Every generation seems to have its own version of an age-old complaint against the young: Why can't they be like we were, perfect in every way? In the state's capital city, the local police department turned out in force when the cops got word that trouble was brewing at a popular shopping mall and to be ready for trouble between 3 and 5 p.m. that day. It was like an alarm going off ("Calling all cars!") and soon the place was full of cops as well as kids. All told, the police rounded up 75 to 100 kids between the ages of 12 and 17 before sending them on their separate ways. According to Lieutenant Steve McClanahan of Little Rock's Finest, they were "causing fear." What teenagers don't when they start moving in packs? So it has been since time immemorial, and so it seems to be today.
It all seemed to be part of a national pattern. Reports from across the country indicate how little had changed since what many of us now refer to as the good old days, which were as bad as ever. But in time's prism and ever fallible human memory, the things swing and sway as in a funhouse mirror. Was all this juvenile behavior somehow connected? "At this time," said a spokesman for the police department in Aurora, Colo., "we don't think it's related. We just think it's a coincidence."
He said a small fight broke out in the food court of a local mall and it was followed by others elsewhere. Soon skirmishes were breaking out all over the place, involving a total of maybe 500 people, but only five juveniles were arrested on charges like disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. No big deal except in the imaginations of conspiracy theorists and other alarmists.
In another Aurora, the one in Illinois, a similar pattern was reported. Ditto in Fayetteville, N.C., Indianapolis, Ind., Tempe, Ariz., East Garden City, N.Y., Memphis, Tenn., and Fort Worth, Texas, for fads can prove infectious--like marathon dancing and goldfish-swallowing in the Roaring Twenties and hula-hoops in another decade. Little Rock's own Lieutenant McClanahan points the finger at all this new-fangled social media, which can gather a crowd or gin up a fundraiser in no time at all. The same things may be happening as have happened before, but at ever faster speeds. As far as the exaggerated reports of such incidents in Little Rock and many points beyond as rumors multiplied into a generalized hysteria, Lieutenant McClanahan assured one and all that these reports of a national conspiracy weren't factual, not at all. They seem to be just today's version of an old game called Telephone in which one kid whispers some tidbit of gossip into another's ear to be passed along. And by the time the "information" has made it full circle, the final version is indistinguishable from the first.
It's the year of Fake News, and it can be frustrating. For the record, no, the clothing designer Tommy Hilfiger did not appear on the Oprah Winfrey show and say, "If I had known that African Americans, Hispanics, Jewish and Asians would buy my clothes, I would not have made them so nice," nor did Mr. Hilfiger say, "I wish those people would not buy my clothes--they were made for upper-class whites." According to the tale, an outraged Oprah Winfrey immediately asked Hilfiger to leave her show--and when she came back from a commercial, he was gone.
Never mind that intentionally alienating a core market is scarcely the smartest move ever made in merchandising. Never mind, too, that Mr. Hilfiger founded a fund to benefit poor kids long before this particular rumor was ever circulated, and that he gave more than $5 million to build a memorial to Martin Luther King Jr., in Washington. And so unbelievably on.
At the time this rumor began and then spread, Mr. Hilfiger had never been on the Oprah Winfrey Show. In fact, the two had never met until 2007, when Oprah Winfrey invited him to appear on her show in order to kill this very rumor once and for all.
Nor did the president of Procter & Gamble appear on the Phil Donahue Show to "come out of the closet" about his company's ties to the Church of Satan. Nor did Liz Claiborne tell Oprah Winfrey that black folks shouldn't wear her clothes.
Skeptical or gullible, all of us may on occasion repeat rumors that exploit our own prejudices. And so it goes, 'round and 'round, and where or how it ends nobody knows, for rumors have a way just dwindling away till they disappear and are replaced by new ones.
Speaking of which, have you heard about. . . .
Editorial on 01/03/2017