I am truly amazed at how fast the right-wing noise machine works. On Feb. 3, Brit Hume on Fox News cobbles together two parts from an Franklin D. Roosevelt quote, adding his own text between them, to make it appear that FDR wanted Social Security to be replaced by private accounts. Then a week later, that quote is incorporated verbatim into a letter to the editor by Matt Mower (Feb. 10).

I had just heard a discussion about this on Air America radio, so I went to its Web site, which posts Brit Hume’s quote and the original FDR quote. The FDR quote outlines three proposals: one, temporary old-age pensions for those people who would be eligible to receive payments before any funds had built up; two, “compulsory-contribution annuities,” that is, Social Security; and, three, voluntary individual accounts.

FDR refers to the compulsory-contribution annuities becoming a self-supporting system (as it did) and explains that the self-supporting system would eventually eliminate the initial old-age pensions for those who were eligible to receive payment immediately. Voluntary accounts were a separate category.

Because Brit Hume is an anchor, not a pundit, Fox viewers probably assume that he’s stating a fact by saying that FDR wanted Social Security to become private accounts. He wasn’t stating a fact, he was misquoting, and that misquote gets spread by a very effective noise machine.

Renee Cote, Auburn