Aug 17th, 2010
I’ve avoided writing about this whole “ground zero mosque” fiasco simply because I was hoping it would drop out of public conversation. Seriously, you’re going to object to a house of worship in an American city? On patriotic grounds? Really? I hesitate even to link to these fearmongers, for fear of enhancing their cause. The [...]
May 6th, 2010
MM can not resist the jaw-dropping Pope story of the day. According to the Christian Science Monitor, Pope Benedict has affirmed the authenticity of the much-maligned Shroud of Turin. The cloth, which has been scientifically dated to about 800 years ago, says the embattled head of the Catholic church, was nonetheless the actual garment of [...]
Oct 20th, 2009
The worship of idols has been given a bad rap ever since the Bible’s golden calf. Putting your faith in earthly things, rather than heavenly ideas, was considered heretical, not to mention embarrassing and primitive. But as you might be able to tell from MM’s obsessions with skulls, stones, and trees, I’m actually a big [...]
Sep 15th, 2009
The brilliant, devastating moments in “Aftermath”, the new play by Erik Jensen and Jessica Blank just opened at the New York Theatre Workshop, don’t strike you all at once. Rather, the details from the daily lives of Iraqi civilian-refugees since the beginning of the war that ravaged their country accumulate slowly and deftly, in words [...]
Aug 21st, 2009
This past weekend a loyal MM reader reminded me that I have as yet been mum on the topic of the “birthers,” and shame on me. They are, after all, one of the biggest purveyors of political misinformation since the Swift Boaters and more than deserved to be busted, debunked, and hopefully, defused. And I [...]
Jul 14th, 2009
As if to answer my prayers for mythography inspiration, the always-genius NPR program On The Media stepped into my vacation-induced void with their July 3rd program all about debunking national myths. Some of their debunking targets: Rosa Parks as meek older lady whose feet were just too tired to move to the back of the [...]
Jun 14th, 2009
To debunk, from the Oxford English Dictionary, transitive verb: To remove the ‘nonsense’ or false sentiment from; to expose false claims or pretensions; hence, to remove a person from his ‘pedestal’ or ‘pinnacle’. Also absolute. Hence debunker, one who debunks; or debunking.
As one W. E. Woodward apparently said in 1923, “De-bunking means simply taking the [...]
Jun 7th, 2009
Two days after his historic Cairo speech, President Obama made an appearance at the ruins of the German concentration camp Buchenwald, calling the chilling site the “ultimate rebuke” to Holocaust denial, of which Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been the most insidious recent example. It seemed a brilliant rhetorical move: take the cultural capital and [...]
Jun 5th, 2009
Allow me to be naive for a moment here. I know President Obama’s Cairo speech didn’t really say anything new; it didn’t set out specific policy initiatives; he gave it in a country run by a totalitarian regime. But part of me wants to stand up and applaud in my pajamas watching the speech on [...]
Jun 3rd, 2009
The release of a Da Vinci Code franchise always unleashes a flurry of debunking. Is there really an Illuminati? Can you really do that with a particle collider? According to an excellent essay by Dennis Overbye, director Ron Howard is well aware that the quasi-believability of author Dan Brown’s fictions are part of what gives [...]