Briggs; Hughes; SF; Hot dogs, et al. (LONG!!)

[Gregory {Greg} Downing]

At 04:24 AM 6/30/99 EDT, Barry Popik wrote:
>     The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (www.hot-dog.org) STILL has the
>wrong information on its we site.  At least some things never change.
>     Last Saturday, I finally saw "American Eats" on the History Channel.
>This was the program that said it would pay me for copies of my work--not
>even for services--and didn't do that.  It presented the Tad Dorgan myth as
>"legend has it..."--then never told the true story at all.
>

I no way do I make the following statement in what would constitute
undeserved extenuation of this kind of treatment. But my guess as to why
these folk origins often live on like Dracula is that a good but unverified
story (unverified because untrue) is often much more alluring than the
truth. That, plus inertia, must explain most of this kind of thing. However,
when an outlet knows what the genuinely documented origin is and nonetheless
chooses to rehash but nuance the false origin by saying "legend has it
that..." or "some have said that..." or "could it be that...?," then it
would seem that the alluring-legend phenomenon is pretty obviously in the
driver's seat. Ratings is ratings, and who's to know any better?


Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing at nyu.edu or gd2 at is2.nyu.edu