Now granted you didn’t say “It can’t be true because it’s an urban legend.” But I think this is pretty close. And the truth of the matter is, he did see it. Unless you are gonna claim he was lying?
As far as the heaping of abuse on Lib, again from David B (btw, I’m not picking on you on purpose, but you did ask for examples)
Makes him look silly eh? Of course, he was right, and he did indeed see the episode he described. Granted, after 2 pages of back and forth you were frustrated with what you saw as his obstinance. But put yourself in his position. If you had seen the show and come here describing it, would you have admitted you were wrong on the basis of the “evidence” you posted?
On the matter of Lib getting some details messed up, in his original OP he mentions that he went to Snopes after seeing the episode and before posting. It’s very possible that he got some details confused between the show he saw and the description he read on Snopes. I think it is clear that he did see the episode in question, it is the clip that is the basis for the UL and in fact a lot of us (myself included) are guilty of basically calling him a liar.
Did you see the quote from David B I referenced above? While I admit that the wording is different, I think that the meaning is the same. David tells Lib that the story is an urban legend and he couldn’t have seen it because it didn’t happen. Seems pretty clear to me.
Also, andros said:
Not according to alt.folklore.urban, as I quoted before from their FAQ:
The way I understand, as tdn explained it to me, the veracity of the story is really not germane to its being called an urban legend, rather, it is the life of the tale after the fact, how it spreads, becoming part of our collective folklore.
Yes, that was one of his points, but it is a faulty one. Throughout my life I have collected tons of stories that I just knew were true. No amount of logical debunking could have proved me wrong. Imagine my shock to find most of them listed on snopes. That is the nature of ULs. They disguise themselves as truth, and can fool the best of us.
When Lib said he never heard the UL, I think what he meant was that he never heard it as a UL. There is nothing unusual about this. When most of us hear these stories, they are usually presented as “check out this amazing true story”, not “I heard this UL today.”
The fact that Lib recounted the story in nearly exactly the same format as everyone else, and not remotely as the event actually happened, suuggests that he had, in fact, heard it before. He just didn’t recognize the wolf in sheeps clothing.
Unfortunately, the only way to resolve the issue of whether this clip is the one Lib saw would be for him to come forth and tell us.
In his original OP Lib said that “I know this happened except possibly for irrelevant details”, implying that there were differences between what he saw and what was described on Snopes. I never saw him describe those differences, so I have no idea what they may be.
It’s too bad that Lib went to Snopes before posting his OP, it would be interesting to note any discrepencies.
you’re saying that reading a description on Snopes changed Lib’s story? Do you really mean to say that?
If so, it means that your definition of “true” is tha same of my definition of “almost true.” By your reasoning, Bill Clinton was telling the truth about Monica–he just “got some details wrong.”
Bzzzzzt. Wrong answer. As I tried (not very well) to say earlier, a “basis in truth” does NOT make something true. Lib saw an episode. It was somewhat as he claimed it to be. That’s cool, I’m all in favor of that. I think it’s a great story and all. But just because he wasn’t wrong doesn’t mean he was right.
You might dismiss this as semantic quibbling, but I don’t think it is.
That’s exactly what I am saying. Having seen the episode at some point in the past (I don’t recall if all of this happened quickly, or if his OP came some time after the episode aired) he reads the description on Snopes. Now, does it not seem likely to you that details of the story on Snopes would be fresher in his mind than the episode he saw some time in the past? So in relating it to us, he relied on the copious information provided on the web site to buttress his imperfect recollection of the actual event. Does that make his story untrue? Of course not.
A few questions, in the hopes of clearing this up:
Do you think that this clip is the one Lib saw?
Do you think this clip is the basis for the UL?
Ok, so were Snopes, Bob Eubanks et al right or wrong when they said it never happened?
Did it “sort of” happen or did it actually happen?
I’m not dismissing this as semantic quibbling, I just think you’re wrong. As I see it, there is no real question here, assuming this is the clip he saw. I don’t think there is much doubt that this is the basis for the UL, and thus, the story is not “sort of” true, it is true, despite being bastardized over time.
I think snopes has been trolled or it is an elaborate troll by snopes.
I am far from convinced that the clip is genuine.
snopes gives absolutely no details on the provenance of the clip other than it is from 1977. Was it actually aired? Is it an outtake? Just who came up with this clip? Given the popularity of the Newlywed Game and the “butt, Bob” legend, one would think that this clip would have been a staple of blooper tapes for years.
While urban legends have many variations, if the clip was actually aired, I’d expect someone somewhere to get the date and some details right. Problem is that people remember the “butt, Bob” story predating 1977 (though maybe their memory is faulty too).
Why would Bob Eubanks deny it? Wasn’t his job to elict embarassing admissions from the contestants? Why wouldn’t he just say, ‘Oh yeah, it happened in 1977, but she said “in the ass”’?
I think the ‘in the ass’ punchline is very new, a feature of the recent email variations on the story. It seems odd that the staple ‘That’d be the butt, Bob’ punchline would circulate for years and again nobody would have remembered the original quote.
Suppose wayyyyy back in the mists of antiquity, a river flooded. It was a big flood, the kind that only happen once every couple decades.
Suppose that the river, in turn, dramatically raised the level of the lake into which it emptied. The kind of high water that only happens once in a century.
Suppose that many of the locals living near the banks of the river and lake were caught by surprise. Some died in the raging turbulence of the swollen river, many more lost their houses and farms and livestock and children.
Suppose that when the waters subsided, a few people returned to their former homes by the banks of the river and the shores of the lake.
Suppose . . .
Shall I then believe that the story of Noah is true?
“Based in truth” does not establish truth.
Ok, I admit it, you’ve completely lost me. What exactly are you trying to say? Do the details of the UL match exactly with the actual event? No, of course not, no written or oral account of an event will ever be 100% accurate. So what?
Seriously, I mean, do you think that this clip is:
(a) the source of the UL
(b) the one Libertarian saw that started this whole mess.
If the answers to (a) and (b) are yes, then I cannot see how you would say that Lib was not right, using any reasonable definition of the word.
To address you example, the situation you described is akin to that before the discovery of this video. Given the facts you provided, no, I would not believe in the story of Noah.
However, if evidence were unearthed of some ancient woman in China saving a whole bunch of animals from a great flood by building a big raft for them, I would say that the story of Noah was probably based on this actual event, despite the fact that the details vary.
warinner said:
I’ll buy that. If it is a fake, the people that made it should get a damn Emmy.
Maybe Libertarian was so pissed at all the people calling him a liar he hired Industrial Light and Magic to make a phony tape for him. I for one think Bob Eubanks looks a lot like Jar Jar Binks.
gEEk said, in response to my statement that “I don’t know that any of us said ‘This can’t be true because it’s an urban legend.’”
You can think anything you want, but I’m afraid you’re wrong. I didn’t say what you claimed we’d said. You can’t try to manipulate other things into your claim. Now, did it turn out that I may have been wrong? Looks like it (though I’m still kind of wondering along with the person here who is suspicious that this may be a bogus clip). But that doesn’t mean I said what you claimed.
I never claimed he was lying, but you can’t sit there and say with absolute certainty that “the truth of the matter is, he did see it.” Unless you were there, you don’t know that for sure. As I’ve said, if this clip is real, it’s probable that he saw it.
The part that I specifically said made him look silly (as you quoted, and should have noticed yourself) was the possibility of him thinking “skeptics are making up stories just to make believers in this urban legend look bad.” And that still stands. And that was not even close to heaping abuse on him. By any standard. I think you’re reaching again.
Maybe so. So what? That still means the UL tainted his memory, which is what I’ve been saying here. I think it’s more likely that it happened beforehand, but I certainly can’t say for sure.
If you want to judge yourself guilty, that’s fine. I never called him a liar, nor did I ever even imply it. In fact, when he and I discussed that (I think it was in a Pit thread), he said he never felt that I had implied he was lying. There is a big difference between mistaken and lying. I thought he was mistaken. There is evidence that he was at least in part mistaken, though he may have been right about a lot of it.
I don’t want to seem the alarmist, but Libertarian’s continuing silence has me perplexed. It is well known that, in certain rare cases, the female consumes the male after mating. Purely out of curiousity – I don’t know how to put this delicately – but has any one checked Edlyn’s scat for bone fragments? (Or maybe they hope to appear on the show, and don’t want to say anything that might annoy Eubanks)
People, people. DavidB has already admitted he was wrong exactly to the extent that he was. I.e., it is not the case that nothing of the kind happened, though the evidence that it did happen doesn’t quite match up to the story that was in question to begin with.
Some of you dismiss the fact that the eyewitness details given by Libertarian are contradicted by the new concrete evidence that has arisen. This is a very odd move, a very illogical one, because precisely what Libertarian was doing by providing details was to lend evidence that the story occured by claiming that he could not be wrong about what, to bastardize Descartes, he clearly and distinctly remembered. Now that the facts as they are known contradict his claims to clear and distinct memory, and that memory was the basis for his claim that the incident occurred, Libertarian’s position is shown to have been unsound because the premises of his argument were untrue.
Furthermore, this becomes a case-in-point against Libertarian’s criticism of skepticism, because it is still an instantiation of false memory, only now it’s possible to concretely demonstrate to what extent he had adopted false memories. If you accept this clip as the incident that he was actually thinking about, then you also must accept that he did in fact adopt *false memories * about it, and held those memories with conviction which the facts do not support.
In the end DavidB was wrong to the extent that he claimed that incident never happened, but he was right to the extent that he claimed that Libertarian’s evidence was not sufficient to establish the truth of the story.
I don’t think the clip could be fake, and if it is, George Lucas and ILM are behind it…
The bleep, followed by extreme laughter, audience reactions of laughter, and then the most damning: Bob’s further explanation that he was looking for a location.
I think she said it, by mouth movement, but I could be tainted cause I was looking for it. I just think that disputing whether or not the video clip is real or not is silly.
The UL originated when someone who saw it told someone who didnt, who expanded on it, etc…and maybe even after a few years, people who really did see it couldn’t discern fact from fiction, or couldn’t put it all together even if they didn’t hear the UL.
The race thing is the clincher about the truth of Libertarian’s claims. I’m a big fan of the Snopes site, and as they point out, minorities and foreigners are often the subjects of urban legends, attempting to show how dumb they or their customs are. I doubt if Lib was wholly untouched by the UL…
It wouldn’t be necessary to fake the video, just fake the soundtrack. And, given the distortions in RealPlayer’s audio, it would be difficult to detect.
‘Extreme’ laughter? It was a comedy gameshow, ferchristsakes. Laughter would be the easiest thing to fake in the clip.
Like I said, the clip isn’t proof in and of itself. Suppose the clip is 100% authentic and the hapless women really did say ‘in the ass.’ Was it ever broadcast? What was the air date? Episode number? Remember, it was supposedly aired in 1977 when broadcast morals where not quite the same as they are today.
Faking bloopers is not unknown, just ask Uncle Don.
Wow. I wish I’d known this thread was afoot. I’ve been busy writing a new web site for the past week or so, and haven’t even had time to browse until today.
To all: kindly do not question David’s veracity or motive. I am convinced that both are impeccable, though, as an Hippocratical Melancholy/Sanguine, he is wont to overdramatize.
David: you were most dutiful to have revisited this issue for the purpose of determining whether this is the episode I saw. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. At least, I don’t think it was. And don’t worry. I don’t think you picked on me in the “Up The Butt, Bob” thread any more than you usually do.