Boston Globe
Alex Beam
OK, OK - SO I'VE BEEN WRONG BEFORE
By Alex Beam | Tuesday, June 11, 2002
[A PUBLISHED CORRECTION HAS BEEN ADDED TO THIS STORY.]
Much schadenfreude attends my latest spectacular error in judgment. After spending an afternoon at the Michael Skakel trial, I boldly predicted that Skakel would go free. "The charges don't fit. They will acquit," I wrote of the jury's only possible decision. Alas, they weren't listening. Skakel, the Joe Btfsplk of American jurisprudence, was found guilty and will be sentenced next month.
My motto, which I rarely utter within hearing of my editors, is: I've been wrong before. Salon magazine has graciously not mocked me for my January 2001 prediction that they would not last the year. On the other hand, Tina Brown never called to congratulate me on correctly divining the fate of her unlamented slop sheet, Talk. Last week, I wanted to predict that the US soccer team would not make it to the next round of the World Cup. Thank heavens I kept my trap shut.
To my knowledge, I have only one prediction outstanding. In February of 1992, I wrote a column predicting that Al Gore would be president "when my children grow up." In July of that year, my wife gave birth to our third son, a hostage to column fortune. Among his many endearing qualities is his unarguable lack of grown-up-ness. So Al, my hopes (if not my vote) are with you: Don't let me be wrong again!
But enough about me. Yes, there is shame, but also notoriety, in indulging the occasionally spectacular wrong guess. "WHITE WILL RUN" is a famous Boston Herald headline, trumpeting Peter Lucas's inaccurate, exclusive report of former mayor Kevin White's electoral intentions. Here is sports scribe Bill Cunningham's legendary 1938 evaluation of the hitting potential of Red Sox rookie Ted Williams: "I don't like the way he stands at the plate," Cunningham wrote, and then he compared Williams's stance to the writer's own golf swing. "I don't believe this kid will ever hit half a singer midget's weight in a bathing suit," concluded Cunningham, thus scribbling his way into sportswriting history.
Another great Bay State writer, Mr. R. W. Emerson of Concord, similarly assessed the abilities of an up-and-coming novelist of his era, Ms. Jane Austen. Her work, Emerson wrote, is "vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit or knowledge of the world. The one problem in the mind of the writer is mar riage able ness. Suicide is more respectable." [CORRECTION - DATE: Thursday, June 27, 2002: Mea culpa x 2
In my recent column about writers - including me - who make mistakes, I wrote that Ralph Waldo Emerson had heaped scorn on the "up-and-coming novelist" Jane Austen. "Oh dear, oh dear!" reader B. J. Miller wrote in. "However noble it is to admit occasional error (I would, too, if I were ever wrong), it's unfortunate to commit even another - horrifying - error in the midst of your humble admission.
"RWE (1803-1882) was 10 years old when Jane Austen (1775-1817) published her first novel, written years earlier (`Pride and Prejudice,' 1813), 14 when she died, all too soon. By the time the Concord Sage was able to review her work, the `up-and-coming novelist' had risen and gone.
"Accuracy, accuracy, eh, Beam?"] Emerson also fell for one of the great hoaxes of his era; the bogus "Cardiff giant" remains unearthed in upstate New York. I fell for an April Fool's Internet hoax earlier this year, which made me the laughingstock of "Web-loggers" the World Wide Web over. The Sage of Concord and I would agree that a foolish punctiliousness is the hobgoblin of small minds.
At least when writers commit errors, the stakes are not high. To cite the old adage: We archive our mistakes; surgeons have to bury theirs. And what of the highest stakes imaginable? American millenarian cults, starting with the followers of William Miller in the 1840s, have been predicting the end of the world for some time. While it's true Manny Ramirez is injured, and Pedro - temporarily, to be sure - has lost his fastball, reports of the world's end have been largely exaggerated.
The definitive words on this subject belong to Leon Festinger, one of the three coauthors of the classic 1956 sociology study "When Prophecy Fails." Festinger and his fellow researchers spent time in remote Minnesota with the Seekers, devotees of Dorothy Martin, a housewife who claimed to receive messages from aliens through her handwriting. Festinger and Martin's followers gathered near Detroit in December 1954 to await rescue from the doomed planet Earth. Sadly, none came.
Festinger observed that the more fervent Seekers had their faith strengthened, not diminished by their prophet's failure. He called the phenomenon "cognitive dissonance," and wrote: "Presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before."
So, in conclusion, I say: I made a mistake, but it's not the end of the world.
Alex Beam's e-dress is beam@globe.com.