Beware of Moral Panic Stories

The myth of a welfare queen was never backed up by any studies. It was based almost entirely on one anecdote told by then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan in 1976 about one woman in Chicago. That woman, Linda Taylor, was a career con artist who was also suspected of crimes ranging from kidnapping to murder. Nonetheless, the myth lived on even though at the time of Clinton’s “welfare to work” bill African-American women made up only 10% of welfare recipients.

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The [Ground Zero Mosque] story on its face was manifestly bogus — namely that what was being built was a mosque or that it was anywhere near Ground Zero (it wasn’t and it wasn’t). A corollary theory, advanced by Mark Ames of Pando Daily and later Matthew Phelan of Gawker, is that the entire project was a shady, possibly bogus attempt to stir up right-wing outrage during the 2010 midterms. In his 2014 piece, "The Ground Zero Mosque Was an Inside Job,” Phelan builds on Ames' 2010 work to make the case that the mosque's primary funders are ex-CIA contractors with a web of ties to right-wing groups and defense industry organizations. This, and the fact that the center never even began construction, renders this theory somewhat plausible. In any event, there's little evidence there was ever any attempt to build a mosque in lower Manhattan, much less on Ground Zero.

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There was no doubt some criminality in the wake of Katrina, but a review of roaming gangs stories by the Times-Picayune later that September concluded most of them were either way overblown or totally false. As Slate pointed out last week, the only confirmed gunfire death in the days after Katrina was at the hands of police who shot Danny Brumfield, an unarmed black man, in the back. Katrina still serves as an example of how racist moral

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Since Obama’s entry into office in 2009, the right has framed his popularity among African Americans in thinly veiled racist terms, most notably how he’s going to give African Americans “free stuff” (presumably taken from hard-working white folk). One of the grossest examples has been the refrain of “Obama phones”— allegedly Obama’s plan to hand out phones to blacks in order to win their loyalty. — which heavily fed the paranoia of New Orleans authorities — can end up having deadly consequences. […] The program was indeed supported by Obama, but as Gawker’s Cord Jefferson points out, the FCC Lifeline Assistance program began under Ronald Reagan and has had broad bipartisanship ever since, expanding under Clinton to include mobile devices.

  

More examples here.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.