"URBAN LEGEND" -- SOME DELIGHT IN SCHADENFREUDE

Urban Legend -- Some Delight in Schadenfreude

To my email address book readers:

Thanks to editorial columnist Joseph H. Brown of The Tampa Tribune I now know what "urban legend" means.

Brown, who always writes with control and panache, made reference in his Sunday column "All The 'News' Unfit To Print" to some of the wild stories posted on the Internet that are believed to be the unvarnished truth, when they are simply "urban legends." People cut and paste these stories into their emails, and then delight in disseminating them.

The point of the column was that there is an increasingly angry Internet surfing reader who feels newspapers are avoiding the "real stories." Not true.

Brown mentioned the "urban legend" of Andy Rooney. At least ten different emailers in my email address book sent me an article allegedly written by Rooney. The article made me very angry. I accepted it as true, and reacted in an email posted to my address book, and alas, also to my blog (www.fisherofideas.com).

I received a cryptic note from Joseph Brown afterwards: "This is only urban legend."

I had no idea what he meant, and never got back to asking him to explain.

My email to him that follows this (below) explains that I am not a Internet surfer of urban legends, not a radio talk "shock jock" listener, and get most of my information from reading and experience. I don't even own cable television.

The alleged "transcript" of "60 Minutes," that Andy Rooney was said to have made with these salacious political and racial views, never happened.

Brown:

"Anyone who has heard Rooney would know instantly (this) wasn't him." Well, not being a "60 Minutes" fan, I wouldn't know.

Brown continues:

"Rooney has been denying this garbage since 2003, and in 2005 disclaimed in a '60 Minutes' segment, saying, 'There's a collection of racist and sexist remarks on the Internet with a picture of me with the caption, 'Andy Rooney said on '60 Minutes...'

'If I could find the person who did write it using my name I would sue him.'"

Brown suggests the Rooney urban legend is alive and well years later, and will likely never die. Sad.

These vicious stories play on our natural inclination to schadenfreude, to the enjoyment of the faux pas of others, and so people will continue to delight in them.

People receptive to such nonsense are apparently too lazy to discover for themselves the real truth. Even more ominous, with this new electronic technology, the worst is yet to come.

People believe what they want to believe: all politicians are corrupt; all Jews are rich; all intellectuals are snobs; something must be rotten in Denmark when an ordinary kid succeeds.

Take me, for instance. I have several degrees from bachelor's to master's to doctorate's, and I have experienced my own variety of urban legend.

A friend has told me that people believe a prominent doctor in my hometown put me through school and greased the skids for my "good connections" and the "good life."

The truth is I never got a dime from anyone at any level through a nine-year college and university educational journey. My parents had no money, so it was entirely up to me. I put myself through school aided by good grades and academic scholarships at the bachelor's, master's, and doctorate's level. What's more, I never took out a school loan. As for my many careers, they, too, have had no sponsors, but a bit of luck and a lot of pluck.

But this is not what people want to hear, so my urban legend will probably continue long after my death.

Be always well,

Jim

-----------------
Forwarded Message:
Subj: RE: Today's column
Date: 12/17/2007 5:06:57 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: JBrown@tampatrib.com
To: THEDELTAGRPFL@cs.com
Received from Internet: click here for more information

Jim:
I remember reading Time magazine in high school and questioned some of the stuff published in it even back then. Henry Luce definitely had an agenda.
Joe

To Joseph H. Brown, Editorial columnist, The Tampa Tribune

Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2007 12:51 PM

SUBJECT: Today's column

Joseph,

Now I know what you mean by "urban legend." It was a new term to me.

I don't surf the Internet, but get from ten to twenty of these things to which you refer from people of my youth.

I don't listen to talk radio, never have. And I am not a fan of "60 Minutes," so didn't know whether Andy Rooney was this or that.

In fact the few times I listened to "60 Minutes" in the distant past, when it related to stories of which I had first hand information, I saw how the story was choreograph for making it viewer friendly to its point of view.

I read books, and still love newspapers especially the "op-ed" pages and sport pages. I feel journalism, especially television journalism has given a huge window to the miscreants of society reporting rape, murder and mayhem on the nightly news as if nothing of significance otherwise has happened in the last 24-hours.

Newspapers have not (yet) been reduced to such exclusive reporting.

Yes, there are people of The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and The New York Times that have sullied their reputations by allowing reporters to publish bogus reports and bogus series, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

The newspaper I have always loved more than any other is my own Iowa "The Des Moines Register." Even the "Daily Iowan" when I went to Iowa was awfully fair for a university newspaper. And the Tampa Tribune, thanks to people like you on its staff, has maintained a dispassionate and credible posture.

Years ago, Time magazine's featured an article (during the midst of the confusion that was the Vietnam War) with the headline, "What you should think about Vietnam."

Incensed, I wrote back that I don't want you to tell me what to think about that war, but for me to decide on my own what I think.

To the Time magazine's credit, an editor wrote back that slanting the news was its role, as anyone that read Time knew it had a point-of-view as, for instance, does Newsweek.

We live in a time when people (most people I know) are quite intelligent at doing things but quite lazy at thinking about things beyond the scope of their direct experience. They don't read, and are obliged to funnel things into their thinking that are convenient and consistent with what they want to believe is true. To penetrate this carapace is the function of a good newspaper.

Be always well,
Jim