🚀 go-pugleaf

Ford Prefect <remailer@bi-node.zerberus.de> writes:

> That's pretty close.  In San Francisco it was primarily a broadcast
> media story that peaked in '93.  The SF area TV stations covered it
> heavily in the days preceeding the Superbowl, but otherwise it was
> rarely mentioned in the off-season except in dubious media "public
> affairs" dronings about spousal abuse or sports violence.  Prior to
> Superbowl Sunday, however, I saw it referred to on each Saturday
> evening local news broadcast I saw, and sometimes in considerable depth
> - including interviews with abuse hotline personnel, etc.  As I said, in
> '92 - '93 period, I am positive that I heard at least two-dozen
> references to it on TV and radio, including NPR.

Ford, darling? Honey, you're making stuff up again. The first
propagation of the Super Bowl/Domestic violence legend came, according
to Sommers herself, at a news conference on January 27, 1993, which was
a Wednesday. The statistical claims made at that conference were
debunked in an article which appeared in the Washington Post that next
Sunday, just four days later. By midweek, the debunking had spread
nationwide.

There was NO discussion of this issue before late January 1993. There
was exactly ONE Saturday between the propagation of the legend and its
debunking. And if you heard "two dozen" pieces on it before it broke,
you were watching a LOT of tv and reading a lot of newspapers during
the five or six days that the story was in play.

It's an interesting thing --- the debunking of this story has taken on
such a powerful societal weight that people like Ford honestly believe
they remember all sorts of things about it that can't possibly be true.
Yes, there have been dozens and dozens of articles about this, but
almost all of them have been about the debunking itself, and each one
that appears strengthens the impression that it was a big story to
begin with.

Ultimately, this was a smallish screwup as media frenzies go. Most of
the press got suckered by exaggerated (but not invented --- there WAS a
study, and it DID show a rise in violence after home team victories)
claims. But that happens all the time, and no one remembers it. Like
the Antioch rules on consent to sex that have transmogrified into
legendary written contracts for handholding on campuses nationwide,
this story perpetuates itself, magnifying the extent of the feminist
error each time it does.


Followups trimmed.

--
Angus Johnston

"How many teeth has a swordfish?"
"A swordfish has no teeth."
     -- Albert Mitchell, "The Answer Man" (1946)