The Bowling Green Massacre: Where, What, and Why It Didn’t Happen

INTRODUCTION

The Massacre at Bowling Green (AKA Bowling Green Massacre) was a seminal event in American media history.  Its citation was used as a reason to justify an executive order banning travel to and from countries with Muslim majority populations in February 2017.

BOWLING GREEN: GEOGRAPHY

Bowling Green, Kentucky is the third most populous city in the state, located in the southwest area of the state.  Wikipedia lists its population as 63,616 as of 2015.  The city is also home to the second largest college in the state, Western Kentucky University, as well as the National Corvette Museum.

Personal note:  I had the pleasure of traveling to Bowling Green to visit friends in 1988.  I found it to be a nice accommodating destination with a lovely, tree-lined square.  I spent an afternoon at the museum at Western Kentucky University, but I didn’t bother going to the National Corvette Museum as I determined that it was filled with nothing but fancy cars.

Sorry, fancy cars are not my “thing”.

So much for where!

THE BOWLING GREEN MASSACRE

Leading historians from the world over have scoured every depository of knowledge to learn and gain some insight in to this event.   After an exhaustive five minute search of said archives the leading historians have concluded that there is no evidence that the Bowling Green Massacre ever occurred.  Indeed the historians sniffed they could not find any mention of a riot, annihilation, conflagration or “flipping the bird” let alone massacre occurring in Bowling Green.  Furthermore, the historians warn scholars not to bother looking for any such citations in any archives, because these words simply do not coexist with the words Bowling Green.

Three cheers for Bowling Green!

THE MYSTERY AND MYTH OF THE BOWLING GREEN MASSACRE

Scholars the world over are now focusing on the mystery of the Bowling Green Massacre.  Their focus is not so much on any curious deviation from the facts regarding the event.  No, they believe the greater mystery is why are we still talking about this none event after three days?

First, some context.  The Bowling Green Massacre first came to the public’s attention during an interview on MSNBC’s Hardball show with Chris Matthews on February 2, 2017. In the course of the interview the president’s adviser Kellyanne Conway mentioned the massacre as justification for the president’s order to ban travel to Muslim countries.   After a few days in which Facebook howled, Twitter giggled and guffawed, and political pundits fell down laughing, Conway admitted that she had misspoke that a massacre had happened.  She clarified that she was referring to the arrest of two Iranian immigrants living in Bowling Green who were apprehended in the act of soliciting funds for Isis in a FBI sting operation. 

Unfortunately Conway stopped short of further full disclosure about the state of her mind when she made these remarks in her interview.  Missing from her explanation were such statements as, “Wow, that was a real stupid thing to say, even for a blonde like myself,” or “I’m a poopiehead.”

THE BOWLING GREEN MASSACRE: AFTERMATH

In the wake of this media frenzy about a tragedy which never happened, there is still one theory worthy of discussion.  Okay, so we now know that the remark was a mistake…or was it?   Could the reference to a massacre in a Kentucky city rather have been another carefully crafted faux pas lobbed at the media as a diversion to take its attention away from more important issues?  Issues such as the current administration’s disastrous military operation in Yemen?

Now, that was a massacre!

(Thank you for not reading.)