Got an e-mail the other day that said the Ku Klux Klan endorsed Barack Obama to be our next president. The e-mail even came with an authentic-looking photo of a man carrying a sign crudely printed with the words “Anything better than Hillary. Vote Obama” walking next to a man dressed in flowing white robes and pointed Klan dunce cap.

Right off, the whole thing sounded too weird to be true. But the Klan does weird things, so I half-heartedly gave it a chance.

That is until I went to Snopes.com, a hoax-busting Web site, and found it not to be true. I found that the story actually came from a satirical British publication called the Daily Squib.

Every week I get tons of e-mails. Some come from business associates, news alerts and listservs. Others ask me to marry a lonely Russian girl or help out some rich Arabian king who can only get to his fortune through my bank account number.

But a large portion of e-mails come from well-meaning friends, like this sweet lady in Cameron who writes every time one of my articles appears in the paper. If she misses, I get worried.

Mostly they forward me jokes or information they think I might find useful.

What I hate is those e-mails that command you to forward them on to 10 more people. If you do, your prayers will be answered, and if you don’t, we’ll shoot the dog or whatever.

Over the past few days I received forwarded e-mails on issues ranging from Obama to military deaths to women’s heart attacks. Again, they came from well-meaning friends hoping to get a helpful word out.

“Bet you didn’t know the following:” began one e-mail. It then went on to show how in the eight Clinton years there were 13,417 military deaths compared to the 9,016 deaths (and still counting) in George W. Bush’s seven-year reign. This bit of information segued into an accusation of biased reporting by the media that minorities make up a big percentage of the lives lost in the Iraqi war. Not true, says the e-mail creator, it’s whites who actually make up the most war casualties. And he can back it up with numbers on the Congressional Research Service Web site.

The e-mail creator then asks, “Why does the mainstream Print and TV Media never provide statistics like these?”

My answer is: Why should we? Is it to say my war is better than your war? Or, look at how many white people or black people are dying in battle?

Too many of our young people are dying in battle. What we need now is unity, not more division.

Another e-mail, supposedly sent out by a nurse, warned about how female heart attacks differ from those of males. It said that men had the “Fred Sanford” chest-clutching type of attacks while women had the more subtle symptoms like nausea and jaw pain.

I mistakenly sent this bit of information on to my wife before checking it out on Snopes. Now her whole address book is probably misinformed.

Truth is, some heart attacks are intense and some only cause mild discomfort, and both men and women can experience either form. But Snopes said it is true that women are more likely, not exclusively, to experience the more subtler symptoms.

No doubt the Internet is a great way to spread and get information. Sometimes we just have to read a little further.

Alonzo Weston can be reached

at alonzow@npgco.com