Download e-book for kindle: Truth and Rumors: The Reality Behind TV's Most Famous Myths by Bill Brioux

When you first heard it, you could not think it: Jerry Mathers, from TV's Leave It To Beaver, were killed in Vietnam. Then notice got here that Abe Vigoda, the actor who performed the curmudgeonly cop Fish on Barney Miller, used to be useless; and that Mikey, who could consume whatever because the existence Cereal tyke, had eaten too many Pop Rocks and exploded. along with exposing us to objects we could not differently think, tv can persuade us of items that by no means really occurred. yet how did those outrageous television legends start? How did they unfold from study rooms to boardrooms throughout North the USA and past? And, most vital, what do those rumors, so quick reworked into evidence and customary wisdom, exhibit approximately our dating to truth during the medium of tv? installed different phrases, what precisely is it that have been doing whilst have been dealing in those terrific rumors―are we chasing after awesome truths or just extra remarkable entertainment?

To take one telling instance: Jerry Mathers was once no longer really killed in Vietnam―but the elemental feel of this lie wasn't some distance faraway from the sentiments factually expressed within the two-page unfold of the faces of the useless in Time journal. during this compelling work―which is supplemented with interviews with some of the humans implicated in those rumors―author invoice Brioux exposes the truth at the back of the numerous tales that at present move in our tradition. via those tales (both precise and false), he sheds a revealing mild on simply what position those rumors play in modern society―and what function our society performs in regard to those rumors as well.