Urban Legends?

Many years ago, tiny alligators (perhaps two inches long) were popular as gifts. Absurd as this may seem, there were lots of weird things going on in what is now thought to be the buttoned-down, repressed 1950's. In fact, people went to parties, had sex, argued about important things, and invented rock and roll. In any event, legend had it that these "pets" were flushed down the toilet as reptilian discards, only to feast on sewage and grow into huge 'gators which patrolled the sewers of New York City to the great danger of the real-life Ed Nortons who made their subterranean livings beneath the manholes of our great metropolis. Happily, this was only urban legend, one of many.

With the advent of the internet, half-truths, rumors, satires, and out-and-out falsehoods, travel across cyberspace with the speed of, well, FIOS. This has posed a danger to those of us who grew up believing that anything printed presupposed a certain degree of diligence beyond that merely spoken or handwritten. Now, official-looking blogs, including mine, carry with them a presumption of authenticity having nothing to so with the probity of its authors. Today, however, I'm not asking you to take anything I say as true. All you have to do is accept the possibility that not everything you read is true simply because it appears in print.

As a lawyer, I have witnessed many things in and out of court that I would have scoffed at as unbelievable, had I not actually experienced them. That said, the yearly "ten-worst" legal occurrences (e.g. the "Stella Awards") bear little or no relationship to the truth. What they do accomplish is to reinforce the public's impression that (to quote Mr. Dooley) "the law is a ass." The most recent of the awards for the most outrageous cases decided in the past year gave first prize to one Mrs. Grezinskie who, after putting her Winnebago in cruise control (at 70 miles per hour), went to the back of her vehicle to (depending on which version you read) either make a sandwich or cup of coffee. When the mobile home went off the road and crashed, she sued for injuries on the grounds that the owner's manual didn't warn against the dangers of leaving the driver's seat when in cruise control. (I guess she thought the craft was on auto-pilot.) Anyway, as a consequence of injuries to herself and her vehicle, she supposedly recovered $1,750,000 plus a new Winnebago. (Seems only fair, right?) Anyway, this clap-trap gets sent around, and the more often it appears, the more credibility it seems to have. People love to re-circulate this nonsense and ask, "Can you believe this!" Uh, no.

I wanted to share with you two recent falsehoods that have been circulating about the web, each of which was passed on to me by well meaning friends or family, who cited them as calls to action against injustice. The first (which I received three times over an 18-month period from the same person) related the story that the United Kingdom had eliminated references to the holocaust from its secondary school curricula, so as not to offend the sensibilities of its growing Muslim population. After reading this, I checked with a lawyer who once worked for me and now has a successful practice as a solicitor in the U.K. In addition, he is actively involved in Jewish affairs. He told me that he was aware of this story, and that it was absolutely untrue. (Apparently, there is one school district that had made holocaust studies "optional," rather than as a required course.) After relating this to the person who sent it to me, I expected I would hear no more about it, perhaps even be copied on the mass mailing she would send to those to whom she had mistakenly circulated the falsehood. When I got the third rehashing of this same story, and called her to remind her of its untruth, she responded, "yes, but wouldn't it be awful if it were true." Now that was a hard point to argue!

(Here's a real-life falsehood that I can't blame on the internet.) I walked into a winter-coat storage facility a few months ago, and overheard the following snippet of a conversation between a customer and the proprietress: "Well, you know he's a Muslim." The proprietress, who knows better, merely nodded in assent. When I asked her, "Let me guess; might she have been talking about our President?", she confirmed that such was the case. When I said "You know that's not true, he's not a Muslim," she responded, "Yes, but he just as well might be." (Yeah, they're the worst kind!)

Most recently, I received a widely-circulated e-mail from a childhood friend, who admitted that, while he wanted to check on the accuracy of the piece, he was so alarmed that he wanted to send it to everyone he knew first. It cited a supposed 2008 appearance by then-candidate Obama on "Meet the Press," when he gave the following responses to questions from a (non-existent) Washington Post reporter. In the "interview," Senator Obama was said to explain that he (a) did not wear the American flag lapel pin because he did not want to offend people who see the U.S. as a negative force in the world, and (b) that the national anthem should be changed from the "Star Spangled Banner," to the Coke-inspired "I'd like to Teach the World to Sing."

As a sometime musician, I can tell you that (as any schoolchild knows) "The Star Spangled Banner" is a tough song to sing, and there are other patriotic songs that I would much prefer ("America the Beautiful," and "God Bless America," for two). As an unreconstructed folkie, I'd even be receptive to "This Land is Your Land," although there would be some appropriate debate upon on which of its six stanzas--some less familiar than others-- should be included. That, however, is something for a separate blog. (For the definitive word on alternate national anthems, try to get ahold of Albert Brooks's comic sketch on auditions for just such a song.) Hopefully these suggestions do not make me suspect, but at least you know where I stand. By the way, I do stand when the anthem is played. I even do so when, at Yankee -games, "God Bless America" is played during the seventh inning stretch, although there's no protocol requiring it. But, as the late Max Shulman was wont to say, I digress.

The point of my friend's sending out this e-mail blast was his concern that there had been no news coverage of the gaffe, thus "proving" the liberal conspiracy of the media. (I guess the fact that it was untrue was not a valid reason for its non-circulation.) When I wrote him about the inaccuracy of the information he was spreading (part of which stemmed from a satirical observation by a conservative critic and the rest being made up out of whole cloth), I reminded him that the revelations of Obama's former pastor not only received massive media coverage, but inspired a national address by the candidate that may have been his finest hour. That said, the one thing even President Obama's enemies grant is that he takes great care in his words, and that it would be extremely unlikely for him--or any candidate-- to say something so obviously impolitic. And, by the way, the failure to wear a lapel pin flag does not, in my humble view indicate anything about a person's patriotism. There are few more devoted New York Yankee fans than I, but I have never sported an "NY" lapel pin, and don't imagine I ever will. (Well, I might if they win the World Series again.)

My one hope, dear readers, is that e-mail recipients will follow the dictum of the late Oliver Wendell Holmes to "stop, look, and listen." In his case, it was a warning to those approaching railroad tracks. In the present instance, it is to underscore the need to not believe everything you read--whatever its source. And, more importantly, try to verify what you do read before passing it on as "proof" to others. Lastly, folks, do yourselves a favor and check those toilet bowls of your for alligators. You never know!