Thursday, June 14, 2007

Is that a gay bomb in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?

News of a Pentagon-proposed "gay bomb" seems to have been all over the Internet the last couple of days. Salon. CBS. Huffington. It's a wild story and certainly news.

But here's the thing: It's not. Well, I guess you could say it's old news.

The story was all over the Web in January 2005. I know because I posted about it at the time, and linked to the BBC story.

As someone in the news business--oh, OK, OK, it's technology news not news news--I wonder how this made a comeback. It wasn't exactly obscure at the time. I If I posted about the gay bomb back then, it's because it was widely linked to. How did the idea disappear down the memory hole? How'd it spring back as "news"? When you Google the phrase gay bomb, that BBC January 2005 story is the first hit, so it's hardly obscure.

And yes, my subject line makes no sense.

UPDATE: I'm not the only one who noticed and is puzzled (scroll down).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So -- is it an urban legend, or is it a Pentagon-staged rumor meant to strike fear into the hearts of our patriarchal enemies?

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing this.