When They Lie about History, Don't Nod Your Head Like a Bobblehead Doll!

Mary Tudor, Queen of England 1553-1558

I'm not sure how I got on Factinate's list, but I get a daily email with "fun facts about everything." If you think historical myths and disinformation are fun, Factinate is the site for you.

Today the subject was "Bloody Mary" Tudor, monarch of England after Henry's son Edward VI died as a youngster. Mary was the daughter of Henry VIII's and his wife, the true queen, Catherine of Aragon. According to Factinate, Mary was a monster, maybe even crazy, who burned about 250 Protestants at the stake for heresy because of her fanatical hatred. The fact checkers no doubt read Foxe's Book of Martyrs that painted Mary as a vindictive and tyrannical monarch. That's kind of amusing when you consider the reign of Henry.

The truth is that Mary was no more brutal than other English monarchs and a lot less brutal than her father and her half sister, Elizabeth. An article in the Smithsonian Magazine paints a more nuanced picture of Mary.

Out of curiosity, I looked up Factinate's take on Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn and Protestant to the core. Not one word there about her persecution of the Jesuits and lay Catholics brutally murdered by being hanged, drawn, and quartered for the crime of refusing to abandon the Mass. Nada, nope...she was "Good Queen Bess." Talk about a myth!

There's plenty of misinformation out there about history, some of it deliberate. Disney's Pocahontas is nonsense portraying the indian princess in a relationship with Captain John Smith when she was only a little child. But then most of Disney's films are nonsense. The ones that aren't have been mostly pulled and shelved because they aren't woke.

Disney's not alone at distorting history though. I hate to destroy an illusion but the Von Trapp family did not flee from the Nazis over the mountains. Unfortunately, Maria sold the rights to her memoir for a meager amount and lost all control over the content of the film. 

When the Von Trapp children saw the movie some of them cried over the portrayal of their father whom they described as a loving and gentle man and not the rigid Prussian officer blowing a whistle to summon his children. 

Let's face it, you don't get good historical truth from movies made for entertainment. Documentaries may or may not be reliable depending on the honesty of the producers and the writers. 

Have you ever seen Hans Christian Anderson with Danny Kaye? The movie begins with a written disclaimer identifying the story as a "fairy tale." If you want to know who Anderson really was, read a good biography. He was not the romantic making ballet slippers for the ballerina he adored.

At any rate, don't just accept as "facts" what are actually biases. These days it's hard to know what's true and what's not. With photo shop and artificial intelligence that can even fake interviews with voice recognition....well.... soon we won't be able to trust our eyes or our ears to know for sure what's true and what's not. 

Be a critical thinker whose slow to jump on somebody's bandwagon. Remember what happened to the Covington kids at the March for Life and to the Olympic "bomber" who wasn't, Richard Jewell. Peoples lives can be ruined by jumping to false conclusions!

As my mom used to say, "Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear." That advice was never more sensible than it is today.