{"id":838,"date":"2011-05-03T20:29:11","date_gmt":"2011-05-04T03:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/03\/quote-misquote-2\/"},"modified":"2011-05-03T20:29:11","modified_gmt":"2011-05-04T03:29:11","slug":"quote-misquote-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/03\/quote-misquote-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Quote \/ Misquote"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reacting to the celebrations over the death of Osama bin Laden, Jessica Dovey<\/a>, a 24 year-old teacher in Japan, posted her thoughts to Facebook and followed her excellent words with a quote from MLK. As is often the case, the Internet then proceeded to get it wrong. But it also got it right.<\/p>\n

\n

I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.<\/p>\n

– Jessica Dovey<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of starts. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.<\/p>\n

– Martin Luther King Jr.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Through what were likely honest mistakes, Jessica’s original quote got mixed in with the MLK quote and the entire quote was misattributed to MLK. A fairly short cycle of denial, anger and acceptance quickly followed when fact checkers cried foul on the mis-quote then quickly ran down the original posting.<\/p>\n

One of two things should have happened:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The incorrect quote continued to be blindly repeated and retweeted until it sank into our collective consciousness, much like the Casablanca quote, "Play it again, Sam." <\/li>\n
  2. Feeling it’s been duped, the Internet lashes out, redirecting the venom typically reserved for Rebecca Black and My Space into a childish attack on Jessica Dovey’s character. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In a blow to my cynicism, the end result was fairly rational. The original posting was tracked down, people recognized the innocent mistake and a mature discussion ensued.<\/p>\n

    Ah, Internet, you’ve made me proud by behaving like a grown-up. You can borrow the car keys for the dance on Friday.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Reacting to the celebrations over the death of Osama bin Laden, Jessica Dovey, a 24 year-old teacher in Japan, posted her thoughts to Facebook and followed her excellent words with a quote from MLK. As is often the case, the Internet then proceeded to get it wrong. But it also got it right. I mourn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[91,115],"class_list":["post-838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-web","tag-humanity","tag-quotes"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.little.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}