Remember when ol’ Grandpa Cliché sat you down on his lap, and said, “If you tell a lie enough times it becomes the truth.”
We’ve been saying that for ages and, in all seriousness, it has become the truth.
From the Pledge of Allegiance, to not swallowing your gum for fear of having it stuck in digestive limbo for 7 years, certain societal norms have only become norms because of our consistent perpetration of believing ill-conceived misconceptions.
Let’s begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. With the importance given to the pledge and the number of times American children are required to recite it, you’d think George Washington wrote it. He didn’t, by the way.
The history of the pledge is littered with red, white and conspiracy, having first run in 1892 in the widely read children’s magazine The Youth’s Companion.
While many self-proclaimed patriots consider the Pledge of Allegiance in the same literary regard as the Bible, the man who wrote it, Francis Bellamy, was ousted as a devoted socialist.
Bellamy stated on record that his sole mission was “to create in America’s children, a habit of automatic reverence and utter loyalty to their country.”
After running Bellamy’s pledge, the owner and editor of The Youth’s Companion, Daniel Ford, had claimed that he dreamed of putting an American flag in every classroom in the country. One year later, over 30,000 American flags had been sold.
The whole “One nation under God” part wasn’t added until 1954 (though it seems like something out of “1984”) during America’s post World War paranoid phase; and for most of the time prior to that, when reciting the pledge, students, teachers and officials would extend their arms toward the flag in a fashion similar to that of a Nazi salute.
Another common misconception that seems to run rampant through American culture is the fault of a certain speech-impeded sailor who goes by the name Popeye.
Before kids learned about steroids from people like Barry Bonds, American children were under the impression that one could simply consume spinach, the source of Popeye’s strength and gain uncommonly toned biceps, and beef up. Well, to a degree, Chuck Norris does have some sway in this category too.
Furthermore, the creators of Popeye chose spinach as his dietary sustenance based on a faulty report filed in 1870 by a Dr. E. Von Wolf in which he misplaced a decimal point, making spinach appear to have 10 times its actual iron content, equivalent to red meat.
To this day, the Encyclopedia Britannica’s states that spinach is “rich in iron.”
Popeye is continually being placed on packaging of spinach in many grocery stores.
It’s not like these are necessarily dangerous issues pressing our society as much as they are just comical coincidences we can poke fun at; however, we have to look at the bigger picture.
I mean, a good portion of America still believes that President Barack Obama is Muslim because of his name.
Of that group, many believe that if he were indeed Muslim that would be a bad thing. Look at the cloud that a couple crazy terrorists have placed on the Muslim faith as a community.
They can’t even get a mosque built in NYC because it happens to be two blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center. As if the worship of one people is a slap in the face to the other.
We get so mixed up with these misconceptions and misinformed statements that we lose sight of what really is important.
Sometimes you need to question the norm and not just believe everything you hear; don’t take everything at face value. Next time you put in that piece of Orbit, go ahead, swallow it, within a few days … well, let’s not get gross.
Let Ben know about more Santa Claus conspiracies at ben.karris@asu.edu
