From: rhinoceros (rhinoceros@freemail.gr)
Date: Tue May 11 2004 - 06:44:29 MDT
[Blunderov]
I found this at about.com. It reminds me of a famous model who is said to have remarked that a famine-struck African country was a good place to keep slim, but was too full of flies and death and stuff.
<snip>
[rhinoceros]
This first quote about African flies and death seems to be false.
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/carey.htm
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/info/cupcake.htm
Claim: In a 1996 interview, Mariah Carey said the following: "When I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean, I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff."
Status: False.
Origins: After a satirical Mariah Carey "interview" appeared on the Internet in a web publication called Cupcake in early 1996, the damaging sentence cited above was lifted from it quoted in VOX magazine (a British culture/movie/music publication), from which the British newspaper The Independent picked up the story in May. The quote spread like wildfire on Internet newsgroups beginning in June, and by August the quote was being reprinted (without question or verification) by dozens of newspapers and magazines throughout the world (including Ms. magazine and The San Francisco Chronicle's usually reliable columnist Herb Caen). The quote was frequently attributed by news reports as having been uttered by Ms. Carey in an interview with the UK's Radio 1 (as reprinted in the British publication The Face, a style/fashion magazine) or on the World Entertainment News Network, and although debunkings of the story appeared in print as early as July, the fictitious quote was still being spread as true by the media int
o September.
Ordinarily such obviously satirical material doesn't gain such widespread currency, but sometimes it does when it strikes a particularly resonant chord with the public, as this quote did — perhaps because it embodied widespread perceptions of the insensitivity of thin people towards the non-thin, and the callous attitude of the wealthy towards the poverty-stricken. If either if these were the main point that caused the legend to be so easily believed and spread, however, the subject of the rumor would most likely have been someone such as ultra-thin model Kate Moss or wealthy and stylish Marla Maples Trump, not Mariah Carey. The association of this quotation with Carey would seem to be another instance of the "celebrity is not what he/she appears to be" legend type, a weapon usually launched at people who, in the public's perception, have come to fame and fortune in too facile a manner. (Other victims of this type of rumor include children's radio host Uncle Don and another pop singer, John Denver.)
<snip>
[rhinoceros]
I think these things often catch (with a litttle "help", of course) because they are reinforced by our shared perceptions, our world of coherence. Other instances started intentionally by someone but some human psychological traits kept them going (maybe "look - he is dumb" or "this is too funny to let it pass"). Remember, for example, Al Gore, well-known for "inventing the Internet":
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.htm
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/09/president.2000/transcript.gore/index.html
Claim: Vice-President Al Gore claimed that he "invented" the Internet.
Status: False.
Origins: No, Al Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet, nor did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The derisive "Al Gore said he 'invented' the Internet" put-downs are misleading distortions of something he said (taken out of context) during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "Late Edition" program on 9 March 1999. When asked to describe what distinguished him from his challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Gore replied (in part):
<quote, Al Gore>
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."
<end quote>
Clearly, although Gore's phrasing was clumsy (and self-serving), he was not claiming that he "invented" the Internet (in the sense of having designed or implemented it), but that he was responsible for helping to create the environment (in an economic and legislative sense) that fostered the development of the Internet.
<snip>
[Blunderov
http://atheism.about.com/b/a/082848.htm?terms=n618b
<q>
"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths," Barbara Bush said on ABC's "Good Morning America" on March 18, 2003. "Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" Hmmm... why indeed should we hear about the deaths that result from our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. And if it is a "waste" to hear about American deaths, how less important must it be to hear about the deaths of Iraqis? I'm not sure, however, that such a sentiment could be expressed by someone with much of a "mind" at all - beautiful or otherwise.
</q>
[rhinoceros]
Now, about Barbara Bush's beautiful mind... this is not on Snopes and it does have quotation marks, source and date...
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