Black Propaganda in the War on the Past

Spot what this post from Laban and this one from the Dumb One have in common.

A little economy with the truth, but hey, what does that matter if it helps to convince us that life before the Great Cultural Revolution wasn't worth living? And what are facts but the social constructions of the powerful, anyway? Which is scarcely an exaggeration - consider this from one of the Dumb One's links:-

'For now, Rigoberta’s academic fan club resorts to what may be termed the Tawana Brawley defense, named after the New York teenager who faked a racially motivated rape. The lawyers and civil rights activists who defended Brawley said it didn’t matter that she had concocted her tale, because a racist society causes such desperation. As legal scholar Patricia Williams put it, “No mater who did it to her, and even if she did it to herself, Tawana Brawley has been the victim of some unspeakable violation.”'

Remember this one? This is from a document apparently emanating from Yale University, no less:-

'The old saying, “a rule of thumb” comes from the rule that a man could not beat his wife with a rod thicker than his thumb.'

I've heard this repeated in good faith (and duly believed it myself), and read it in a book by a Christian feminist. It's an urban myth. Or you might prefer the description here: a 'gender hate crime'.