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Of Memes, False Memories, and False Attribution
Around my door at the middle school I teach at, I have posted pictures of various historical figures along with inspirational quotations. Included among these is the one you see to the left. I included it both as a humorous touch, and as genuinely good advice.
I was reminded of this image today when I narrowly avoided falling for another false quote. I have seen the Trump meme below the fold pop up multiple times on the internet:
I was leaning towards believing the quote, and considered bringing it up on Ricochet, as I never saw it discussed in our frequent arguments over the Donald. Fortunately, I saved myself some embarrassment by sticking to my policy of always double-checking quotes I’ve seen online.
Well, the explanation for why I’ve never seen this quote discussed in conservative circles is simple: It’s 100 percent horse manure. There is no evidence that Trump ever said this in any interview.
But what truly disturbed me in researching this was how many commenters on the fact-checker sites were convinced that they had seen Trump say this. Of course, none of them could actually provide video links, but they all swore they’d seen it (I even saw one commenter claim they’d seen the video just “this morning”), and that all the clips must have been taken down.
Now, barring the possibility that a massive pro-Trump conspiracy has scrubbed all evidence of this off the Internet, the simpler explanation is that these people are mistaken and have convinced themselves that — not only did they see the meme — but they actually saw video and now refuse to accept proof to the contrary. (I suppose they could be liars, but I think they’re genuinely sincere).
So, once again, my faith in humanity and popular enfranchisement is taken down a notch.
On reflection, though, I admit that there is one fact about which I refuse to concede my memory as being false, despite what the publishers may say. It regards to the Berenstein Bears. You remember the Berenstein Bears, don’t you? Popular children’s picture book that’s been around since the 60’s. Well, withing the past couple of years I learned that, supposedly, that lovable bear family’s last name is not spelled B-E-R-E-N-S-T-E-I-N, but instead is spelled B-E-R-E-N-S-T-A-I-N. Take a look!
Does not the sight of that spelling cause dissonance among your synapses? Does not your brain rebel at this bizarre configuration of letters?
I distinctly remember reading “BERENSTEIN Bears” as a kid. And I’m not the only one. Online many people have gathered and discussed this creepy disconnect between the title we see on the books now and our own childhood memories. One popular theory, which I am subscribing to, is that we are remembering the spelling from an alternate reality/parallel dimension. There’s also the possibility that, in the late 1990s, somebody went back in time and changed the spelling. Or that Random House publishers have switched out all copies of the books with ones with the distorted spelling in an attempt to… I don’t know… summon Cthulu? I’m gonna stick with the alternate realities explanation for now.
How about you? Have you ever had the experience of coming across people remembering things that never happened? Or do you have vivid memories that apparently are false or erroneous?
And are there any popular memes/quotes you’ve noticed passed around the internet that you know are bupkis? I have many times been disappointed to find that cool conservative quotes attributed to Founding Fathers are often apocryphal, like the one below:
Awesome words. I highly agree with whoever wrote them. Too bad there’s no evidence that it was actually Washington, though.
Published in Culture
Actually, you started out with brand new tennis shoes,then wore old tennis shoes, then tennis shoes with holes in them, sturdy sandals then flimsy flip flops. THEN you made the trip in your bare feet. You don’t remember? ;)
This makes sense. Drats. I was rooting for the parallel universe theory. Our universe has gotten so crazy, I had hopes I could find a sane one to move to.
Hi, Knotwise:
The Trump quote in the OP is cited as People magazine, 1998. WorldCat lists 4550 libraries worldwide that carry People (though not the one where I work.) Surely some large percentage of these holdings goes back that far. Couldn’t someone avoid the whole Internet search and just go right to the (unalterable) source?
Just a thought
I am a lazy reader. I think I read just the first half of long words, believe “I know where this is going”, drop it, and move on to the next word. I probably never made it past the first six letters and assumed the rest.
Washington also said:
“My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.”
He did not have a great relationship with her, she was demanding and complained a lot. He was sent to live with an uncle at age 12 after his father died.
He may have made the statement, not sure he meant it.
Mr. C and I often have conflicting memories. I’ve developed a rule of thumb for him (and husbands generally): Don’t trust your memory — trust your wife.
;-)
Actually, I acknowledge frequently how unreliable my memory is, for specific details especially. But when it comes to memories about spending my summer days outside in my bare feet all I need do is look at the 4-inch scar in the instep of my foot resulting from stepping on a broken milk bottle in the weeds. You know, glass bottle? Also, one of my most vivid memories is of our family doctor coming to our house that evening to stitch that cut and the experience of him scrubbing my dirty foot before doing that. You know, house calls? Most details I do remember involve some questionable behavior. But most of the routine events of my life are just gone from memory, just not there.
There is also reason to believe Washington’s mother was a Loyalist and didn’t approve of her son’s rebellious activities. The relationship was very strained.
One of my favorite quotes was a piece called The Desiderata which was alleged to have been found carved into a pillar of a 16th(?) Century Church, but, in fact, was written in the 20th Century. The apocryphal date of origin, I suppose, was to give it greater gravitas. It is good advice at any age. Wise words do not necessarily have to come from famous people to be wise words. I have read many very excellent and quotable phrases in posts and replies on this very site.
One thing, though, that did bother me a bit was the fact that Knotwise has some of these misattributed quotes hanging outside of his classroom. The quality of education these days is so poor, in general, that giving students that kind of misinformation may not be the wisest thing to do. Of course, Knotwise’s students may be of a much higher level than those I worked with, and are able to differentiate between fantasy and reality.
When I was in prep school I had a teacher who used quotes quite a bit. One that always stuck with me was “Die at the right time.” with a Z. following it. The Z stood for Zarathustra. He explained that even though this was not the source it was a commonly used attribution for such sage advice.
What is worse, attributing a saying to a particular figure who is not the author or not attributing a complete idea to the originator?
What is the chief concern? Truth relayed in the saying or the reputation of the attributed?
In order to hold up either heroes or villains, is there not a certain amount of embellishment that goes along with this?
“I chopped down your cherry tree.”
“Let them eat cake.”
The only misattributed quote I have hanging in my classroom is the Abraham Lincoln one, which I hope my students can figure out is false (and I know I’ve discussed it with at least some of them). I was pretty thorough on checking all the other quotes.
You’re telling me people would lie on the internet?!
Did you mean bunk? Bupkis means “nothing.”
As Billy Preston might have sung, “Bupkis from bupkis leaves bupkis.”
Yep, you are correct. My bad.
I thought as much, but also thought it worth checking on. Cheers.
Recently I was having a reverie about the 1958 NFL Championship Game. I could remember seeing it on TV and could call up vivid details of the room where I watched it. It eventually hit me that the calendar and family circumstance said I couldn’t have possibly been in that room at that time. I asked my brother if he’d been there and where “there” was. He described the same room and me in it. And didn’t have an explanation of how we could have been in the place we both remembered. Best I can come up with is that we both transposed the 1958 game to 1959 (both Colts v. Giants) for God knows what reason. The odd thing is I can’t unstick the memory, which I can do on other lapses (e.g., I typically remember being in a place I wasn’t during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but when I realize the error, I can drum up satisfactory memories of where I really was when it was going on).
My favorite is the attribution of “if you want to know who rules a society look for who you aren’t allowed to criticize” to voltaire and not the actual honest to god white supremacist who said it.
One of my favorite quotes, “If you aren’t a liberal at 18, you have no heart. If you’re still a liberal at 30, you have no brain,” has been attributed to Benjamin Disraeli and Winston Churchill. Sometimes it has age 16 instead of 18. Does anyone know the actual attribution?
Piaget vividly remembered an attempt to kidnap him when he was a toddler, only to find later that it was a false alibi his nurse told his parents, to explain lateness.
Yet to to talk about false memory syndrome is such a heresy that researchers following up Elizabeth Loftus’s work felt compelled to research first person tales of alien abductions.
There is, surrounding the most popular myths a kind of religious zeal that makes flat-out believing a virtue on its own. It’s funny how people who have abandoned religion have retained guilt as an essential thing, and profess blind faith as an unquestioned good. When we were benighted, traditional, and unenlightened we were somehow much harder to fool. How is that?
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/24/heart-head/
Speaking of mis-attribution, I’m totally stealing that.
My favorite variation of this.
–Mother Teresa
Bupkis is yiddish. Its original meaning was goat droppings; now it means nothing or something of no value.
No one has mentioned the Taylor Swift / Third Reich connection.
An art form worthy of an NEA grant