I am sick of things "everybody knows", especially considering how many turn out to be entirely fictitious. I have written on this topic many times, from many angles, but, as it continues to come up, I have decided to once again address the many, many "facts" that circulate on the internet which have no foundation. Before I start though, let me point out I am omitting two topics. First, I am not going to discuss the many slanderous quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh, such as "You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray. We miss you, James. Godspeed.", as I have discussed those at great length in "Rush Debate", "Best of the Web Imitates Me XX" and "A Request for Rush Fans". Second, I am not going to go into the more technical idiocies, such as pointless economic studies which show something completely different than is claimed. For those interested in such technical matters, I suggest reading "Bad Economics Part 4". Having said that, let us now proceed to look at all the strange things that "everybody knows".

The first claim we will address is probably the least political, though one of the most bizarre, a claim that shows not only how such claims spread through the internet ether, but also the role played by the pseudo-encyclopedia "Wikipedia" in spreading such nonsense*. That is the claim that the Roman legions in England invented hopscotch.

I originally covered this in "The Power of Myth on the Internet", using the topic to explain how misinformation can be perpetuated by internet postings. And, several months later, I still find it the best example of the way such myths are spread. I had heard repeatedly that hopscotch was developed by legionnaires in England, who performed the game in full armor and with full pack, running courses over hundreds of yards. At the time, I was skeptical as I knew how much weight your average legionnaire carried (weeks of food, full camp building equipment, etc.) and was skeptical anyone could one leg hop with such weight for a lengthy course, no matter how well trained. And so, doubting the superhuman strength needed was likely, I started digging. What struck me first was how each post used almost the same wording, as if they all had a common ancestor. An ancestor I set out to find.

I never did find that ancestor, though I saw how widespread the single original article had become, almost identical wording having spread to every corner of the internet. But I did find a possible origin, the source form which the original article sprang. Another skeptic had found an antiquarian who postulated that some pieces of broken pottery found in English sites resembled the quoits used in hopscotch, and, from that wild speculation, it seems, along with mention of some lines scratched on Roman roads, the myth of Roman hopscotch was born.

What makes this interesting is, there is simply no record. Not in Roman history, and not in the many extant manuals on the Roman military from the same period. If it were a common training practice, common enough to have persisted for centuries and spread throughout the world, you would think Vegetius or one of his many imitators would have at least mentioned it, but not a word. Nor did any historians. Nor did the British writers such as Bede who continued the Roman histories for the British Isles. No one seemed to notice this widespread game until late in the 20th century, when it suddenly spread across the internet, becoming common knowledge.

I explain in the original post the many reasons I think this theory is false, so I won't go into them here. What I will mention, as it is relevant for this post, is that this article shows a very important mechanism. With the birth of the internet, we see the perfection of the absurd "mythical explanation". We had them before, absurd explanations that spread by word of mouth. That "mother plucker" tale, or the story about the middle finger or two finger obscene gesture coming from Agincourt, or a few other nonsensical explanations that were nonetheless quite popular. But, with the internet, we have a medium which allows such explanations to spread with alarming speed. And so, when a story arises, which either explains a question which has plagued many, or provides a tale many find pleasing, or maybe both, it not only spreads across the globe in an instant, the many recording devices of the internet, especially Wikipedia, not only perpetuate it, but give it credibility it never deserved. And as a result we find absurdities such as educators taking seriously tales of hopscotch playing legionnaires, simply because nominally authoritative internet sources take them seriously.

Which brings me to the rest of my subjects, the more political topics, all of which are nonsense, yet are taken seriously, and sometimes even cited by people who should know better. There are several such quotes, each of which I shall describe below. However, this is intended to be only a brief overview. For those seeking more information, I recommend reading my earlier posts "Mystery Quotes", "They're Here! Mystery Quotes Revistied" and "A Mystery Quote, Several Dubious Quotes, More Boring Quotes, and One Very Bad Conclusion".

The quotes in questions are all very familiar, no doubt you have heard at least one, if not more. First, there is the supposed Jerry Falwell quote "So-called gay folks would just as soon kill you as look at you." Next we have Bob Dornan's supposed statement, "Don't use the word 'gay' unless it is an acronym for 'Got AIDS Yet'. And finally, George W. Bush's supposed claim that "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did." As well as his more infamous quote that the Constitution is "just a damn piece of paper."

All of these are quite popular on the left, as well as among certain groups nominally on the right. (The paleo-cons especially love the Bush quote.) Each is offered up as proof positive of a certain aspect of the individual in question. But each also suffers from two very huge logical problems, a problem common to each of them.

The first problem is one that some will dismiss, but only the most condescending can ignore. That is the truth that each person involved is a well known, successful public figure. No matter how much one may dislike the individual, he was clever enough to attain a position of authority and to rise to a high rank in his field. One does not do that by making idiotic mistakes. And each of these statements represents just that sort of idiotic mistake. Even if they want to "throw red meat to the faithful", such figures would do so in euphemism, not in such blatant terms. They know better than to provide such easy ammunition to the opposition, and, in the case of Bush at least, to make damaging statements in front of unknown individuals. Unless you really think idiots run the world, you have to ask why successful, clever individuals would make such foolish slips.

But, even if you really think idiots run the world, there is a second problem. Admittedly, the Bush statement was supposedly made behind closed doors, but the rest were supposedly public statements. Yet, the only record we have are second or third hand reports, not primary sources. Why? Thin about the furor over Rush Limbaugh's relatively innocuous Donovan McNabb statement. A quote that is much less inflammatory than these was covered ad nauseam, yet these quotes passed without so much as a peep, showing up only in retrospect when cited long after the fact? Does that make sense to anyone?

I won't go any farther, as those two arguments alone should show how shaky these various quotes are. I could go into many specifics about each one, about the dearth of sources for most, or the dubious nature of the sources cited in the few cases where it is more than simple hearsay, but why bother? As I said above, these should have been front page news when they happened, that they wer enot is evidence enough that this is a load of nonsense. The media, while it might cover up some of Obama's fumbles, can't even provide 100% protection for politicians it likes, how on earth can one imagine it would provide perfect protection for politicians it dislikes? No, if Dornan or Falwell or Bush had said those things, they would have bee headlines, not citations on Wikipedia years later.

Which brings me to my final topic, one that is even more controversial, that is the existence of WMDs in Iraq. How often have we heard that "everyone knows" we didn't find WMDs? The problem there being, we did. We found 500 rounds of mustard gas and sarin. That alone says we found WMDs. Whether they were "old" or not, they were weapons prohibited by the UN resolution and the ceasefire, and so we DID find WMDs. Which makes the statement false on its face. And that doesn't even touch upon all the "agricultural chemicals" found in military bunkers which resemble nerve gas more than insecticide, or the trailers used for "agricultural research" or the other overly cautious interpretations given to many finds. On top of which it is miraculous that we found anything at all, for the reasons I give in "Food For Thought". But, the simple point is, we DID FIND WMDs, so the statement that "everyone knows" we did not is laughable, to say the least. yet, over and over, that very statement is offered as an absolute truth, and not even challenged any more by most of those on the right. Somehow a blatant lie has come to be conventional wisdom, and even the right has accepted it.

However, before we feel too smug in seeing all these follies of the left, we need to strike a note of warning. I have begun to see many on the right falling into precisely the same pattern. We are just as much humans as those on the left, and just as prone to error, especially when the error plays into what we already believe. Several times I have seen mythical statements attributed to Obama, which makes as little sense as any of the quotes above.

We need to recall, Obama may be a socialist, he may even be prone to mistakes, but he is not a total fool. Just as Bush is not idiotic enough to say the Constitution is a "damn piece of paper", especially in hostile company, if Obama were going to do something to dismantle the constitution, he would not announce it in public. People who make it to high office may sometimes be foolish in some regards, but they don't get to that office without survival skills, and those skills include not making idiotic rookie mistakes.

So, the next time you hear a tale that Obama has stated something outright treasonous, you need to take a step back. No matter how much you want to believe it is true, check out the source, then check again. Look for corroboration, and check what corroboration you find. Make sure you are not finding confirmation from the same source providing the original quote. Find something independent, even better, find confirmation form a left-wing site if you can. Don't take it at face value. Because, the truth is, when you think a quote fits what you believe to be true, that is the time for the greatest caution. No con man ever got rich telling people what they didn't want to hear. So when you hear what you want to believe, check it twice, and then check again.

Otherwise you might find your own beliefs appearing in the next iteration of this post.

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* Wikipedia also played a major role in spreading the Limbaugh disinformation. See "Wikipedia Absurdities" for details. My general complaints about Wikipedia, mostly about the flawed philosophy underlying it, I suggest reading  "The Power of Myth on the Internet" and "Life is Strange", as well as the articles linked in those posts.

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POSTSCRIPT

Should anyone find a primary contemporary source for any of these quotes, I will be happy to publish it with a retraction. However, I will not accept the word of Mahmoud Abbas for claims of George Bush's G-d-given mission to attack Iraq or third hand reports of hearing a friend tell of having read about what Falwell said. Nor does it count to cite a source mentioning a past event. It is simply too easy to create fictional events isolated form us by a protective buffer of years. Until I find a contemporary source, and a named source, for these quotes, they remain dubious at best.