Word: rumored
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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State police had said Monday a fourth body had been spotted in the Mohawk River by a police helicopter, but later in the day officials said that was only a rumor...
...still an end of innocence, since Vaskevitch was the firm's first investment banker to get caught up in the insider-trading scandals. Moreover, the involvement of so high an executive in the largest U.S. brokerage firm sent new waves of shivers through Wall Street. According to the rumor mill, which is now more preoccupied with subpoenas than proxy statements, as many as 60 Wall Streeters will be accused in connection with the Boesky scandal alone. Rumors about possible charges against the investment firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, which had close ties to Boesky, have become so vexing to the company...
Some stories voice new and realistic fears in coded form. A wild rumor that McDonald's was mixing earthworms into its hamburger meat spread across the U.S. as concern about junk food was rising. "The worm represented, on the one hand, the garbage food," says Kapferer, "and, on the other hand, the internal destruction that comes when you eat it. Far from being an aberration on the part of a bunch of crazies, this rumor was a cry of alarm...
...teacup story about President Nixon, which Kapferer says was spread by the official Chinese press. Instead of challenging the President, so the story goes, authorities arranged to have a performing magician pull the cup out of Nixon's briefcase and replace it with a cheap imitation. Kapferer thinks this rumor offered folk wisdom on how to deal with foreigners. "It showed the essential traits of the image the Chinese have of themselves," he explains, "the final victory of the resourceful Chinese over the crafty foreigner, and the ability of the Chinese to know how to act without having anyone lose...
Among the other businesses that have been threatened by rumors are Proctor & Gamble (the notion that the company's moon-and-stars symbol was related to Satanism), a Belgian beer that had to ride out a phony report that it caused impotence, and France's margarine industry, the victim of gossip that the lower-price spread was full of dangerous contaminants. Kapferer thinks French housewives got behind the margarine rumor as an excuse to keep buying butter. One margarine company fought back with an ad slogan describing the story as the "rumor that costs you dearly...