
looking them all up one at a time just wasn't something I cared to spend a big chunk of time on. Who can keep all those dates straight anyhow?
What's really interesting, though, is that the meme wasn't just bought into by the usual re-sharing suspects. It was reposted on this Muslim blog along with the prediction of 9/11 via folded paper money meme.
Here is a brilliant drubbing of this Lincoln/Kennedy bollox. by Terra Walker.
I'll chime in with my comments as well. Terra started the list from bottom to top, but I rearranged it so that it goes top to bottom, and without that second copy of the meme text besides which was included in the post before Terra's meme-downing. The usual headings apply to specify which of us said what. Happy reading, and the next time some schmuck sends you this Lincoln/Kennedy meme, just point them here. Sorry, but Terra's original link seems to be no longer up. Glad I saved that pwning!
👩💻Terra Walker: Lincoln/Kennedy Conspiracy Chain Letter (really, why is this still going around)
By terrawalker | August 11, 2013 | Editorial, Essays
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I've asked myself that question many times.
👩💻Terra Walker: I’m always disappointed when I see otherwise intelligent people posting this crap or sending it to me.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Nodding vigorously in agreement* This drives me right up the wall too!
👩💻Terra Walker: About twice a year, I see this (or something similar) posted on Facebook or emailed to me, and it always has a bit of snark attached. So, I’m thinking maybe I should take some time to clear up some things in this chain, since some of you seem to be so hot to toss it at History teachers and then walk away without an answer, like you just PWND something.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: No kidding.
👩💻Terra Walker: Let it be known that I am not a History teacher, but I am a student – which means I’m willing to find answers and share them – and I’m a different kind of dangerous, a different kind of smart.
How many of you have gotten the following email or seen it posted on some social media network?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Count me in among those who have seen it junking up some site or other.
👩💻Terra Walker: Let’s review, shall we?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: yes, let's… review and debunk this junk.
😏Meme: Very interesting
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Very annoying!
😏Meme: Mind Blowing!!!!!
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Try mind-numbing… Underwhelming… Bull.
😏Meme: Have a history teacher explain this if they can.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And cause them to scream inwardly with annoyance and frustration because they realize someone has just fallen for the Lincoln Kennedy factoid chain yet again.
😏Meme: Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So?
😏Meme: John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: so what? Look, it really isn't all that fascinating considering how common the names Kennedy and Lincoln are, and that the US gets an election every 4 years…
👩💻Terra Walker: Not much of a real coincidence, considering we elect a new president every 4 years, and 100 is evenly divisible by 4.
😏Meme: Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860. John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: so what? Politicians living approximately a century apart might end up with some rather coincidental but useless stats.
👩💻Terra Walker: See explanation above. It’s not much of a coincidence, considering how we elect people to office. They both had very different political lives prior to each of their being elected President – Kennedy’s successful, Lincoln’s not.
😏Meme: The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So who cares? Lots of people's last names have only 7 letters, and Kennedy and Lincoln didn't have the same first name or with the same amount of letters… and one has to wonder - if your life really so boring that you resort to searching out stats on various people trying to come up with as many supposedly cool stats as possible to make a chain letter about - what kind of existence is that?
😏Meme: Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
👩💻Terra Walker: Yes, in the same manner that I’m particularly concerned with people spreading false information and/or being far too lazy to do a little research before regurgitating what’s been shoved down their throats. It just happens to be what ‘s going on around me. We could make the same type of comparison between many Presidents.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Exactly, Terra. and really, this whole both concerned with civil rights thing is pretty underwhelming considering that was an issue during those time periods.
😏Meme: Both wives lost a child while living in the White House.
👩💻Terra Walker: It is literally a true statement, but if we dig deeper, it loses all power. There are also huge differences in the family structures of the Lincolns and the Kennedys. The Lincolns actually lost 2 children, not just one, and were a family with 4 boys, only 1 of which lived past his teenage years; the Kennedy children were 2 boys and a girl, and two of them lived well into adulthood.
😏Meme: Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
👩💻Terra Walker: 1:7 odds that they will be shot on the same day of the week
😏Meme: Both Presidents were shot in the head.
👩💻Terra Walker: One of only two places that are guaranteed kill shots. Not really that coincidental.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Funny how assassins aim for the head, isn't it?
😏Meme: Now it gets really weird.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: No, it just gets really false with whatever truth is contained, getting twisted and distorted into something it really isn't.
😏Meme: Lincoln’s secretary was named Kennedy.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Wrong.
👩💻Terra Walker: Lincoln’s secretaries were John Hay and John Nicolay, and there is no record whatsoever of anyone named Kennedy being a secretary for Lincoln
😏Meme: Kennedy’s Secretary was named Lincoln.
👩💻Terra Walker: Yep, Kennedy had a secretary named Evelyn Lincoln.
😏Meme: Lincoln's secretary, Kennedy,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: who didn't exist…
😏Meme: warned him not to go to Ford's Theatre.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Lincoln was warned not to go there, or to most places he went, same as any other country's leader. Just who issued every warning is unimportant, and in this case, false to boot.
😏Meme: Kennedy's secretary, Lincoln, warned him not to go to Dallas.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Lincoln was warned many times not to go wherever he was going because threats against his person or his life were ever-present. There were many warnings that turned out to be false, but everybody forgets about those, focusing on the one out of millions that actually comes true. Moreover, nobody really knows which if any of the secretaries were the ones to deliver every warning. So there goes another attempt at sounding super awesome freaky. whoosh!
😏Meme: Both were assassinated by Southerners.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: John Wilkes Booth was born in Maryland, a slave state that remained part of the union. Booth considered himself a Northerner who understood/sympathized with the south.
😏Meme: Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.
👩💻Terra Walker: No, Lyndon Johnson was from Texas and Andrew Johnson was from North Carolina. LBJ Supported the Civil Rights Movement, and Andrew Johnson was a die-hard slave owner. LBJ won the Presidency in the largest landslide election in history, while Andrew Johnson was never elected President on his own merit or ability.
Now, John Wilkes Booth was absolutely a southern sympathizer, but he was born and raised in Maryland. Oswald was a southerner because he was born in Louisiana, but ultimately it might be slightly more important that he was a communism supporter, and was motivated by his supposed KGB ties, not his geographic location.
And, when your Vice President is from the south, you will naturally be succeeded by a southerner. And then there ‘s this Johnson thing – a last name that literally means son of John and is the last name of 8% of the population of the United States, second only to Smith.
😏Meme: Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808. Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.
👩💻Terra Walker: Let’s realize that a 100-year coincidence is pretty common. MOST politicians are over 50 when they finally get to higher offices. But let’s examine the 100-year coincidences before we get much farther. If I laid out all the data side-by-side for you to compare yourself instead of just believing what things like this tell you, you would see plenty of coincidences involving other numbers. They’re just aren’t nice, evenly rounded numbers like 100, and as such, people are less-inclined to include them in their conspiracy data.
😏Meme: John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
👩💻Terra Walker: John Wilkes Booth was born in 1838.
😏Meme: Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So were a lot of people. And yes, some people were born a century apart, others were not...
😏Meme: Both assassins were known by their three names. Both names are composed of fifteen letters.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So freaking what?
👩💻Terra Walker: Another truth, though still grasping at straws. Why does it matter that their names have 15 letters? Why is this suspect, and NOT the fact that both men’s fathers were popular actors? John Wilkes Booth often went by John Wilkes or J. Wilkes Booth, and was a prominent popular actor. Lee Harvey Oswald was unknown and went by Lee or Lee Oswald. The police used all three names because he was known to use aliases, and had many false ID cards making it difficult to identify him.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: The letters weren't the same amount in each of their names anyway. Lee is 3 letters and john is 4,. but even if their names were divided into the same amounts of letters from first to last per assassin, who cares? Obviously Three Six Six could kill a president as dead as Four Six Five.
😏Meme: Now hang on to your seat.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Rolling eyes* Nothing you can say is going to blow my mind and make me fall off my chair. Your pack of factoids (which are not facts) with what little trivial truth thrown in is not impressing me.
😏Meme: Lincoln was shot at the theater named “Ford.” Kennedy was shot in a car called “Lincoln” made by “Ford.”
👩💻Terra Walker: Besides being poorly worded, this is true, though a stretch even for conspiracy theorists. It was Ford’s Theater and a 1961 Lincoln Continental, which was manufactured by a company owned by Henry Ford. As a side note, I can’t stand this use of “quotation marks”. It’s making my skin crawl.
😏Meme: Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: No. Assassins get killed, they don't get assassinated. Assassination is specifically the murder of important political figures. World leaders, president/prime ministers etc.
👩💻Terra Walker: That’s a questionable use of the word assassinated. It’s should be noted that they weren’t even shot in the same manner – Oswald in the stomach 2 days after he was captured, Booth 11 days later – shot in the back of the neck AFTER being trapped in a tobacco shack that was set on fire.
😏Meme: AND……………….:
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Rolling eyes*
😏Meme: Lincoln was shot in a theater and the assassin ran to a warehouse… Booth ran from the theater and was caught in a warehouse.
👩💻Terra Walker: No, John Wilkes Booth was caught and killed in a tobacco shed in an entirely different state days later.
😏Meme: Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and the assassin ran to a theater… Oswald ran from a warehouse and was caught in a theater.
👩💻Terra Walker: Lee Harvey Oswald was caught and taken alive in a theater about an hour after Kennedy was shot – and arrested for the murder of an officer, not the president.
😏Meme: And here’s the “kicker”:
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: The kicker is this is crap!
😏Meme: A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So what? Doing what?
😏Meme: A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with in Marilyn Monroe.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: WRONG! and particularly unfunny stupid as well. Besides the words 'Marilyn' and 'Maryland' being completely different, Marilyn Monroe died well over a year before JFK.
👩💻Terra Walker: Marilyn Monroe died in August, 1962; Kennedy was shot November 1963. Clearly, the person writing this missed History 101.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And utterly bombed Comedy 101 as well.
😏Meme: I saw this had to share just in case anyone did not know.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Right, the same old excuse, you just "HAD to SHARE!" There is no real knowledge here. Just a lot of junk that is either useless, false, or both.
👩💻Terra Walker: I hope that will suffice as an explanation. I hardly needed a History teacher to explain it to me. I just needed to use my own logic and researching skills. I’d like to see a little more of that in this world.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Me as well, and kudos for a great meme-mangling!
Over and out.