Posted 3:43 PM by Scoobie Davis

Right-Wing Urban Legends Update
I have been busy with the TV show and my article on right-wing urban legends—the tentative title is “There Are Alligators (As Well As Some Republicans) In Our Sewers.” I have always been interested in urban legends since I read my first book on the topic by Jan Harold Brunvand. Urban legends are an interesting part of fringe culture that I had found amusing, along with Illuminati conspiracies described by Robert Anton Wilson and Jack Chick comics. What I found more intriguing is how, in recent years, many in the American right have spread rumors (particularly about the Clintons) to the point that urban-legend-debunking web sites began to address them. However, one thing I know about the American right is that it will not let anything stand in the way of an effective smear campaign. Hence, the Moonie-owned Insight magazine recently attempted to discredit one of the most popular urban legend debunking web sites, Snopes, for alleged liberal bias. The Insight article criticizes the site’s administrators for listing as false a rumor spread by WorldNetDaily’s Geoff Metcalf that then-President Clinton planned to go to Vietnam and that the Vietnamese flag would be raised above the American flag on a U.S. Navy ship. I did some research into the matter and found that Metcalf not only spread this particular rumor—refuted by the Navy—but he also circulated the “Clinton body count” smear and conspiracies involving Vince Foster’s death. This revelation is not surprising to anyone familiar with WorldNetDaily, a repository for urban legends and paranoid conspiracy theories. WND is run by Joseph Farah, who was an expert witness for Clinton Chronicles hoaxer Pat Matrisciana in hislibel suit(I’ll detail this extensively in the forthcoming article).