Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / Readership Capture / Real life becomes a rumor

Real life becomes a rumor

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When I was messing around on the internets the other day, I came across one of my favorite urban legends: the one about Keith Richards getting a total blood transfusion to kick heroin. My other favorites are Mikey and the pop rocks, Snapple supports the KKK, and, of course, Richard Gere and the gerbil.

What are your favorites?

And what’s your favorite example of something you assumed was an urban legend but turned out to be true? Mine is that Tom Friedman won three Pulitzer prizes.

Reader Interactions

158Comments

  4. 4.

    jrg

    I like the one about Obama and the cattle guards. I think it amuses me so much because in an effort to make Nobawmmmmer look stupid, posting it proves you’re dumb enough to believe anything you read on the internet.

  5. 5.

    Mnemosyne

    When I was in college working for the student newspaper, we got a gen-u-ine fax informing us that Procter & Gamble was owned by Satanists, presumably under assumption that we would cover this breaking news story.

    And at my current job, we got an actual Nigerian scam letter over the fax machine. That made my day.

  6. 6.

    pokeyblow

    The current round of Curt Schilling divorce rumors are entertaining. Some think his busty blonde wife finds him less attractive now that he’s pissed away a multimillion-dollar fortune playing wizard.

    ha ha

  7. 7.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Bob Ney is trying to start some urban legends about Boehner, and has my warmest and best wishes in that endeavour, which I spell the British way because it’s fancy:

    “A maintenance job…he was considered a man that was all about winning and money. He was a chain-smoking, relentless wine drinker who was more interested in the high life- golf, woman, cigarettes, fun, and alcohol.”
    Ney spices up his depiction of Boehner with a few salacious stories of alleged misbehavior. Claims Ney: one night at the Capital Grille Boehner got drunk and took a female staffer home; Boehner regularly gave hand outs- free Barclay cigarettes from his lobbyist and campaign checks on the House floor; Boehner called one of his staffers a “fag;” Boehner broke out into “all-out wailing” after he was ousted from chairman of the House Republicans Conference in 1998.

    Das Boner as a ladies’ man?
    Also, too, Elvis is alive, Mama Cass and the ham sandwich, and the true one about pre-asshole Bill Bennett once going on a blind date with a pre-Pearl Janis Joplin

  8. 8.

    Hill Dweller

    Republican Presidents balance the budget.

    Republicans are fiscally conservative.

  13. 13.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Oh, and Richard Nixon saying that Barbara Bush was the only real man in that family, and that he grudgingly admired her because she knew how to hate.

    The feud between Nancy and the Bushes, though you wonder which side to take. They say Big Bad Bar put another book cover on the Kitty Kelly bio of Nancy and would slyly show it friends. I wonder how she felt when Kelly wrote that book on the Bushes, which I confess to buying out of spite but couldn’t make more than a hundred pages in.

  19. 19.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Certified Mutant Enemy: and a few in DC. Not just Vince Foster but there was one floating around about the body of one of Bubba’s mistresses being found in the bear pit of the National Zoo, or something like that.

    also, Pat and Bay Buchanan have never been seen in the same room.

  24. 24.

    Evolving Deep Southerner

    @pokeyblow: Please tell me you’re talking about Nancy Reagan and not “These Boots Were Made For Walking” Nancy.

  27. 27.

    General Stuck

    That Elvis was really dead. Didn’t buy it. Though he could be now, after becoming David Broder.

  28. 28.

    JWL

    Not exactly an urban legend, but after the attack on Pearl Harbor Admiral Yamamoto did not say, “I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant”. That was a Hollywood fabrication.

  34. 34.

    Tara the Antisocial Social Worker

    @Certified Mutant Enemy:

    Bill & Hillary are apparently responsible for every murder committed in Arkansas from 1981 until 1993…

    The best one of those is the “bullet hole in Ron Brown’s head” after he died in a plane crash. There was even a book written about this. The theory was that the assassin (paid by the Clintons, natch) shot Brown and then crashed the plane to get rid of the witnesses. (I seriously heard someone argue that the assassin would loyally go down with the plane, just like the 9/11 terrorists.)

    I just want to know: if you’re going to crash the plane to get rid of the witnesses, WHAT’S THE POINT OF SHOOTING HIM? He can only die once.

  35. 35.

    Southern Beale

    When I worked in the communications office of a federally-owned national recreation area back in the ’80s I got a call from a radio station wanting someone to appear on the show to talk about how huge chunks of the site had been ceded to the United Nations and were no longer owned by the people of the United States. I had no idea what they were talking about but it turns out we had a few areas designated a UN Biosphere Reserve, which just tells the scientific community that “hey, there’s this cool thing here, you might want to study it.” It really is meaningless.

    That was my first introduction to wingnuttia. I had NO idea these crackerjacks would soon take over the country.

  36. 36.

    reflectionephemeral

    Around 1998, there was this email forward going around that Tommy Hilfiger had said all this openly awful stuff, I think racist stuff, on like Oprah or something. I got it from an extremely intelligent person– now with an authentic MSM job– though a quick (whatever preceded Google– Alta Vista?) search could debunk it in seconds.

    The rumor itself is forgettable, but that it could take off, in an era where any half-assed effort to turn up real-life facts could debunk it in seconds, really stuck with me.

    Also, I used a line from “Man Out of Time” as a post title awhile back after coming across a Rick Perry line about Karl Rove: “My brain is like a chicken pot pie. His is like a refrigerator that is all very organized— pickles here, salad there.”

  37. 37.

    Tara the Antisocial Social Worker

    @pokeyblow:

    Frank Sinatra pounding Nancy upstairs at the White House.

    To borrow from Mark Russell: “These are people in their late sixties. Shut the drapes, PLEASE!”

  44. 44.

    Tara the Antisocial Social Worker

    My favorite was that KFC had to change their name from Kentucky Fried Chicken because they actually used some sort of non-chicken meat grown in a test tube.

  46. 46.

    pokeyblow

    Andrew Card saying “Sir, we are at war” to Bush in that Florida school on 9/11.

    No one apart from those two dirtbags has any idea what Card actually said. “Things are going just as planned” is just as likely a candidate for Card’s actual statement, and is more consistent with Bush’s lack of reaction.

  49. 49.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @pokeyblow: along those lines, Rudy 9/11 turning to Bernie Kerik after the second tower fell and saying “Thank GOD George Bush is our President!”, a line the McCain-endorsing Giuliani managed to keep a secret until three years later, at the GOP convention.

  50. 50.

    MonkeyBoy

    A Mexican cactus explodes and spews baby tarantulas everywhere.

    may be partially based on fact. I once prepared an avocado (imported from Mexico) that had some soft spots near the skin. I left the skin with soft spots out, and later when I came back it looked like a near by bottle was covered with grains of salt or sugar. It turned out that the grains were mites and they numbered in the thousands. If you looked closely at the flesh still on the skin you could see mites sucking on it. (I took the skin to an expert and we watched them through a microscope. He noted that the mites had spines on their body which suggested they developed in cysts under the skin where a touch sense was important)

  53. 53.

    Southern Beale

    @reflectionephemeral:

    Around 2001 my sweet, elderly neighbor sent me an e-mail that said the ACLU was trying to ban the singing of all Christmas carols on TV. That meant no more “Charlie Brown Christmas,” etc. It was my first chain-email thing I’d ever gotten. I looked it up on Snopes and found out it was one of the oldest chain email hoaxes ever, it started actually on snail mail. LOL.

    Now when I get stuff like that I just debunk and “reply all” because I can’t be bothered with that crap.

  54. 54.

    pokeyblow

    Jim + Raven, it’s amazing how the meatheads eat up all the cheesy John-Wayne dialogue they get fed by the GOP.

    Not sure whether there are similar gullibilities on the left… maybe regarding environmental stuff?

    Anyway, Let’s Roll!

  55. 55.

    Little Boots

    i remember jokes about priests and little boys a LONG time ago. not exactly an urban legend, but still … all too true.

  56. 56.

    Tara the Antisocial Social Worker

    @Southern Beale: Oh yeah, and there’s that one about how “this is the last year you’ll be allowed to buy Christmas stamps with religious images.” That one has been going around every Christmas since probably the Pony Express.

  58. 58.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @Southern Beale: I’d heard that Kentucky decided it was time to make money off of its name, so KFC and the Kentucky Derby changed their names to avoid paying royalties.

  59. 59.

    Southern Beale

    @MonkeyBoy:

    GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! Thank you for that horrific information. Will never, ever eat avocados again.

    Some packages of Chilean grapes came with black widow spiders in them, I think they were used as an organic form of pest control. I saw it on the news.

  61. 61.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Oh, historical urban legends: George Washington’s teeth, Caligula and the horse, Catherine the Great and the horse, Frederick the Great and the Horse Guards…

  63. 63.

    West of the Rockies

    I’ve heard that Michael Savage’s son-in-law runs Rock Star energy drinks. Anyone know if that’s true? I have never consumed one of those because I don’t want to support someone who is even related to that wanker. I used to down the occasional “Lost” energy drink, but I don’t see that brand much anymore here in nor Cal.

  64. 64.

    Chris

    Marco Rubicon claiming that his folks were refugees from the Revolution.

    And really anything about the JFK assassination. (I’m not that generation, but I’ve never understood what was so implausible about “Oswald was fucked in the head and/or a commie and decided to shoot the president.”

  68. 68.

    Mnemosyne

    @pokeyblow:

    No one apart from those two dirtbags has any idea what Card actually said. “Things are going just as planned” is just as likely a candidate for Card’s actual statement, and is more consistent with Bush’s lack of reaction.

    Lack of reaction? The man was basically trying not to piss his pants in public.

    And I’ve always assumed the thought going through Bush’s head at that point was, “Bandar fucked us! He told us we didn’t have to worry about Bin Laden! Fuck!”

  69. 69.

    Avery Greynold

    How old am I? Mid-century, when those kids took LSD and stared into the sun until they went blind.

  70. 70.

    pokeyblow

    The story of Caligula’s horse, Incitatus, is in Suetonius.

    I tend to believe it.

  71. 71.

    Eric U.

    Clinton and the Gold Star Mothers comes to mind. Seen that so many times it’s just amazing

  72. 72.

    Sly

    – Barack Obama wants to put serial numbers on every bullet manufactured in the United States.

    – Adam Sandler, Mickey Rourke, George Clooney, Jim Carrey, and/or Eddie Murphy just died in a snowboarding accident.

    – Jamie Lee Curtis is a hermaphrodite. So is Lady Gaga

    – Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers fame was a Marine sniper with 150 confirmed kills in Vietnam.

    – “420” in pothead lingo is a reference to the number of cannibinoids in marijuana or Hitler’s birthday or the day Bob Marley died.

    – Walt Disney had himself (or his head) cryogenically frozen and stored beneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

    – THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE!

  73. 73.

    Tara the Antisocial Social Worker

    @Anton Sirius: The Van Halen M&M’s story has mutated to include anyone that the right wants to portray as a diva – last time I heard it, it was supposedly Barbra Streisand.

  74. 74.

    Quaker in a Basement

    The whole Las Vegas stolen kidney story was a good one. I also heard that some people think Ted Nugent was once some sort of rock star.

  75. 75.

    Sly

    Also, the one about Rod Stewart being taken to the Emergency Room and doctors pumping a quart of semen from his stomach always made me chuckle. I mean… a quart?

  80. 80.

    joel hanes

    @Mnemosyne:

    W was trying to figure out how to get his Saudi and Yemeni friends, sponsors, and business partners out of the country before the net came down. At this task, he completely succeeded — which tells you the importance W gave it, because he never bestirred himself to succeed at anything else in life, before or after that moment.

    But almost every member of the al-Saud and bin Laden families got out of the US very quietly, while the no-fly edict grounded almost all aircraft.

  82. 82.

    Splitting Image

    @Anton Sirius:

    I’ve always wondered why the M&Ms got more attention in the press than the fact that the band also asked for a large tube of KY jelly to be placed in one of the band members’ dressing rooms.

    Perhaps rock’n’roll fans are not so prurient as the industry press leads us all to believe.

  83. 83.

    jay Noble

    New one I just ran across this afternoon – black-eyed children. Black-eyed as in all pupil.

  84. 84.

    Little Boots

    the idea that america was rushing to fly bin laden family members out of the country after 9/11 is pretty incredible, even now.

  85. 85.

    Mnemosyne

    @Sly:

    Walt Disney had himself (or his head) cryogenically frozen and stored beneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

    See, now that’s just silly. Everyone who works for the company knows that his head is really stored …

    … wait, I think someone’s knocking at my doo

  86. 86.

    YellowJournalism

    Hippie babysitters smoking pot and sticking the baby in the oven, thinking the baby was a turkey. I love all those old-school horror ones that usually ended with a maniac with a hook being in the house. I also love the accounts of Disney theme park and movie urban legends and true stories like the penis castle from The Little mermaid or “SEX” in The Lion King.

    I was surprised to learn that there really were naked porn pictures hidden at one time in the Rescuers, and that someone actually did find a dead body hidden in the bed of their motel room.

  87. 87.

    Yutsano

    @Sly:

    Walt Disney had himself (or his head) cryogenically frozen and stored beneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

    There is a minor kernel of truth here, but it was Ted Williams.

  89. 89.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Mnemosyne: @joel hanes: You guys give that wet brain a lot more credit than I do. I imagine his “thoughts” for those seven minutes of blinking and staring into space as resembling the grey screen your old rabbit-eared TV used to show after the day’s programming had ended

  90. 90.

    JWL

    @Avery Greynold: You’re also old enough to remember that Art Linkletter’s daughter believed she could fly after dropping acid and listening to Sgt. Pepper.

    Kids do the darndest things..

  92. 92.

    nancydarling

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: The stories about G. Washington’s teeth are true. I’ve seen a set of his dentures at a Washington exhibit at the Huntington Library in Pasadena. He had a set carved in wood, another carved from hippopotamus ivory, and one set where the upper and lower were actually connected with springs.

    What is the “cattle guard” story?

  93. 93.

    YellowJournalism

    @YellowJournalism: Grammar fail! The way I wrote my first post made it seem like I thought they really spelled out “SEX” in The Lion King. The penis castle is under debate.

  94. 94.

    Southern Beale

    @jay Noble:

    Have you heard of Indigo Children? That’s some kind of New Age-y thing I really don’t know much about. Children that are hyper sensitive to the cosmic convergence or some such.

  95. 95.

    scav

    Pre-Snapple, a french kid solumnly explained to me how Marlboro cigarettes were owned by the KKK, tracing out the hidden Ks on the package. Didn’t slow down his smoking them in the slightest.

  98. 98.

    Nylund

    Don’t know if it’s true or an urban legend, but the internet tells me that Nancy Reagan was once known to give the best blow jobs in Hollywood.

  100. 100.

    Chris

    Oh oh oh –

    Reichstag fire. I grew up hearing that the Nazis had done it as a false flag operation. It’s not until I read “An Anatomy of Fascism” that I learned that most historians now think the communist who took the fall really did do it, and the goose steppers just seized the opportunity.

  102. 102.

    Southern Beale

    @Anton Sirius:

    Yeah I know the Van Halen thing is true. It was my “thing I always thought was a hoax but found out is true” response. Should have clarified.

    Here’s something that’s true that I refuse to believe: Kenneth Lay of Enron died before sentencing. Sorry, I am convinced he’s on an island somewhere, under an assumed name. Or maybe South America.

  104. 104.

    Chris

    @scav:

    Silly ass kid! Klansmen these days run Meth labs, not tobacco plantations.

    Maybe those weren’t cigarettes he was smoking.

  109. 109.

    Tara the Antisocial Social Worker

    @Southern Beale:

    Have you heard of Indigo Children? That’s some kind of New Age-y thing I really don’t know much about. Children that are hyper sensitive to the cosmic convergence or some such.

    How long till my soul gets it right?
    Does any human being ever reach the highest light?
    I call on the resting soul of Galileo,
    King of the night vision, king of insight.

  110. 110.

    quannlace

    My favorite from elementary school was

    Ah, memories, of kid’s urban legends.
    Don’t ever swallow your gum; it’ll stay in your stomach forever.

    Don’t ever swallow any kind of seeds. They’ll sprout in your stomach, grow up into your throat and eventually choke you to death.
    ***********
    Funny how so much involved food/danger.

  115. 115.

    eemom

    @nancydarling:

    The stories about G. Washington’s teeth are true.

    Indeed. At the museum at Mount Vernon, there’s a whole exhibit about them. The poor man suffered terribly at the hands of primitive dentistry.

  116. 116.

    JerryN

    My favorite sorta true, but weird fact is “Neil Young owns Lionel Trains” and by that, I mean the company. In the mid-90s, Neil Young was part of a group that bought the company and at one point he had about a 20% stake in it. For more of the background see Trainmaster Command Control.

  117. 117.

    John Revolta

    Moon landing. Totally fake.

    Cat in the microwave.

    Also, Zappa taking a shit onstage.

    And also too, when I was a kid (this may be a strictly local one, did anybody else hear this?), the secret ingredient in Coke was…….BLOOD!!11111!!1!

    Kinda like that whole blood libel thingie. Oooo! Protocols of the Elders of Zion!(Does that count?)

    P.S. They saved Einstein’s brain!! No, really.

  122. 122.

    Tara the Antisocial Social Worker

    @Jamey: I know, and I thought it was pretty clever. But the story has morphed into “[fill in target of the day] is such a diva.”

  123. 123.

    Heywood J.

    @John Revolta: I remember that Zappa thing, in his autobiography he talks about sometimes the rumor was that he merely took a shit, sometimes that he ate it.

    His response was something along the line of, “Folks, the closest I ever came to eating shit was at a buffet at the Holiday Inn Express in Fayetteville, North Carolina.” Awesome.

  124. 124.

    danah gaz

    “And what’s your favorite example of something you assumed was an urban legend but turned out to be true?”

    Joe Scarborough murders women.

    Thank you ladies and gentleman. I’ll be here all week. Try the veal, and don’t bother tipping your waitress because she’s probably a parasite.

  125. 125.

    Woodrowfan

    Eddie Van Halen was on XM radio talking about the M&Ms thing and claimed they put it in after a venue ignored the technical aspects of the contact and some equipment was damaged or some such. So if they went into the dressing room and saw the M&M clause was met, they knew that someone had paid at least some attention to the fine print.

  127. 127.

    Cacti

    Don’t swim for at least an hour after eating.

    Sitting too close to the TV is bad for your eyes.

  128. 128.

    MarkusOfarkus

    My favorite that has been missed so far is that it was once a well known fact that Alfonso Ribeiro died breakdancing (head spin, of course).

    This was sometime after Silver Spoons but before The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

  129. 129.

    disco bean

    My all time favorite is the one where Church’s chicken puts a secret ingredient in their batter that makes black men sterile.

  130. 130.

    Pinkamena Panic

    UGH. I got too sick of correcting my family on this shit over email and Facebook to deal with either anymore and now it’s getting dredged up here? UGH.

  132. 132.

    Calouste

    @Splitting Image: The M&M’s got in the news because it actually happened once or twice, at which point Van Helen made a massive ruckus because it told them that at a minimum the show would be delayed because everything needed to be double checked, and worst case, the show might need to be cancelled.

  134. 134.

    John Revolta

    A lot of people thought that Janis, Jim and Jimi were all murdered by Hoover’s FBI. Crazy, right?

    .

    .

    .

    Right?

  139. 139.

    JCT

    Ah, Imperial Bedroom is one of my favorites — nice one, DougJ

    When I was a clinical clerk doing my Peds rotation in the early 90’s a patient pulled me aside and quietly asked if my resident was Jewish (not realizing that I was as well). When I asked why that would matter she told me that she had heard that Jewish doctors were injecting black babies with “AIDS” and was worried about my resident because he had a “Jewish name”.

  140. 140.

    danielx

    That turned out to be true?

    Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize. Which, of course, is why he is welcome in countries around the world for his humanitarian works.

  142. 142.

    danielx

    @JerryN:

    That one is true…his two sons have cerebral palsy and Young got very heavily into model railroading as a hobby he could participate in with them. Truth being stranger than fiction…

  143. 143.

    schrodinger's cat

    If you put pencil shavings in milk and leave them overnight, you get an eraser.

  144. 144.

    artem1s

    @John Revolta:

    Moon landing. Totally fake.

    there’s a whole weird video on Youtube about the secret messages in The Shining about the fake moon landing. Supposedly the government hired Kubrick to do it.

  145. 145.

    rob!

    For years, circa late 90s, it spread among the comic book nerd (redundant) community that they were going to make a new Superman movie with Christopher Reeve, with digital effects enabling him to walk, fly, etc.

    This idea was so stupid, absurd, and even sorta offensive that I started thinking less of my fellow comic nerds who believed it. I think it took Reeve to die before it finally went away.

  149. 149.

    opie jeanne

    You can get drunk by drinking Coke with aspirin in it.

    If you shoot a triangle in a windshield with a bb gun, the triangle will pop out. This was tried on our pickup by a darling pair of children.

  150. 150.

    virginislandsguy

    If you burp, fart, and sneeze at the same time, you will die.

    h/t National Lampoon

  153. 153.

    John Revolta

    secret messages in The Shining about the fake moon landing

    I heard about that too. From what I know about Kubrick and his obsessiveness about his films, this is maybe the crackpottiest theory of them all.

  156. 156.

    rebmarks

    @pokeyblow: That Laura Bush killed her boyfriend is actually sort of true. At age 17 she ran a stop sign and killed the occupant of the car she hit, which was a friend from school, and may have been her boyfriend or at least romantic interest.

  157. 157.

    rikyrah

    Church’s Fried Chicken is in the Black neighborhoods to make Black people sterile.

    Phyllis Diller is Susan Lucci’s mother.

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