You Said What?: Lies and Propaganda Throughout History PDF
Preview You Said What?: Lies and Propaganda Throughout History
? W H AT SAID YOU LIES AND PROPAGANDA THROUGHOUT HISTORY @ EDITED BY BILL FAWCETT Dedicated to the memory of James Patrick Baen, the most honest person I have known CONTENTS Introduction: So Many Lies, so Few Pages vii Politics 1 Watergate: The Great American Scandal 3 Stalin’s Big Lies 10 McKinley’s Missionary Position 16 The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere: Silversmith or Poster Child for Civil War Draft 21 J. Edgar Hoover’s Not-so-Red Menace 29 The Soviets Blink 35 Daley Country 41 The First Casualty of War Is Truth 47 James K. Polk’s Fabrication to Congress 49 How the Roman Empire Lost Its Gallic Wars but Julius Caesar Became Emperor 53 iv CONTENTS Radio Raiders of the Polish Frontier 58 Murder Most Foul 62 Listening In 67 The Yellow Peril That Wasn’t 73 The Magical Lies of Quicksilver 78 And U-2 89 How Not to Sell a War 93 Incident in Tonkin Gulf: The Dishonest Truth 100 Sink or Swim with Ngo Dinh Diem 106 King Hussein’s Trust Issues 122 History Books Lie Too 127 Cleopatra: Looks Were Not Deceiving 129 Death on the Nile 137 Christmas—In May? 141 Witches, Devils, and Puritans in Massachusetts 148 So Humble in Green County, Tennessee, 1834 154 J’Accuse! 157 Seventy-nine Bridges 162 Village of the Damned 168 World War II’s Master of Lies 174 Arms for Hostages? 181 CONTENTS v But It Was in a Book . . . 189 This Is a True Story . . . Not 191 The Author of This Book Is . . . 203 The Janet Cooke Pulitzer Fiasco 213 Mark Hoffman’s Forgeries and Murders 217 The New York Times’s Khmer Rouge Story 222 The New York Sun’s Six-Part Story on Life on the Moon 226 Trust Me, I Can Cure You 231 The Royal Touch That Healed 233 Grover Cleveland’s Secret Dental Surgery 237 Dr. Albert Abrams and the ERA 241 The High-Voltage Cure-all 246 Bad Blood 252 FDR’s Legs 257 Smoking Is Good for You 261 A-OK JFK: The Presidential Campaign Trail, 1960 266 Killing by Bureaucracy 270 What Lies Ahead? 277 “We Are Here to Save the Holy Land, Making a Profit Is Just Incidental!” 279 The Fake of a Fake 285 vi CONTENTS Tower of London: Not Really Where You Get a Head 289 Are My Arms Tired! 295 No Speak English 299 Eric Clapton’s Undying but Temporary Passion for Patti Boyd-Harrison 304 Vincent “the Chin” Gigante 308 Epilogue: Color Him Red-Faced 313 About the Editor Other Books by Bill Fawcett Cover Copyright About the Publisher @ INTRODUCTION S M L , F P O ANY IES SO EW AGES S o many lies, so few pages. When this book was proposed there was no shortage of lies, deceptions, and frauds great and small to use as examples. The fact is that the lies told in an era give us some real insights into history. So this book could be a deep study of the philosophical ramifications of deceptions on histori- cal, um . . . okay, you got me. It isn’t philosophical anything. We did this book because lies, when you are not the one caught tell- ing them, anyhow, are both fascinating and fun. They do tell you a lot—mostly that some of the greatest leaders in history should be embarrassed. So we looked at all those uncounted thousands of lies that have been told to us and to those who came before us and came up with what follows, the story of some of the strangest, best known, and darkest lies. You are even likely to find a few lies here that you thought were truths. (Hint, I threw out my coonskin cap, and it wasn’t to please the terrorists at PETA.) This selection of lies from history are fun and interesting—and a few will simply viii INTRODUCTION amaze you that anyone ever believed them. Their topics run the gamut from war and politics to medicine and crime. Oh, and it’s safe to leave this book in the bathroom or take it to the offi ce. We carefully did not cover the lies lovers and married c ouples tell each other and will leave to you all of those deceptions perpetrated by our current leaders. Some of the lies we include caused great pain, others great embarrassment. Through the perspective of history it may seem strange that anyone, occasionally just about everyone who heard them, believed some of the whoppers in this book. Still they “made sense at the time.” There are some lies p eople just want to believe. Other lies are accepted because no one knows better. Many lies are successful simply because the liar is so good at telling them. This book is written in many small sections. It really is meant to be picked up, put down, read while commuting. It may make you think, it might even outrage you a few times, and it will occasion- ally elicit a chuckle or two. When editing this book, it has been tempting to draw conclusions about the nature of truth and the state of man from its contents, but I will leave that to those of you so inclined. That said, while the intent of this book is to entertain, no one who has contributed to it will be upset if you view the lies we are hearing and accepting today with a little more skepticism. That said, to get us off to a roaring start and because it just has to be in a book on lying somewhere, so needing no introduction here it is: “I did not have sex with that woman” (President William Jefferson Clinton). BILL FAWCET T ED I TOR POLITICS @ How can you tell a politician is lying? His mouth is moving . . . A joke that likely first appeared sometime during the Sumerian Empire. “I am not a crook” (Richard Nixon, 1956). (He should have added “yet.”)
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