Larry Hnetka Goes HMmmm

I’ve added a Funny Quotes widget to my sidebar.

I also had the option to add a quote to the random pool of funny stuff. My lame contribution was “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

Little did I know that my supposedly funny submission reads “Larry HNetka claims it is anon.”

Yikes, my “Nervous Norman” shot into overdrive. Not only was this quote not that funny but also I chanced being pilloried for pitiful attribution.

But do you think I can find an accurate reference for that quote? Nope, no luck schmuck.

The best I could do was a vague reference in Answers.com where a review of the movie, The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan states “(the movie) catered to middle-brow music fans eager to dissolve into a world of rousing light opera, vivid images, and a script that takes to heart Mark Twain’s famous writing admonition: ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.’”

Naturally, I searched everywhere to verify Mark Twain actually said this. No luck, bucko. Not even anything close to that adage.

The most likely source of the quote is folklorist J. Frank Dobie who supposedly had this take on the phrase, “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.” Although Dobie is sometimes credited with this phrase, it hasn’t been verified with documentary evidence.

Delbert Trew (another Texas folklorist) has claimed: “I never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.” Similar to the other quotes but again unverified. However, it seems the phrase dates from at least 1940.

At another site, someone asked for the Latin translation of the quote.

One reply gave this Latin translation: Nunquam veritas obstructio fabulae bonae sit. A second reply suggested that nunquam veritatem fabulae bonae impedire sinamus (Let us not permit the truth to impede a good story) was perhaps a more concise Latin translation.

The things my “nervous norman” self finds out on this manic hunts.

But there is yet one more tidbit about this quote.

On Snopes.com there is the Dan Quayle anecdote which actually sums up why the quote actually is meaningful.

In April 1989, Representative Claudine Schneider of Rhode Island told a gathering of Republicans that she had recently attended an event at the Belgian embassy, where Vice-President Quayle complimented her on her command of French.

Then, Schneider said, the Vice-President added: “I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn’t study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people.”

Ms. Schneider concluded by admitting that the story was merely a joke, but not all the newspapers reported it that way.

Several publications, either through carelessness or a desire not to let the truth get in the way of a good story, reported the story as true.

The culprits included such venerable publications as Newsday, the Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, and Time. The fabricated misquote took hold because it sounded exactly like something Dan Quayle (or, more accurately, the Dan Quayle of public perception) would say, and no amount of correction could dislodge it from the public vocabulary.

So there you go. The quote is likely by Texan J. Frank Dobie. Mark Twain may have said something along these lines but I couldn’t verify that. Now you know the Latin translation of the quote. And sloppy journalism has created an urban myth from a simple joke by a politician.

Now back to my point. This quote just isn’t funny anymore. But I learned something by golly.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 4th, 2007 at 7:25:05 PM and is filed under HMmmm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.