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Re: But captain, I can't change the laws of physics!

> Where Soviet and Nazi schemes of "repeat a lie often enough and it
> becomes true" . . .

That attitude is hardly unique to Soviets and Nazis, though.

   A scene from the 1944 movie _A Wing and a Prayer_ focused on the
   three-man crew of a navy torpedo bomber in the South Pacific. As the
   crippled plane plunged downward and the gunner prepared to parachute,
   the pilot said to his wounded and immobilized radioman, "We'll take
   this ride together." In a byline from "A Flying Fortress Base, England,
   Feb. 1, 1944," Jack Tait recorded a similar story in the _New York
   Herald Tribune_, but now it was one gunner who stayed with another
   trapped gunner: "Take it easy, we'll take this ride together." He
   admitted that he could not verify the story except as one "circulating
   at this base that has almost become a legend." That qualification was
   omitted when the _Reader's Digest_ condensed the story in its issue of
   the following April.

   Ronald Reagan told that story as an historical fact during his 1976 and
   1980 presidential campaigns and then repeated it, on December 12, 1983,
   to the annual convention of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society in
   New York City. The story involved the pilot and ball-turret gunner of a
   B-17 over the English Channel: "He took the boy's hand and said, 'Never
   mind, son, we'll ride it down together.' Congressional Medal of Honor,
   posthumously awarded."

   That last point, however, was open to verification, and when Lars-Erik
   Nelson, Washington bureau chief of the _New York Daily News_, checked
   the 434 Medal of Honor citations from World War II, he found no such
   act of heroism recorded anywhere. Presidential spokesman Larry Speakes,
   when questioned about the story's accuracy, said, "If you tell the same
   story five times, it's true." President Reagan, who had seen _A Wing
   and a Prayer_ and was a regular follower of _Reader's Digest_, claimed
   that he recalled "reading a citation" recommending a medal for such a
   heroic act while he was himself in the army (Cannon 58-60).

   It is unnecessary to claim that Reagan could not tell fiction from fact
   or propaganda from history. What happened in his memory was not as
   unusual as we might like to think. Fiction had become fact and was
   thereafter impervious to criticism. Who could prove there had been no
   such citation recalled from Reagan's army days? But, on the other hand,
   who believes there _was_ one?

   -- John Dominic Crossan, _The Birth of Christianity_, New York:
   HarperSanFrancisco, 1998, pages 64-65 (from a chapter entitled "Does
   Memory Remember?").

Once again, I repeat: see _Memento_.  :)

--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
 "I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where."
      Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom

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