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.)