What’s ‘Problematic,’ When, and Why

May 182022
 

In my previous blog I discussed the (real and performative) outrage over Will Smith attacking Chris Rock at the Oscars, and the curious lack of outrage over co-host Amy Schumer’s long history of (alleged) racism. From racist jokes to behavior, Schumer’s past would seem to be problematic—especially for an Oscars that, for the first time, was run by an all-black production team. I wondered whether Schumer’s inclusion would only be seen (or, if you prefer, recognized) as problematic in retrospect.

My interest here is the how the subjective assumptions of harm change over time.

The question of “How did we not see this?” is often asked, retrospectively, about problematic entertainment such as beloved teen comedies including The Breakfast Club.

This response is interesting for a couple of reasons, including that the film’s plot contains a problematic theme or message. Of course many popular films and TV shows have potentially problematic plots, ranging from murder to incest to abuse (Game of Thrones, for example, manages a hat trick here); there’s nothing necessarily bad or toxic about messed up plots. So the real concern seems to be that The Breakfast Club—to take just one prominent example—was intended to depict aspirational and healthy real-life situations; that is that the audiences watched the film and believed that the characters’ behaviors were good or should be modeled. For many reasons—including having a background in psychology, education, and media literacy—I don’t actually think that’s a valid assumption (for more on this, see my CFI blog Fifty Shades of…Fear).

Policing Problematic Content

There is a long history of people fearing what nefarious influences in entertainment—typically on those society deems most gullible and feeble-minded; in centuries past this usually meant women and children, and in practice this fear of entertainment was often used to justify censorship and women’s oppression. The same principle underlies recent conservative concerns over Critical Race Theory and the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bills. The foundational fear is that children will be influenced—that is, corrupted—by exposure to information (never mind that Critical Race Theory has never been taught in public schools).

In her 2001 book Not In Front of the Children: ‘Indecency,’ Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth, Marjorie Heins notes that “Contemporary concerns about shielding children and adolescents from corrupting sexual ideas are traceable directly to Victorian-era fears that libidinous thoughts would lead to the ‘secret vice’ of masturbation. Proscriptions against arousing literature, relatively rare before 1800, thus became pervasive in the century that followed.”

Those proscriptions were often formalized into law. “The purpose of obscenity law was thus to prevent immoral literature from falling into the wrong hands, whether they be those of servants, the mentally deficient, women, or minors. That women and mental defectives were included among the classes to be ‘protected’ was consistent with the ideology of an era when, as Peter Gay recounts, women were also classed with ‘criminals, idiots, and minors’ for purposes of property and inheritance law.”  

Though ostensibly claimed to protect women, the fears were used to oppress them, deny their agency, and treat them as vulnerable victims. In fact, Anthony Comstock, director of the notorious censorship-happy Society for the Suppression of Vice, singled out feminists for targeting. Concerns over needing to “protect” delicate women from potentially harmful materials was a central feature of Comstock’s misogynistic mission. Suffragette and birth control advocate Mary Ware Dennett wrote a frank (and sex-positive) sex education pamphlet The Sex Side of Life in 1911, which later caused her to be targeted by Comstock. For more, see my interview with feminist sex educator Shelby Knox.

Problematic Subjectivity

What’s often missed in these arguments is that in many cases there were people objecting to the content at the time, and they were largely ignored. Why? Because the people complaining were often (rightly or wrongly) dismissed as religious fundamentalist ninnies who needed to lighten up and take a joke.

I lived through it and remember it well; the Moral Majority crowd and Tipper Gore, among many others, were trying to tell musicians and artists what content they should create (and succeeded in getting parental warning labels on potentially objectionable music content that remains to this day). For a reminder, see RUN-DMC’s video for their hit “Mary Mary,” which features protesters complaining about the sex and violence in rap videos.

It’s satire, of course, but represents a vocal minority that tried to curb entertainment, from RUN DMC and NWA to Guns N Roses to Judas Priest. It wasn’t just rap lyrics; it was also violent video games and even tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons—with all the accompanying Satanic Panic fears. And, yes, it was also raunchy teen comedies of the 1980s and 1990s, claimed to be exposing impressionable youth to inappropriate language, nudity, and sex.

I always wonder what things we take as acceptable today will be considered problematic in 20 or 30 years. For example the recent Superbowl halftime performance was widely praised, but featured at least three performers who have been accused of rape, abuse against women, and/or having violent, rapey and homophobic lyrics (Eminem, Dre, and Snoop Dogg). Some conservatives predictably groused, but the liberals and progressives were another matter. Most of them (rightly) praised the show for its diversity and performance, but were conspicuously silent about the problematic pasts of several of the performers. Like Amy Schumer four months later—and, arguably, like The Breakfast Club some 37 years earlier—it was ignored.

To be clear: I take no particular offense at any of these performers—Dre’s NWA colleague Eazy-E is more my style, and I’ve seen Schumer perform live—but why their problematic pasts were ignored is an interesting question: Is it a lack of sufficient sensitivity (what some might derisively term “wokeness”), or due to the inherently subjective and ambiguous nature of outrage and offense, or even hypocrisy?

Were 2022 audiences oblivious to, or unaware of, Schumer’s racist past or the problematic pasts of Eminem, Dre, and Snoop Dogg? Possibly. Or they just didn’t care or take it seriously because they were enjoying the show.

Were 1985 audiences oblivious to, or unaware of, the (apparently) problematic themes in The Breakfast Club? Possibly. Or they just didn’t care or take it seriously because they were enjoying the show.

Will our kids look back and shake their heads in dismay about why we didn’t stand up and protest? Are we right now to let those things pass without objection, or were we right then? In other words if the difference is that we (that is, kids today and ourselves) are more enlightened than we were back then, why aren’t we (and they) expressing due outrage now?

Part of the answer may lie in the fact that the idea that lay audiences have a social obligation to complain or “make their voices heard” and warn others about potentially problematic scenes and themes in entertainment is a relatively recent development. In decades past, some people might complain about sex or violence in entertainment, but it was often a handful of self-appointed moral guardians (Anthony Comstock, Fredric Wertham, or Tipper Gore, for example) who would champion the cause, often for personal and political gain.

But there has been a rise in offense culture over the past decade—greatly enabled by social media—of people who feel the need to denounce and highlight materials they believe are socially damaging, regardless of whether there is any objective evidence for that harm or not. It’s not so much that audiences in the 1980s didn’t necessarily find some of the materials objectionable—although most didn’t—rather, most just didn’t feel the need to vigorously denounce it. Cultural sensitivity has dramatically changed, but it’s also that most people in the 1980s and 1990s didn’t fear that innocuous teen films of the era would or could damage America’s moral fiber.

Chronically popular-but-politically incorrect (and often sexually explicit) television shows such as Archer, Shameless, Family Guy, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Girls, and Game of Thrones, to name just a few, demonstrate that American appetites for crudity are as strong as ever. Game of Thrones is an especially interesting example; it was widely praised and beloved by critics and fans alike, winning a Peabody, 59 Emmies, and eight Screen Actors Guild Awards. It was also criticized by some for depictions of rape, as well as gratuitous nudity and violence. Will the next generation wonder how such a (potentially) problematic and sexist show could have been so popular among both women and men?

It would be a difficult task to find an American over the age of 13 who has not seen some of this questionable content; the fact that acting like the characters in these shows is not an epidemic problem in our country bears out the theory that viewers are able to enjoy crude comedies or dramas without absorbing some polluting message that will alter their behavior or morals. By the same token, introducing grade schoolers to age-appropriate gender identity issues isn’t likely to cause harm. As long as the debate remains unanchored in scientific evidence of demonstrable harm, the cycle will continue.

A longer version of this piece appeared on my CFI website blog. 

 

 

 
 

Investigating the ‘Stonehenge Surprise’ Crop Circle

May 152022
 

The new issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine features my investigation into the amazing crop circle that appeared near Stonehenge in 1996. It’s unique in its complexity and that it’s said to have been created in under an hour during daytime. I offer a different explanation… If you’re not a subscriber you can sign up here! 

 

‘Science Friction’ Documentary Now Out!

May 082022
 

The long-awaited documentary SCIENCE FRICTION, which is pretty good despite my involvement, is now available on Prime Video! It’s about how scientists are deceptively edited on TV, and available now on Amazon Prime and Tubi, find it at https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B09RQFWJ4L, Add to Watchlist or buy or rent it, then you can see it on your Prime TV app.

Check it out!

Squaring the Strange #174: A Musical History of the Devil

May 062022
 

New episode of Squaring the Strange is out! This time the devil’s not in the details, he’s in the music! From violinists centuries ago to hard rock and even country music, the devil shows up quite a lot. Pascual takes us on a diabolical tour of musical folklore involving Mr. Scratch… Check it out!

 

Chapter in New Book: ‘North American Monsters’

Apr 182022
 

I’m delighted to have contributed a chapter in this new book on the folklore of monsters! I haven’t read it yet but many of the other authors are brilliant friends and colleagues, and I’m looking forward to it.

Mining a mountain of folklore publications, North American Monsters unearths decades of notable monster research. Nineteen folkloristic case studies from the last half-century examine legendary monsters in their native habitats, focusing on ostensibly living creatures bound to specific geographic locales.

A diverse cast of scholars contemplate these alluring creatures, feared and beloved by the communities that host them—the Jersey Devil gliding over the Pine Barrens, Lieby wriggling through Lake Lieberman, Char-Man stalking the Ojai Valley, and many, many more. Embracing local stories, beliefs, and traditions while neither promoting nor debunking, North American Monsters aspires to revive scholarly interest in local legendary monsters and creatures and to encourage folkloristic monster legend sleuthing.

 

More info HERE!

Squaring the Strange # 170: Pet Psychics and Psychic Pets

Apr 152022
 

In case you missed our recent Squaring the Strange, we talk about people who think they can talk to animals. Or people who think their animal can talk to them — psychically, of course. Yes, it’s Pet Psychics and Psychic Pets time… Listen HERE!

 

Mystery of the Borderline Bar Silent Shooting

Apr 122022
 

A few years ago I investigated and solved a mystery that stumped both conspiracy theorists (not hard to do) and a noted science educator (more difficult). Why did eyewitness video of a nightclub shooting contradict eyewitness accounts?

 

On November 7, 2018, a shooting at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, California, by former Marine Ian David Long left nearly a dozen people dead, including the shooter. 

One victim, Sgt. Ron Helus, it was revealed recently, was killed not by Long but instead “friendly fire” from another police officer’s gun in the chaos. Dozens more were injured, mostly while escaping the club.

It was the latest horrific mass shooting, and Dann Broadbent, a science communicator, writer, and cohost of A Science Enthusiast podcast, examined it on his website. Broadbent wrote, “It was the 307th mass shooting this year (today is the 312th day of this year, too). This is our new normal. We consider ourselves to be better than the rest of the world, yet we have more gun violence per capita than any other developed country in the world.”

There are a few things we could unpack in this comment. In a future article I’ll examine the seeming epidemic of mass shootings, but in a previous column I wrote about concerns that Americans are numb, that mass shootings are becoming so routine and “the new normal” that citizens have lost their ability to be outraged.

What caught my eye was this comment: “I watched videos of the shooting last night. I heard the gunshots. But I didn’t hear people screaming, because we as a society now know that in an active shooter situation, you don’t scream because that draws extra attention to you. You get down, and look for ways to get out as quickly as possible.”

That seemed like a strange—and improbable—aspect of the attacks. No one screamed as a self-described “insane” maniac shot people in the nightclub? Everyone was silent (well, as silent as a country music nightclub would be) and careful not to yell or make a noise lest he or she draw attention?

After the attack had begun, of course, the circumstances would change. Potential victims hiding and staying silent in the presence of enemies with weapons is nothing new; it’s been a defensive tactic for millennia and was described in accounts of the Columbine school shootings in 1999. But perhaps in today’s world where shootings seem common, people in the Borderline Bar really did have the savvy and self-control to keep silent during the attack.

I didn’t follow the news coverage that closely, but I saw and read many interviews with survivors, none of whom mentioned an eerie silence from the killer’s potential victims.

Instead they described chaos: people yelling, screaming, and shouting. One victim, Bryce Colvard, described his friends shouting at him to get down; another student, Teylor Whittler, said that during the shooting “Everyone just yelled, ‘Run, he’s coming!’” and so on. Multiple news reports described victims screaming and yelling.

It got me wondering why someone would think or assume that the club’s victims were silent during such a terrifying scene. Where did that odd bit of misinformation come from? Broadbent referenced his source: the video he watched of the shooting in which “I didn’t hear people screaming …You can watch one of the videos yourself, but I must warn you that it’s extremely disturbing.”

Tale of the Tape

I watched the one-minute video he linked to, posted (and presumably taken) by Dallas Knapp on Instagram, from inside the club. Loud gunfire can be clearly heard, as can breaking glass and some indistinct sounds.

The video is dark and unclear; at first glance I had initially thought it was taken outside the club. It shows a chaotic scene and a dark, empty dance floor. A man is seen in the background, but it’s not clear if it’s the shooter, a victim, or a police officer. The cameraman turns and runs, exiting the building moments later.

Chicago’s ABC 7 News described the video: “The video shows what appears to be a semi-empty dance floor as a man dressed in dark clothing is behind a counter-like wall and shooting. About 10 gunshots are heard in the video. The man taking the video runs out of the venue and yells, ‘Guys, run, he’s coming out this door!’ Several people are heard screaming in the distance.”

It’s not just Broadbent of A Science Enthusiast who remarked on the video and noted there was something odd about it. In fact, myriad conspiracy theorists watched the same video and suggested that the shooting was a hoax, a “false flag” operation. A sampling of these opinions can be found in the responses to the video linked to within a CNN report:

  • “I don’t see anyone except one man not running but casually behind in the next room and the camera man. There would be people running all over the place and people on the ground.”
  • “THE ROOM WAS EMPTY!!! LET THAT SINK IN PEOPLE!!! YOU ARE BEING PLAYED!!!”
  • “You’re telling me a club with hundreds of people and an active shooter was quiet enough for the microphone to CLEARLY pick up the sounds of glass breaking and not be drowned out by the sounds of panic?”
  • “Either THAT VIDEO was staged independently of the actual incident where people may have truly been injured or it’s ALL bullshit.”
  • “WTF did I just watch? A video of an empty bar and then audio of gunshots. What happened to the 100s of people who were supposedly partying and line dancing? Where was all the mayhem that ensued afterwards? What, no one screaming? No one diving for cover on the floor. No stampede for the doorways and no one throwing chairs through windows? Oh my how horrific this video is indeed. It seems to contradict the eyewitness accounts. I’m calling BS.”

The last conspiracy poster’s comment reflects Broadbent’s observation: “What, no one screaming? … It seems to contradict the eyewitness accounts.” It’s a fair and accurate statement, so what can we make of it?

The Video versus the Victims: What’s Going On?

We can examine this through the lens of critical thinking, science, and skepticism. On one hand we have dozens of eyewitnesses who described the horror they saw and heard, including shouting and screaming; on the other hand, we have a short, ambiguous video clip that, superficially, seems to contradict them.

In fact there’s no contradiction: Eyewitnesses, such as Holden Harrah interviewed on the Today Show, stated that Long appeared at the door and immediately began shooting people. News reports state that the attacker fired at least sixty rounds; of those, about nine or ten can be heard in the video. Thus, we are seeing about one-sixth of the number of shots fired, with the balance coming before and/or after the video was recorded.

The dance floor is largely (or entirely) empty when the video was recorded because by that point the shooting had been going on for some time; it only takes a few seconds to clear a small dance floor. The room is very dark, and no victims can be seen; if there are any, they’re hiding behind tables or are in other rooms or are already outside. It’s true that in that video clip there’s no loud screaming, since the place is mostly empty at that point; few if any of the fifty or so patrons originally in the main room were left. There were reportedly about 200 people on the premises, including cooks, staff, people in other rooms, etc., most of whom fled in other directions and never directly encountered the shooter; the video depicts Knapp moving from the dance floor to the exit in seconds.

No music can be heard in the clip either—not because no music was being played that night at the nightclub but because the music, like the screaming, ceased soon after the shooting began. There’s nothing unusual or suspicious about it. We would not expect to hear people screaming in that room for the same reason we would not expect to see a full dance floor.

It’s like watching video taken by a driver after a car accident and finding it curious or suspicious that the footage doesn’t show the entire event before the cars collided. Why would it? Just because we don’t see some specific aspect of an event in a short video clip of that event doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Conspiracy theorists find it suspicious that more videos of the shooting have not been made public. It seems likely that most of the victims that night were too busy running or hiding to pull out their cell phones and record the events; that one person did isn’t particularly surprising.

There are likely additional videos from police body cameras and security systems that have been reviewed by police but may not be made public. Since the suspect is dead, there will be no criminal trial and no necessary reason to release them.

In fact just recently, after a protracted legal battle by journalists at The Hartford Courant, police released documentation about Adam Lanza, the shooter in the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre—six years after the conspiracy-laden event.

Authorities are not legally obligated to release any and all information about a crime simply to satisfy the morbidly curious and conspiracy theorists. (And, of course, such videos will not satisfy the conspiracy minded: “Yeah, so if this is real, why wasn’t this video released right away? FAKE!!!”)

Anyone can make mistaken assumptions; we all do it. It’s not a question of believing the victims or believing the video; we can do both if we examine the evidence closely—and we must be careful not to create contradictions where none exist, because those are the building blocks of conspiracies.

 

A longer version of this piece appeared on my CFI blog; you can find it here. 

 

 
 

 

 

Parsing ‘Possible’

Apr 082022
 

One of the favorite techniques of mystery mongers when confronted by skeptics or good evidence—or just plain common sense—is to reply “But isn’t it possible?” This is a standard ploy on countless paranormal-themed television shows, including (and especially) those dealing with ancient aliens.

This is often said with some degree of smug satisfaction, as if some universal truth had been laid down and the critic should just concede defeat and move along. Sure, maybe there’s no evidence whatsoever for Claim X—but how arrogant it would be to confidently and omnisciently rule it out! When I’m confronted with this fallacy, as I often am, I explain that there’s some (often unintentional) confusion between possible, plausible, and probable. This is a point that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention in critical thinking and skeptical circles, and I thought it would be worth exploring.

To scientists, statisticians, and actuaries the distinctions between what is possible, plausible, and probable are important, especially in the context of threats and dangers. Because these distinctions are rarely made (and in fact are routinely conflated) by the media, understanding how risk is measured is an important part of critical thinking and media literacy.

• Possible is of course the lowest bar, and from a scientific view anything is possible. It’s possible that a huge asteroid might come out of nowhere next month and kill all life on the planet. It’s possible that as you’re reading these words a child is being born in Pakistan who can fly like Superman and breathe underwater. It’s possible that a close friend of yours will be mugged by a left-handed serial killer named Wilbur. Science does not operate on certainties, and strictly speaking, anything is possible. As such, it’s essentially meaningless. Defense attorneys and conspiracy theorists love to use this “retreat to the possible” logical fallacy despite significant evidence to the contrary: “Yes, my client was seen and videotaped robbing this store, and sure, his fingerprints were found at the scene—but isn’t it possible that he has an evil twin that no one knew about who did this crime, while my client was busy volunteering at the homeless shelter across town?”

• Plausible is a more subjective measure; what’s plausible, or believable, depends on who you ask, what their knowledge base is, the context, and other factors. Often a claim that is plausible to a layperson is implausible to an expert; for example, a religious group’s claim of reducing a city’s violent crime through prayer will likely seem implausible to a police chief, who would use other methods. Or a president’s claim that building a border wall will stop illegal immigration would be considered implausible by experts on national security. What’s plausible also depends on what sort of information a person has access to—which is why it’s vital to have accurate information about the world upon which to reach a conclusion.

• Probable is the most valid, important, and science-based criterion. Unlike the meaninglessness of stating what is possible, and the vagaries associated with plausibility, probability has recourse to hard data and statistics. Experts may have honest disagreements about data interpretation, but we have reasonably good data on baselines for countless metrics and demographics—from the causes of car accidents to cancer incidence to the numbers of homicides. Statisticians and actuaries can tell you what your overall likelihood is of anything from being a crime victim to getting cancer (based on your genetics, diet, and lifestyle choices). It’s not precise or guaranteed, and there are outliers—some hamburger-loving chain smokers live to be 100, and some diligent vegan exercisers drop dead at 30—but typically the data conforms to a normal, bell-curve distribution. This is the power of data over anecdotes.

Yet we do not see many accurate discussions on probability in news stories designed to gather clicks as they ride currents of fear or outrage. Getting into the habit of looking for data on probabilities—and noticing when it is conspicuously absent from an article or discussion—is a valuable way to cut through misleading narratives and claims. Doing so will not just raise your level of media literacy, it will likely also decrease your anxiety—if you, like many, find yourself overwhelmed at times by the flood of panic-inducing stories served up as news and social media commentary.

Fearmongers routinely inflate dangers in an attempt at social control. If you can exaggerate small, remote dangers into prominent and visceral ones, you can scare the public and create division. This is often done by activists or candidates with a social or political agenda in mind, but the media also regularly subjects the public to alarmist news and studies, some more fact-based than others. The same applies to mystery mongers forced to concede the paucity of evidence for their claims. As always, skepticism is an important tool in critical thinking, so the next time you hear the lame rhetorical ploy “Isn’t it possible?” just reply, “Of course; anything is possible. You’re asking the wrong question.”

 

A longer version of this piece appeared on my CFI blog; you can find it here. 

 

 

 
 

Squaring the Strange #17: Deathbed Confessions, Real and Rumored

Apr 062022
 

The new episode of our podcast Squaring the Strange is out! This time we discuss a short list of purported deathbed confessions. The last words of a consequential figure can be hijacked or twisted to fit agenda — or, sometimes, it’s not just the words that are made up, it’s the person too. From cautionary tales to urban legends, deathbed confessions are a peculiar branch of the folklore tree. There are also very real deathbed confessions that have solved mysteries, revealed crimes, or reversed a long-held position. Check it out!

 

Searching for Cressie, the Crescent Lake Monster

Apr 042022
 

The UK Skeptics have a fun piece I wrote about investigating Cressie, a lake monster in Newfoundland. Check it out, and for more on this see my book “Lake Monster Mysteries,” co-written with Joe Nickell! An excerpt is below, and you can read the rest HERE!

 

 

Crescent lake is a picturesque body of water in northeastern Newfoundland, Canada, near the small town of Robert’s Arm. Settlement of the area dates back to the 1870s, though other native peoples, including the Beothuk Indians, were early visitors. Robert’s Arm (formerly Rabbit’s Arm) has a population of about a thousand. The scenery is gorgeous, with walking trails snaking over lush green hills and around the placid lake. Though the region’s natural beauty is the main attraction, it is the huge, dragon-like creature with fearsome teeth by the side of the road that draws visitors’ stares. Next to it a sign welcomes visitors to “The ‘Loch Ness’ of Newfoundland!” Crescent Lake, deep and cold, is allegedly home to a local lake monster affectionately known as Cressie.

Along with colleague Joe Nickell, I’ve previously investigated other Canadian lakes in search of the reputed denizens in their depths (Radford & Nickell, 2006). Ontario beasties Champ (of Lake Champlain; Nickell, 2003; Radford, 2003), Igopogo (of Lake Simcoe), and Quebec’s Memphre (of Lac Memphremagog) were no-shows despite our best efforts. I arrived at the lake on a crisp spring day last year hoping that Newfoundland’s famous hospitality extended to their local monster.

But it was not to be. I scanned the horizon and quickly determined that Cressie was not on hand to greet me, so I headed a short distance into Robert’s Arm and inquired about it at the town hall. I got a few curious looks from the pleasant, raven-haired woman behind the desk. Finally her face lit up and she said, “Oh, you need to talk to Fred Parsons, he’s your monster man.”

I’d been traveling in Newfoundland for less than a week and hadn’t quite acclimated to the local accents and cadence. Because of that, I sort of missed the first name and just made a mental note to ask for a man named Parsons; in a town as small as Robert’s Arm, I thought, surely there’s only one. Little did I know that half the town was named Parsons.

I finally did find Fred, a former teacher (and “Citizen of the Year”) with an easy smile and warm handshake. We sat on the town hall steps while he told me about his Cressie sighting: On July 9, 1991, Fred and his wife left Robert’s Arm at around noon for a doctor’s appointment in Corner Brook. As he drove along the lake, he saw something in the water perhaps 100 yards out. “What I saw was like a long, snake-like creature on the water,” he told me. “It was about fifteen or twenty feet long and a dark brownish colour – It was a long, sleek body without any significantly large head, basically right on the water.” He glimpsed it only briefly, and by the time he realized he might have seen Cressie he had passed it by. In the years following his sighting, Fred became the area’s resident collector of lake monster reports, clipping local newspaper items and interviewing witnesses…

A Book of Books about Beasts

Mar 282022
 

Review of Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist’s Library

By Matt Bille

The subject of cryptozoology, like many Fortean fields, is plagued by poor scholarship. This is not a dig at the topic, but merely an undeniable and unfortunate fact. Whether the subject is psychics, or ghosts, or anything else, there is no shortage of information on these topics, but what’s needed is not merely information but good, valid, well-researched information. There is a huge difference between some random blogger’s opinions of the existence of Bigfoot, and, for example, organized, published research by noted, credible researchers such as John Green, Jeff Meldrum, Karl Shuker, or Daniel Perez. Cryptozoology is a big tent, and for any given cryptid there will be a variety of sources and researchers; for lake monsters, for example, one might look for noted researchers such as John Kirk, Roy Mackal, Loren Coleman, Michel Meurger, or Peter Costello (or even, I might modestly add, Joe Nickell and myself).

Of course for every one of these people there are dozens or hundreds of others who have also written on the same topic. The point is not to create or enforce some arbitrary cutoff for who is or is not a good scholar or careful researcher—though hopefully that would become apparent in the process—but instead to give the casual reader some guide to it all.

In many cases it’s simply plagiarized, cut-and-pasted material from elsewhere. About ten years ago while reviewing a cryptozoological topic I stumbled across huge swaths of a popular book that had simply been lifted from internet sources: The Element Encyclopedia of Vampires: An A – Z of the Undead, by Theresa Cheung and published by an otherwise reputable house, HarperCollins. It became clear that Cheung “wrote” many entries her book by merely typing a subject name into Google and then cutting and pasting paragraphs from the top three or four hits, changing a few words, and then submitting it as her own work. (For more on my investigation see my article “Investigating Plagiarism in New Age Books” in the July/August 2013 issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine). My colleague Kenny Biddle exposed similar plagiarism issue with the Zak Bagans book—or, rather, the book attributed to Bagans—Ghost-Hunting For Dummies.

I mention this because just as one of the chief challenges for cryptozoologists is trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, the hoaxes from the good evidence, the same challenge applies to scholarly researchers. There’s no central authority making any attempt to hold evidence to any scientific evidential standard. In scientific research, there is some semblance of gatekeeping (imperfect as it is), partly because researchers are held professionally accountable for mistakes. For example, if the editor of a top medical journal publishes highly dubious (or even outright hoaxed) research, he or she can expect significant opprobrium, including calls to resign. There is no analogous position in Bigfoot research; a handful of journals have attempted to impose some scholarly standards on the research, including Cryptozoology: Interdisciplinary Journal of the International Society of Cryptozoology (1982–1996). But most of what passes for cryptozoological research appears in blogs, New Age books, and social media posts with little or no quality control or outside input (much less skeptical commentary).

This is one reason why Matt Bille’s book Of Books and Beasts is useful, providing some token effort at quality control and a sense of what’s useful. As the back cover notes, “Science writer and cryptozoology researcher Matt Bille offers 400 reviews of significant books in cryptozoology, supporting sciences like biology, and cryptozoological fiction. Matt’s selections, based on 45 years of reading and writing on zoology and cryptozoology, favor reliable science and history, providing an essential foundation for enthusiasts and skeptics alike. The search for unknown animals starts here.” I have several of his cryptozoology-related books, my favorite of which is Shadows of Existence: Discoveries and Speculations in Zoology.

The book is a delight to peruse, and offers excellent capsule descriptions on hundreds of books and sources that had flown under my—and surely most people’s—radar. It is sprinkled with quotes and occasionally whimsical “Matt’s Musings,” brief commentary set off in italics. The book is culled primarily from book reviews written over the decades for the Exotic Zoology newsletter, his blog, and other sources. The entries, which range from a few sentences to a few pages, are engaging and concise, and occasionally point to updated or reissued volumes. The book is divided into four sections: Cryptozoology Books; Related Sciences; Crypto-Fiction; and A Marvelous Miscellany.

My main reservation about Of Books and Beasts is not Bille’s writing style nor expertise but instead the book’s purpose and scope. When eager authors ask me for book writing advice I first ask them to identify their audience and tell me how the book will serve that audience. What will they get from it? How will it help them? Why should they pick up that book instead of another, similar title by a different author? What, specifically, are they bringing to the project that makes it worth their (often considerable) time to write, and more importantly their readers’ time to read?

This reader’s perspective was an issue I repeatedly returned to reading Of Books and Beasts. Bille is candid about the scope of the material in the book, offering many broad caveats about why books were left out. Some are fairly understandable and straightforward, such as including only books in English, original editions, and under a century old. He reviews only books he’s personally read; omitted most (but not all) of the state-specific titles (e.g., Monsters of Missouri); and skipped over annuals published by periodicals. But he also “passed over or culled many of the Sasquatch and Loch Ness books because they’d overwhelm this entire book,” with no indication given about which books are omitted, or why (other than that the sheer quantity of them, regardless of their quality, would render them unmanageable). If Bille was not interested in (or didn’t read about) a particular cryptid, no matter how popular—say, Mothman, thunderbirds, or the chupacabra—then they may merit only a passing mention, if they appear at all.

I understand that the book is not meant to be, and cannot be, definitive or exhaustive, and I’m sympathetic to his plea of “too many books” (p. x) but this speaks to a basic problem in the scope of the book. You can’t write a dictionary and arbitrarily omit some words merely because including them would be too cumbersome, in the same way that you can’t offer a book on the fifty states and leave out a few because the task became overwhelming. For the same reason you can’t offer a seemingly authoritative book on the cryptozoological literature and leave out swaths of material. I suspect that George Eberhart and Michael Newton, authors of the two main cryptozoology encyclopedias, encountered the same issue. It’s a monumental task, if done correctly, to write informative entries, along with references, for hundreds of reputed cryptids.

For a book whose subtitle promises cryptozoology, surprisingly little of the book is dedicated to cryptozoology per se; only the first section (about 125 pages) deals with, in order: A Basic Library of Cryptozoology, Primates, Land Animals, Lake and Sea Creatures, and Others. This raises the venerable questions of demarcation in cryptozoology, which can profitably be approached from many different angles including eyewitness accounts, folklore, and so on. The second half of the book covers a much broader scope, from evolution to paleontology to fiction involving cryptids and monsters. These are all arguably within the purview—but again so are folklore, eyewitness testimony, forensics, and so on, all of which are absent here. This is not Bille’s fault, of course, and there’s no particular reason he would have reviewed books on those topics. But it does limit the book’s utility for its intended audience, who likely would have preferred a broader selection of core cryptozoology books. The review copy I was provided had nearly thirty pages of unnumbered indices—containing only lists of authors but no corresponding page numbers—which made it very difficult to use as a reference, though I was told that later editions would have a numbered index.

The book is best understood and appreciated as a well-read cryptozoology researcher’s interesting (albeit idiosyncratic and limited) thoughts and reviews of books he’s read on the topic of cryptozoology. The book walks a fine—and occasionally crossed—line between straight book review and commentary about the topics under review; despite Bille’s note in the afterword that “I’ve avoided offering my opinions in the various cryptids as much as I can,” his opinion on many come though clearly. This is not a criticism, and in fact if anything I would have welcomed a section at the end of each chapter (instead of at the end of each review, which would quickly become repetitive) on his learned take on the topics. After all, he has read more cryptozoology books than most of us (even in the field) ever will, so he’s in a great position to do so. Nevertheless, that material can be found in his other books, including Shadows of Existence, as noted above. For what it is, overall Of Books and Beasts is an informative and entertaining collection of one noted cryptozoologist’s book reviews.

 

 

 
 

Chapter in New Book: ‘North American Monsters A Contemporary Legend Casebook’

Mar 182022
 

I’m delighted to have contributed a chapter in this new book on the folklore of monsters! I haven’t read it yet but many of the other authors are brilliant friends and colleagues, and I’m looking forward to it. I also did the cover art!

Check it out HERE!

Squaring the Strange # 170: Pet Psychics and Psychic Pets

Mar 162022
 

New episode of Squaring the Strange is now out! After a brief discussion on the recent jailbreak (rock break?) of a Japanese nine-tailed fox demon and some thoughts on war rumors we talk about people who think they can talk to animals. Or people who think their animal can talk to them — psychically, of course.

Yes, it’s Pet Psychics and Psychic Pets time… check it out!

 

Evidence for ‘The Entity’ Case? Still Waiting…

Mar 142022
 

Kenny Biddle and I wrote articles on the true story behind “The Entity” 1982 horror film. We were challenged in an episode of the Three Tortured Souls show by a guy who complained that we weren’t being fair to the original paranormal researcher, Barry Taff, upon whose work the film was loosely based. Taff did an astonishingly bad investigation job, which his defender basically admitted, but said that the original research (somewhere in a CA storage unit) would prove us wrong.

Kenny and I offered to pay to have the research located and analyzed, but we never heard back..

 

Squaring the Strange #168 – Sex Urban Legends

Mar 102022
 

Did you miss out recent show on Sex Urban Legends? First, all the way from New York City Skeptics, Russ Dobler drops in to tell us about AIPT Comic’s skepticism month — and we also chat about Joe Rogan and Ivermectin. Then our main topic is sex urban legends, a field so fertile it’s a veritable cornucopia of naughty, forbidden, lurid, or merely humiliating tales that someone swears happened to a friend’s cousin’s boss’s uncle. From Lemmiwinks the gerbil to the poor woman impregnated by a Civil War bullet, we dive into stories old and new about a topic people never seem to tire of.

 

Check it out HERE!

‘Clerical Error Fries Phoenix Faithful’ by Jim Underdown

Mar 032022
 

My buddy Jim Underdown asks some pointed questions about recent news that a priest’s wrong spoken word during baptisms jeopardized souls: “Fr. Andres Arango has jeopardized the everlasting souls of (presumably) hundreds of parishioners who were baptized by him — and potentially sent them hell bound. If your church is telling you that a random error by someone else is putting your eternity in jeopardy, then they’re out of their minds and it’s time to move on. Enough is enough.”

 

Check it out HERE!

Quoted in New Book: ‘Disenchantment, Re-Enchantment, and Folklore Genres’

Feb 282022
 

Not the most compelling cover art, but I’m quoted in this new book from the Belgrade Institute for Literature and Arts. The subject, of all things, is my research into the Pokemon seizure panic of 1997.

 

Check it out HERE! 

 

Squaring the Strange #167: Bob Larson, the D-List Demon Dispatcher

Feb 202022
 

The new episode of Squaring the Strange is out! This week we discuss an old Satanic Panic dog learning some new tricks. Televangelist Bob Larson has turned to giving remote exorcisms via Skype and Zoom these past few years, and we speak with two people who have endured such events, as both participant and audience. JD Sword wrote a recent article about his strange (and underwhelming) experience with Larson exorcising a doll (or not), and Alisa Yang has turned her exorcism into a short-form documentary called “Sleeping with the Devil,” available on Vimeo now.

Check it out! 

 

The Battle Over Wikipedia Misinformation: Interview with Guerilla Skeptic Guru Susan Gerbic

Feb 152022
 

If—like most people—you’ve ever searched Wikipedia for skeptical topics, or looked there for topic covered by organized skepticism, chances are you’ve probably read some of Susan Gerbic’s work. She’s a (very) active member of the Center for Inquiry and the Independent Investigations Group. She’s also one of the driving forces behind trying to bring skepticism, balance, and critical thinking to the world’s most-used reference. In 2011 she responded to e-mailed questions from a secret bunker somewhere in California; this interview revisits that time, with a few updates. You can hear more from Susan on the podcast I co-host, Squaring the Strange, as well as YouTube. Susan and her colleagues have also garnered significant attention from the mainstream news media, including Wired, Medium, The New York Times magazine, and other places.

BR: What’s your background?

SG: Born and raised in Salinas, California, the youngest child of a youngest child. Professional portrait photographer for three decades, I specialize in people who do not want their portrait taken—which means the very young and the old and cranky. 

I was four classes away from a Masters degree in American History when I quit college in 2004, it was either the Graduate degree or a long-distance relationship with skeptic Mark Edward (author of Psychic Blues: Confessions of a Conflicted Medium) who lived 6 hours away.  I have two grown sons, Caspian, and my younger son Stirling who attends all the skeptical functions with me.

Raised Southern Baptist, I never heard the word atheist until I was in my late teens, once I found out there were other people who felt like I did, I read everything I could on the subject.  Discovered skepticism as a community in 2000 while looking for a topic for a college paper.  Attended a small gathering in San Jose, met Carol and Ben Baumgartner, Dr. Wallace Sampson, Dr. Jere Lipps and was hooked.  Went to the Skeptic Toolbox in Eugene, Oregon that August and felt like I found my people! I’m officially a skeptical junkie, just waiting for the paperwork to prove it [I’ve been promised by those at CFI that it’s on its way and should be there soon–BR].

I’m the co-founder of Monterey County Skeptics which is a social group that hang out together.  Being in the L.A. Area so much with Mark we both got involved with the Independent Investigations Group (IIG) for a while, but I’ve been busy with more since then.

BR: Do you think Wikipedia is really one of the main battlegrounds for skepticism?

SG: Yes I do, and I think I can prove it with numbers—skeptics like numbers. Podcasts, lectures, blogs etc. are all wonderful and needed as it builds a stronger skeptical community.  They also introduce us to more and more outlets that we can explore. But with a few exceptions we are still preaching to the choir.  

We still have to have investigations and video media to release to the public.  It is like an ecosystem all the different parts working together.  Wikipedia is where it all comes together.  We know how many people are accessing Wikipedia pages, we can compare those numbers to the amount of hits an article on the same topic is generating when it comes from a personal website or blog.  The numbers are staggering and varied, but generally Wiki hits outnumber articles every time. 

Look, we also know that people rarely change their mind when someone is yelling at them telling them how stupid they are.  Most of us skeptics have been believers on some level, we should know better.  What people need is reasoned discussions and the ability to do their own research.  They are going to go to a neutral site to do so, and Wikipedia is waiting for them.  When they have looked over the page and hyperlinked to all the pages linked, they are better able to change their mind. 

 

BR: What about projects like SkeptiWiki, which is devoted solely to skeptical content? Do you think that’s useful?

SG: I don’t think I have ever used that site, and almost never heard it referred to. We need neutral sites. The public is trying to understand a topic and they can tell from the name that it is one-sided.  All that talent would be better used editing in a place that the public are already going to. I have no idea what the numbers would be comparing them, but I can image that there is little use trying to fight something as successful and powerful as Wikipedia. Why not use it to our advantage?

BR: How is Wikipedia structured and administered?

SG: All volunteers working towards creating a living, breathing encyclopedia, that’s pretty awesome I think.  They have their own rules and language that take time getting used to.  I’m totally self taught, I’ve tried reading the instructions on how to edit and it’s like reading a tech manual.  I ask people for help, and look at well authored pages, copy what I like and paste into the page I’m editing.  Change it to reflect the person/topic I’m working on, and I’m done.

BR: How is the Wikipedia content judged?

SG: Mainly peer reviewed.  Some editors are considered higher level than others, but for the most part I’ve had little problem with the edits they have reverted.  You can’t take it personally, we are creating a better encyclopedia which must be the main goal.  If you are having problems with an editor then step back and try to see what is really the problem, usually you can work through it.  There is a process for peer-arbitration which I’ve threatened someone with but never used.  Once you get a bunch of edits under your belt you can start editing with confidence.  Be bold, cite everything and usually people leave you alone.

BR: What have been some of the main challenges to injecting skepticism into Wikipedia?

SG: Probably only time.  There is so much to be done, and people are always telling me “good job!” which is nice to hear, but what I badly need is help editing. Kudos are nice, but help is better. The project is that important.  The tips and ideas I give on my blog are from copy/paste/save types of edits, to fixing grammar, to rewording blurbs to more advanced items. 

BR: Obviously some skeptical content will upset people, such as psychics who rely on the general public not knowing about their track record of failure. What sort of opposition have you seen? Can you give a few examples?

SG: I have had almost no contact with anyone upset about my edits.  I do see some frustrated comments people have left in the discussion area of pages—almost all from believers upset that their favorite psychic’s page is not balanced.  Wikipedia is not balanced, you will never see a citation about the earth being flat on the “Earth” Wiki page.  Nor will you see anything about a moon landing hoax on NASA’s page.  Just cited fact after cited fact. 

[Convicted felon] Sylvia Browne’s page is a great example that I discuss in my blog, believers do not always understand that you can’t post opinions and stories, it has to be cited, and neutral.  Over and over people complain that there isn’t anything about how Browne “helps people” and is “a wonderful person”.  They say that the only thing that the editors ever show is Browne’s failures.  I love it when I read the editors respond that if they will find her successes in print (not her book) that can be substantiated then we will gladly post it on her page.  Usually we never hear from that believer again, one man said he would find the evidence, but it would mean long months in the library, but he will eventually find proof for us.  We are still waiting, the exchange can be read on Sylvia’s discussion page.  Great reading, BTW. 

Psychics themselves have rarely if ever commented or edited their own page. It’s a losing battle, they have to show proof of their claims and that isn’t likely to hold up to review.  Personally I think they would rather the believers not go to Wikipedia to see what is there.  I’m sure they downplay the site if it is mentioned to them. 

BR: What topics have you tackled?

SG: All have been in some way associated with the skeptic movement.  Tim Farley (who started me on this project) believes that an editor should not stick to one topic all the time, he suggests editing your home town page and other places so you don’t get a reputation amongst editors for having a “cause.”  I’m all over the place so much that there is no pattern to see unless the editor looks closely at my edits—which I doubt they will do. 

My “hit list” is pretty long but needs to be a lot longer.  I’ve done UFO’s, Power Balance, ghost hunting sites, most of the psychics and anything else that attracts my attention. I’m very interested in beefing up all the pages of our skeptical spokespeople.  This is a sub-project of Guerrilla Skepticism that I call “We Got Your Wiki Back!”.  The main idea is to remember we are not improving Wikipedia for the skeptical choir, our audience is the public.  When they access our spokespeople’s pages they should find well-written, well sourced information.  How can we expect others to respect our spokespeople if we don’t respect them enough to maintain their Wikipedia pages? 

BR: What mysterious or paranormal topics get the most controversy?

SG: Usually it comes in waves.  When a page is vandalized over and over, there is a protection put on the page that anonymous editors cannot edit.  The Scientologist page is the first one that comes to mind, I believe that many of the positive edits happening there were traced to Scientology headquarters, and there was a stop to that (plus some bad publicity for them).  The astrology page is really getting hit lately, believers just can’t allow the already determined consistence wording to remain.  They keep fussing with the definition, then editors have to change it back and tell them not to change it again.  Along comes another believer who changes it again…and on and on. 

BR: Many people use Wikipedia but don’t feel tech savvy enough to become editors or contributors. What is the actual process to edit pages? Can you give a short introduction to show people the basics?

SG: Start by opening a Wikipedia account.  Read my blog for ideas and tips, or go to pages and click around.  In time you will get comfortable finding misspelled words and bad grammar.  You fix things by clicking on the “edit” page.  Make simple changes and at the bottom of the edit page you will see the tabs for “preview page” “save” “watch this page” and an area to comment.  First “preview” your change, if it looks okay then write in the comment area what you just did “corrected spelling” or “added a period”, click “watch this page” so that you will be notified on your “watch list” if there is a change to the page.  Then when you are sure you have done all this correctly, click save. 

You will know when you are ready to try more difficult changes.  I learned to go to a well-written page, click edit, copy the area that I know I wanted to duplicate elsewhere.  If you want to write a blurb about a SI article you just read, start by opening a word document somewhere so you can just play with what you are doing.  Write your two or three sentences you think will neutrally reflect the article.  Copy a <ref> citation from some other page that you know was done correctly.  Paste that into the word document you are using.  Change the citation that you know does not apply to your new citation.  For example the date the article was published, as well as the name of the article will need to be changed in the new edit.  Once you are completely happy with the blurb and reference, paste it into the Wiki page.  Follow the directions in the paragraph above. 

I would love to mentor anyone interested in learning how to edit. If anyone wants to watch me edit and learn that way, please contact me! You can find GSoW on Twitter.

 

A different version of this interview appeared in the March/April 2012 issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

 

 

 
 

Debunked ‘Primal Scream’ Therapy Returns With Covid

Feb 102022
 

In the news: Moms gathering to scream out their pandemic frustrations. Psychotherapist Arthur Janov believed that neuroses are caused by childhood pain and could be relieved by re-experiencing it through crying and screaming. A huge fad in the 1970s, the idea of “screaming out” anger has a pop culture, superficial appeal, but little basis in science. It’s performative “therapy” ineffective at best and harmful at worst, not shown to improve mental health. Any benefit comes from the group support, not the screaming itself…

National Capital Area Skeptics Talk: ‘Big–If True’

Jan 222022
 

I recently gave a talk for the National Capital Area Skeptics on some of my investigations into strange topics, from ghosts to curses and monsters, featured in my new book Big–If True. It was livestreamed on YouTube, you can watch it HERE!

Squaring the Strange #166: Episode 165 – Moral Panic Series: LITERATURE AND COMIC DANGER!

Jan 182022
 

Our last Squaring the Strange episode of 2021 is out, and unlike other podcasts, we are giving you fresh episodes… even a BONUS episode like this one, well ahead of our usual biweekly schedule. Our final episode of the moral panic series deals with panics surrounding literature and comics. From the big boss battle between Bill Gaines and Fredric Wertham to the murders attributed to Catcher in the Rye, we go through some historical examples… as well as the philosophy behind worries our forefathers had about how literature might affect “weaker minds.” Get your fainting couches and/or swear jars out and enjoy, you can listen HERE.

 

Quoted in Rolling Stone: ‘Stop Falling for Made-Up TikTok Moral Panics!’

Jan 152022
 

So this is cool: I’m quoted in Rolling Stone encouraging people to, quote, “Stop Falling for Made-Up TikTok Moral Panics!”

Check it out HERE! 

 

Also, don’t forget to check out my podcast, Squaring the Strange! 

 

“Más allá del mito: Las Brujas de Salem”

Jan 112022
 

I’m quoted in a news article in the Spanish-language newspaper Clarin on the social and cultural drivers of witchcraft, including at Salem: “Más allá del mito: Las Brujas de Salem, la verdad de la ciencia a 330 años.”

¡Léelo ahora!

 

 

‘Psychic’ Killers in the ‘House of Gucci’

Dec 292021
 

House of Gucci tells the true story of the iconic Italian fashion family. The film follows the rise and fall of Guccis (and soon-to-be-Guccis) from 1978 to the 1990s. You can track the era by the hairstyles and cars, as well as Christmas gifts (such as Simon and Teddy Ruxpin). Along the way there’s plenty of melodrama.

Full disclosure: I am no one’s idea of a fashion follower, and I know even less about high-end fashion such as Gucci. Though the film is based on a book of the same title, and by extension a true story, I had no idea what to expect. I vaguely remembered that there was some assassination, or attempted murder involved in the story, but I wasn’t sure who the victim was, so I went into House of Gucci with a clean slate.

Lady Gaga plays Patrizia Reggiani, a middle-class, possible gold digger who marries into the Gucci family via nerdy lawyer Maurizio (Adam Driver), much to the evident dismay of his father Rudolfo. The dramatic dichotomy is set early on: the indecisive, studious Maurizio and the impulsive, passionate, manipulative go-getter Patrizia. The meet cute between them is too long and too cloying by half (I suspect to pad out Lady Gaga’s screen time). Gaga’s giggly character, though annoying and one-note at first, eventually wins over both Maurizio and the audience.

The film is filled with excellent performances, perhaps most prominent among them Lady Gaga. She effectively conveys a range of emotions, ranging from vulnerability to guile. Driver is good as her husband, though often so passive it’s not clear he has much to do in the role. Jeremy Irons has a small but savory part as Rodolfo, brother of Aldo Gucci (Al Pacino). Pacino can do this role in his sleep but, to his credit, decided to show up and not phone it in. Maurizio’s cousin Paolo, played with commitment by Jared Leto, is a talentless oaf with delusions of grandeur largely inspired by his own last name. Yes, Leto’s performance is over the top, but it fits the film. The film is slightly unhinged, but then again the family is unhinged, and the story is unhinged. These are, for the most part, awful people and their fortunes and foibles are writ large.

The Guccis, not surprisingly, embraced the ethos of Leona Helmsley, Donald Trump, and others that only stupid people pay taxes. This is par for the golf course, but sometimes the law catches up with even the rich—just ask Wesley Snipes and Martha Stewart—and sure enough soon the Guccis are swimming in debt and ducking police raids. As if that’s not enough, Patrizia’s marriage is soon on the rocks, and she means to keep it together.

The film follows Patrizia as she unravels into scheming, obsession, and revenge, seeking weaknesses in the family dynamic to exploit for her own purposes. About halfway through the film an important subplot emerges as Patrizia seeks out guidance from a TV psychic named Pina Auriemma. The fortuneteller, played by Salma Hayek, soon become an accomplice to murder (“We’ve run out of spells, it’s time for something stronger,” one says) and soon Patrizia’s husband was dead.

This is perhaps the most interesting role, at least to me as a skeptic, because while psychics often run afoul of the law—despite being rarely prosecuted—they rarely are involved in murders. Auriemma was not only a close friend and confidant of Patrizia, but she also had underworld connection to Benedetto Ceraulo, Ivano Savioni and Orazio Cicala, Sicilian assassins. Patrizia paid them about $300,000 to kill Maurizio, which they did on March 27, 1995. The plan fell apart two years later when anonymous tip led police to wiretap their telephones and they were recorded discussing the killing. Auriemma eventually confessed, which led to the hitmen confessing as well and revealing Patrizia’s role in the killing, eventually leading to her conviction in 1998; she was sentenced to 29 years in prison and served 16 before being released in 2014. Auriemma was sentenced to 25 years and served just over half before her release.

For all the genuine drama and melodrama, the film seems curiously unfocused. The cast are interesting—and Irons and Leto, especially, are a delight to watch. But House of Gucci is perhaps excessive in its excesses. It’s about a backstabbing power struggle in the Gucci family. It’s about a scorned woman who seeks revenge. It’s about the cutthroat world of high fashion in the 1980s. It’s about two and a half hours long, and it either needed more or less Lady Gaga, depending on which way the story wanted to go. It would have been a stronger film (with a tighter plot) had the filmmakers figured out which story they most wanted to tell and stuck with it.

The True, Heartwarming Story of the Mall of America’s Black Santa

Dec 242021
 

In 2016, before COVID and amid the encroaching commercialization of Christmas, Black Friday sales, and annual social media grumblings about the manufactured controversy over whether “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” is appropriate, an ugly episode of racial hatred tainted the beginning of the holiday season.

 

It began when the Mall of America hired a jolly bearded man named Larry Jefferson as one of its Santas. Jefferson, a retired Army veteran, is black–a fact that most kids and their parents neither noticed nor cared about. The crucial issue for kids was whether a Playstation might be on its way or some Plants vs. Zombies merchandise was in the cards given the particular child’s status on Santa’s naughty-or-nice list. The important thing for parents was whether their kids were delighted by the Santa, and all evidence suggests that the answer was an enthusiastic Yes. “What [the children] see most of the time is this red suit and candy,” Jefferson said in an interview. “[Santa represents] a good spirit. I’m just a messenger to bring hope, love, and peace to girls and boys.”

The fact that Santa could be African-American seemed self-evident (and either an encouraging sign or a non-issue) for all who encountered him. Few if any people at the Mall of America made any negative or racist comments. It was, after all, a self-selected group; any parents who might harbor reservations about Jefferson simply wouldn’t wait in line with their kids to see him and instead go somewhere else or wait for another Santa. Like anything that involves personal choice, people who don’t like something (a news outlet, brand of coffee, or anything else) will simply go somewhere else–not erupt in protest that it’s available to those who want it.

However a black Santa was a first for that particular mall, and understandably made the news. On December 1 the local newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, carried a story by Liz Sawyer titled “Mall of America Welcomes Its First Black Santa.”

Scott Gillespie, the editorial page editor for the Tribune, tweeted later that night (at 9:47 PM): “Looks like we had to turn comments off on story about Mall of America’s first black Santa. Merry Christmas everyone!” The tweet’s meaning seemed both clear and disappointing: On a story that the Star Tribune posted about an African-American Santa, the racial hostility got so pervasive in the comments section that they had to put an end to it, out of respect for Jefferson and/or Star Tribune readers. He ended with a sad and sarcastic, “Merry Christmas” and sent the tweet into cyberspace.

Overnight and the next morning his tweet went viral and served as the basis for countless news stories with titles such as “Paper Forced to Close Comments On Mall Of America’s First Black Santa Thanks to Racism” (Jezebel); “Santa is WHITE. BOYCOTT Mall of America’: Online Racists Are Having a Meltdown over Mall’s Black Santa” (RawStory); “Racists Freak Out Over Black Santa At Mall Of America” (Huffington Post); “Mall of America Hires Its First Black Santa, Racists of the Internet Lose It” (Mic.com), and so on. If you spend any time on social media you get the idea. It was just another confirmation of America’s abysmal race relations.

 

There’s only one problem: It didn’t happen.

At 1:25 PM the following day Gillespie, after seeing the stories about the scope and nature of the racist backlash the Tribune faced, reversed himself in a follow-up tweet. Instead of “we had to turn off comments,” Gillespie stated that the commenting was never opened for that article in the first place: “Comments were not allowed based on past practice w/stories w/racial elements. Great comments on FB & Instagram, though.”

This raised some questions for me: If the comments had never been opened on the story, then how could there have been a flood of racist comments? Where did that information come from? How many racist comments did the paper actually get? Fewer than a dozen? Hundreds? Thousands? Something didn’t add up about the story, and as a media literacy educator and journalist I felt it was important to understand the genesis of this story.

It can serve as an object lesson and help the public understand the role of confirmation bias, unwarranted assumptions, and failure to apply skepticism. In this era of attacks on “fake news” it’s important to distinguish intentional misinformation from what might be simply a series of mistakes and assumptions.

While I have no doubt that the Tribune story on Jefferson would likely have been the target of some racist comments at some point, the fact remains that the main point of Gillespie’s tweet was false: the Tribune had not in fact been forced to shut down the comments on its piece about the Mall of America’s black Santa because of a deluge of racist comments. That false information was the centerpiece of the subsequent stories about the incident.

The idea that some might be upset about the topic is plausible; after all, the question of a black Santa had come up a few times in the news and social media (perhaps most notably Fox News’s Megyn Kelly’s infamous incredulity at the notion three years earlier–which she later described as an offhand jest). Racist, sexist, and otherwise obnoxious comments are common in the comments section of many articles online on any number of subjects, and are not generally newsworthy. There were of course some racists and trolls commenting on the secondary stories about the Star Tribune‘s shutting down its comment section due to racist outrage (RawStory collected about a dozen drawn from social media), but fact remains that the incident at the center of the controversy that spawned outrage across social media simply did not happen.

A few journalists added clarifications and corrections to the story after reading Gillespie’s second tweet or being contacted by him. The Huffington Post, for example, added at the bottom of its story: “CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to reflect that the Minneapolis Star Tribune‘s comment section was turned off when the story was published, not in response to negative comments.” But most journalists didn’t, and as of this writing nearly two million news articles still give a misleading take on the incident.

The secondary news reports could not, of course, quote from the original non-existent rage-filled comments section in the Star Tribune, so they began quoting from their own comments sections and those of other news media. This became a self-fulfilling prophecy, wherein the worst comments from hundreds of blogs and websites were then selected and quoted, generating another round of comments. Many people saw racist comments about the story and assumed that they had been taken from the Star Tribune page at the center of the story, and couldn’t be sure if they were responding to the original outrage or the secondary outrage generated by the first outrage. As with those drawn to see and celebrate Jefferson as the mall’s first black Santa, this was also a self-selected group of people–namely those who were attracted to a racially charged headline and had some emotional stake in the controversy, enough to read about it and comment on it.

Unpacking the Reporting

I contacted Gillespie and he kindly clarified what happened and how his tweet inadvertently caused some of the world’s most prominent news organizations to report on an ugly racial incident that never occurred.

Gillespie–whose beat is the opinion and editorial page–was at home on the evening of December 1 and decided to peruse his newspaper’s website. He saw the story about Larry Jefferson and clicked on it to see if the black Santa story was getting any comments. He noticed that there were no comments at all and assumed that the Star Tribune‘s web moderators had shut them off due to inflammatory posts, as had happened occasionally on previous stories.

Understandably irritated and dismayed, he tweeted about it and went to bed, thinking no more of it. The next day he went into work and a colleague noticed that his tweet had been widely shared (his most shared post on social media ever) and asked him about it. Gillespie then spoke with the newspaper’s web moderators, who informed him that the comments had never been turned on for that particular post–a practice at the newspaper for articles on potentially sensitive subjects such as race and politics, but also applied to many other topics that a moderator for whatever reason thinks might generate comments that may be counterproductive.

“I didn’t know why the comments were off,” he told me. “In this case I assumed we followed past practices” about removing inflammatory comments. It was a not-unreasonable assumption that in this case just happened to be wrong. Gillespie noted during our conversation that a then-breaking Star Tribune story about the death of a 2-year-old girl at a St. Paul foster home also had its commenting section disabled–presumably not in anticipation of a deluge of racist or hateful comments.

“People thought–and I can see why, since I have the title of editorial page editor–that I must know what I’m talking about [in terms of web moderation],” Gillespie said. He was commenting on a topic about his newspaper but outside his purview, and to many his tweet was interpreted as an official statement and explanation of why comments did not appear on the black Santa story.

When Gillespie realized that many (at that time dozens and, ultimately, millions) of news stories were (wrongly) reporting that the Star Tribune‘s comments section had been shut down in response to racist comments based solely on his (admittedly premature and poorly phrased) Dec. 1 tweet, he tried to get in touch with some of the journalists to correct the record (hence the Huffington Post clarification), but by that time the story had gone viral and the ship of fools had sailed. The best he could do was issue a second tweet trying to clarify the situation, which he did.

“I can see why people would jump to the conclusion they did,” he told me. Gillespie is apologetic and accepts responsibility for his role in creating the black Santa outrage story, and it seems clear that his tweet was not intended as an attempt at race-baiting for clicks.

In the spirit of Christmas maybe one lesson to take from this case is charity. Instead of assuming the worst about someone or their intentions, give them the benefit of the doubt. Assuming the worst about other people runs all through this story. Gillespie assumed that racists deluged his newspaper with racist hate, as did the public. The web moderator(s) at the Star Tribune who chose not to open the comments on the Santa story may (or may not) have assumed that they were pre-empting a deluge of racism (which may or may not have in fact followed). I myself was assumed to have unsavory and ulterior motives for even asking journalistic questions about this incident (a topic I’ll cover next week).

In the end there are no villains here (except for the relative handful of racists and trolls who predictably commented on the secondary stories). What happened was the product of a series of understandable misunderstandings and mistakes, fueled in part by confirmation bias and amplified by the digital age.

The Good News

Gillespie and I agreed that this is, when fact and fiction are separated, a good news story. As noted, Gillespie initially assumed that the newspaper’s moderators had been inundated with hostile and racist comments, and finally turned the comments off after having to wade through the flood of hateful garbage comments to find and approve the positive ones. He need not have feared, because exactly the opposite occurred: Gillespie said that the Star Tribune was instead flooded with positive comments applauding Jefferson as the Mall of America’s first black Santa (he referenced this in his Dec. 2 tweet). The tiny minority of nasty comments were drowned out by holiday cheer and goodwill toward men–of any color. He echoed Jefferson, who in a December 9 NPR interview said that the racist comments he heard were “only a small percentage” of the reaction, and he was overwhelmed by support from the community.

The fact that Jefferson was bombarded by love and support from the general public (and most whites) should offer hope and comfort. Gillespie said that he had expected people to attack and criticize the Mall of America for succumbing to political correctness, but the imagined hordes of white nationalists never appeared. A few anonymous cranks and racists complained on social media posts from the safety of their keyboards, but there was very little backlash–and certainly nothing resembling what the sensational headlines originally suggested.

The real tragedy is what was done to Larry Jefferson, whose role as the Mall of America’s first black Santa has been tainted by this social media-created controversy. Instead of being remembered for, as he said, bringing “hope, love, and peace to girls and boys,” he will forever be known for enduring a (fictional) deluge of bilious racist hatred. The true story of Jefferson’s stint as Santa is diametrically the opposite of what most people believe: He was greeted warmly and embraced by people of all colors and faiths as the Mall of America’s first black Santa.

Some may try to justify their coverage of the story by saying that even though in this particular case Jefferson was not in fact inundated with racist hate, it still symbolizes a very real problem and was therefore worthy of reporting if it raised awareness of the issue. The Trump administration adopted this tactic earlier this week when the President promoted discredited anti-Muslim videos via social media; his spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders acknowledged that at least some of the hateful videos Trump shared were bogus (and did not happen as portrayed and described), but insisted that their truth or falsity was irrelevant because they supported a “larger truth”–that Islam is a threat to the country’s security: “I’m not talking about the nature of the video,” she told reporters. “I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing. The threat is real, and that’s what the President is talking about.”

This disregard for truth has been a prominent theme in the Trump administration. Yes, some tiny minority of Muslims are terrorists; no one denies that, but that does not legitimize the sharing of bogus information as examples supposedly illustrating the problem. Similarly, yes, some tiny minority of Americans took exception to Jefferson as a black Santa, but that does not legitimize sharing false information about how a newspaper had to shut down its comments because of racist rage. There are enough real-life examples of hatred and intolerance that we need not invent new ones.

In this Grinchian and cynical ends-justifies-the-means worldview, there is no such thing as good news and the import of every event is determined by how it can be used to promote a given narrative or social agenda–truth be damned.

I understand that “Black Santa Warmly Welcomed by Virtually Everyone” isn’t a headline that any news organization is going to see as newsworthy or eagerly promote, nor would it go viral. But it’s the truth.

Merry Christmas.

Squaring the Strange #163: Moral Panics in Music!

Dec 222021
 

The new episode of Squaring the Strange is out! Part two in our four-part series on moral panics. This week we talk MUSIC, and go into the past, present, and future of (as Fresh Prince would say) parents just not understanding their kids’ music. So sit back and hear about gansta rap, Miley’s twerking, and even some far-too-jaunty Bing Crosby tunes! Check it out HERE!

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