More Examples of Distortion (or Manufacture) of Stories

For my notes-to-self file:

• Billy Graham in New Orleans:  Here's yet another example how stories can get imaginatively distorted in the blink of an eye.  Apparently an Internet rumor was going around that Billy Graham, speaking at a crusade in New Orleans, suddenly led the crowd out of the building to Bourbon Street, where they ministered to revelers and made hundreds of converts.  It turns out that Billy's son, evangelist Franklin Graham, did indeed lead an event in New Orleans, and Billy did speak at the event, but the part about a mass repentance of Bourbon-Street revelers is a pious urban legend.  (Hat tip: TitusOneNine; I couldn't resist gently needling my traditionalist friends there just a bit about this one.) 

• Barack Obama's Indonesian schooling:   From yesterday's NY Times, here's an example of how stories of questionable origin and -motive can appear seemingly from out of nowhere, spread like wildfire, and sometimes take a long time — or forever — to die out, especially when people have agendas to advance or axes to grind.  To wit:  A Web site claimed that Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign was going to accuse Barack Obama of concealing his attendance at an Islamic religious school when he was 6 years old.  Other news organizations confirmed that the school was a secular public school, but the mere making of the claim "set off a wave of television commentary, talk-radio chatter, official denials, investigations by journalists around the globe and news media self-analysis that has lasted 11 days and counting."  (David D. Kirkpatrick, Feeding Frenzy for a Big Story, Even When It's False, NY Times, Jan. 29, 2007)   I'm sure there are people who will continue to believe this about Obama, because it's something they want to believe.

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I imagine I'll have occasion to use these stories (with others cited just below) in conversations with traditionalists who think the Holy Spirit and the early church somehow made sure the New Testament stories were error-free.

Further reading:

• Other examples of story distortion
• Flat-out contradictions in the New Testament stories