Word: myths
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...felt pressured to conform to unnatural and confining standards. Those who couldn't meet them often pretended that they had. One of the strictest requirements, since Andrew Jackson inaugurated the era of the common man, has been that the President fulfill what historian Edward Pessen called the log-cabin myth: the personal-creation narrative that begins with humble roots. For some Presidents--the Roosevelts and J.F.K. spring to mind--the effort was clearly impossible. But other patricians in the White House have passed as plebians. In 1840 the supporters of William Henry Harrison called him the Log Cabin and Hard...
...letters, from a lawyer in Tennessee, reported a common belief among the African-American community that tumors should be left alone lest surgery “provoke” them. The correspondence sparked Retsky’s interest in a racial angle to his theory. “Myths seldom lack any connection with reality,” his new paper reads. “Could it be that [African-Americans] believe in the myth twice as frequently as [European-Americans] because they observe it twice as often?” Retsky’s research is again raising eyebrows...
...says the carpenter, "I will not reach my hand out to save him." In Khadamiya, too, the narrative about Aug. 31 has changed. Karrar Hussein, 28, was crossing the bridge when the stampede began. Ask him about al-Obeidi, and his cheerful demeanor quickly turns sour. "That is a myth," hisses the cell-phone salesman. "That person never existed at all. He was invented by the Sunnis to make them look good." Rather than jumping in to help, he claims, the people of Adhamiya laughed and cheered as Shi'ites drowned...
...about whether any returning American soldiers were actually spat upon.) Vietnam also saw the first appearance of the ridiculous argument that we couldn't stop the war until our POWs were freed - as if stopping the war wasn't the quickest way to free them. This, too, fed a myth that opposition to a war was somehow a betrayal of the soldiers. Ultimately, in the case of Vietnam, the antiwar movement included a majority of the country, and it saved the lives of untold thousands of Americans by getting us out of that war - not quickly, but eventually...
...bought into thenaive belief thatif only Israel would remove all settlements in the West Bank, peace would ensue. The Gaza experience forever debunked that myth. Peace will come only when the Palestinians acknowledge Israel's right to exist...