Two weeks ago I wrote a blog post about a newspaper report of a Pennsylvania man who claimed to have found unknown Native American ruins on his property, sparking a flurry of calls from the paper’s readers urging him to contact Scott Wolter of America Unearthed. The subject of that newspaper article took issue with my blog post, and he felt that I unfairly added “twists and nuances” to what he claims was erroneous reporting in the newspaper accounts. In a contentious hour-long phone conversation this afternoon, the man (whose name I am omitting so Google won’t pick up this post) explained that the original newspaper accounts contained inaccuracies, and he blamed me for failing to confirm the newspaper’s reporting before writing about the news accounts. I fully attributed all of the information to the newspaper, but the man is correct that I erroneously assumed that a local newspaper could correctly report on its own area.
This week, the original reporter of the newspaper story and its follow up blog post retracted parts of his reporting. Because some of the underlying facts were retracted, I have decided to remove the blog post in its entirety out of respect for the subject of the story. While I maintain that my analysis was fair and accurate based on the original reporting, because that reporting has been partially retracted, I cannot stand by the analysis and indeed would not have posted the article as I did had the original newspaper accounts been correct. I apologize to the subject of the blog post for the misleading analysis that emerged from the incorrect impression created by the false facts from the newspaper.
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I’m not sure what to make of a claim circulating this week of a Chinese connection to the prehistoric lands of what is now the U.S. state of Georgia. According to an article published on Ancient Origins, written by Jon R. Haskill of the Indigenous Peoples Research Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated to exploring Old World contact with pre-Columbian North America, a Chinese votive sword was discovered in Georgia last year. The object, measuring about 30 cm (12 inches) in length, was allegedly uncovered in a creek bed, and it is now being promoted by Siu-Leung Lee, the Chinese man who appeared on America Unearthed to argue for a Chinese presence in prehistoric North America based on another Chinese artifact allegedly found in America under mysterious circumstances, as well as a misreading of an old map. Lee now claims that he knows of several Chinese objects from Georgia, which he is keeping secret until he can publish the details, though he does not say where.
I’d like to start today with a few words about MTV’s new series Scream. I had low expectations, and the show failed to meet even these. I was 15 when the first Scream movie was in theaters, and I love it. But it was very much a product of its time, a clever and ironic love letter to the slasher films of the 1970s and the 1980s. Scream the TV series is more of a plagiarized high school essay on the first Scream movie, borrowing incidents and archetypes without originality, wit, or soul. It’s a faded copy of a movie that was itself a recreation of a dying original. The new series lacks a tone; it is not horror, or even, as it tries to assert, Gothic. Instead, it is a hodgepodge of homages to 1990s relics--Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Dawson’s Creek (all by Scream movie writer and show “story” creator Kevin Williamson, no less!)—but reanimated incompletely, and with no new energy propelling the shambling mess. I can’t blame Williamson here since he isn’t actively involved in the series, but his works tend to have purpose behind the horror: Scream (the movie) was a twisted murder-mystery beneath the genre trappings. I Know was, beneath the slasher trappings, a suspense thriller and roman a clef. The pilot for the Scream series lacks the extra layer that would make it watchable.
Well, enough of that. |
AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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