
When That Guy Died on My Show (2007) - mcenedella
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/when-that-guy-died-on-my-show/
======
vortico
I found this article difficult to follow, mostly because I'm not familiar with
the people or event, and it begins with rhetoric assuming the reader is
familiar. Here's a list of the "characters".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._I._Rodale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._I._Rodale)
who died on the stage of the Dick Cavett Show
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dick_Cavett_Show](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dick_Cavett_Show)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cavett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cavett)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Hamill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Hamill)
who Cavett was talking to while Rodale died

~~~
rmason
I was a big fan of Dick Cavett's show, it was a higher brow show than the
others.

I went looking for his interview of Jimi Hendrix to post which happened during
Woodstock but sadly couldn't find it on YouTube. But here's a short clip where
he tells Cavett who he thought was the best guitarist in the world.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJxiCZwP_GI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJxiCZwP_GI)

Here's Cavett interviewing John and Yoko Lennon:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kXCnKfdGOY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kXCnKfdGOY)

------
PhantomGremlin
This is one of those situations where people remember the gist of an event,
but they don't clearly remember the exact details.

I was a high school kid living in NYC at the time. I used to watch Cavett on
TV all the time. Here's what I remember:

1) this was relatively big news when it happened

2) newscasts covered it. Newspapers covered it.

3) Cavett spoke about it on his show the next day (as he mentions).

4) I saw footage from that show. Did that footage air on the news on the day
Rodale died, or did Cavett show some footage the next day? I don't remember,
but there clearly was footage of the guy sitting in the chair just before he
died.

\-----

So, many people "saw" the event, in the sense that they pieced it all
together.

Even when Cavett talks about "the look on your face", that also happened.
People might not have seen his face that day, but Cavett was somber the next
night when he explained the previous day's events. Many people tuned in for
that and I'm not surprised they "remember" it.

All this is well understood. As Wiki claims: _Memory is never a literal
recount of past experiences. Rather, it is dependent on the constructive
processes present at the time of encoding that are subject to potential errors
and distortions._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstructive_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstructive_memory)

~~~
bittermang
I once saw a very drunk woman drive her car at full throttle into the corner
of a hotel.

It's like he describes it, snapshots. My brain throttled hard, and locked up
at the amount of information there was to process all at once. That can't be
right, she just drove into the side of that building. No, she slammed into it.
She might have been trying to drive through it? No, that's silly.

But one clear piece is the unmistakable sound of an automatic transmission
with the pedal hard to the floor. And the crash, an onomatopoetic word of
itself, it sounded like a crash.

It was complicated by the fact that moments ago, I was loading wedding gifts
in to a van. Not mine, just helping the Niece after the reception. But what a
stark and sudden turn for a day, to witness something like that. What if she
had turned her wheel this way or that when entering the parking lot before
hitting the building? Would she have gone through me, and right in to the
lobby? Would she have missed the building wide and ramped off the escarpment
overlooking the Interstate?

And I was just frozen in that moment of time. Slack jawed and wide eyed while
I watched by buddy Timmy organize the available bystanders and check on the
driver. I believe he shut the ignition off, but I believe that is something he
would do, I have no proof that is what actually happened next.

It's weird, the kind of stuff that goes through your head, and you find out
about when something like that happens.

------
S_A_P
This reminds me of the Challenger explosion. I’m certain I watched it live in
elementary school and when it blew up my teachers had to deal with a bunch of
crying 2nd graders. I’ve read, however that it is highly improbable for that
to have occurred due to the launch being tape delayed and CNN being the only
station to carry it live. I have enough memories of my classmates crying and
the teachers trying to figure out what to say that I’m convinced I saw it.
It’s likely the same scenario happened as mentioned in this article.

~~~
AndrewNCarr
If you were in school, it is very possible you did watch it live:

"With Christa McAuliffe set to be the first teacher in space, NASA had
arranged a satellite broadcast of the full mission into television sets in
many schools, but the general public did not have access to this unless they
were one of the then-few people with satellite dishes. What most people recall
as a "live broadcast" was actually the taped replay broadcast soon after the
event."
[http://www.nbcnews.com/id/11031097/](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/11031097/)

~~~
mixmastamyk
Was (too) early in the morning on the east coast, the cold contributed to the
failure. By the time we arrived in school in California, it was hours-old
news.

~~~
mentat
"The time had come, at 11:38 AM Eastern Standard Time" \- at least look it up.

~~~
mixmastamyk
So it was 20 mins old, no need to be an ass about it.

------
vermontdevil
Similar to the insistence that Sinbad played a genie in a movie called Shazaam
when he never did. But people really insisted they saw the movie.

[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sinbad-movie-
shazaam/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sinbad-movie-shazaam/)

~~~
brickmort
I think I have a valid argument for this theory besides people mistaking this
with Shaquille O'Neal's 'Kazaam'. In an episode of Nickelodeon's 'All That',
Sinbad once played the father of Ishboo (played by Kenan Thompson) 'Sinboo'.
And I recall his clothing being very similar to that of a Genie. Can enough
people be mistakenly conflating their childhood memories of Sinboo and Kazaam
and creating 'Shazaam'..?

~~~
TwoBit
Also there was a TV show called Shazam.

------
closed
If anyone is looking for a rabbit hole to go down, the memories formed in
response to surprising, highly emotional events, that people feel are
especially vivid, are called flashbulb memories :).

RE people believing they saw it, even if they couldn't have, an important
factor for people's (mis)recollection is what happens after the event.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashbulb_memory](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashbulb_memory)

~~~
nielsole
I liked how Terry Pratchett mocked this phenomenon:

> He remembered once when he'd been stabbed and would have bled to death if
> Sergeant Angua hadn't caught up with him and how, as he lay there, he'd
> found himself taking a very intense interest in the pattern of the carpet.
> The senses say: we've only got a few minutes, let's record everything, in
> every detail... \--The Night Watch

------
jaytaylor
My favorite part of the article was this memorable quote:

    
    
        A man convinced against his
        will,
        Is of the same opinion still.
    

Cleanly sums up the phenomenon.

------
rrauenza
This is partly about the Mandella Effect -- many people claimed to have seen
the episode, but supposedly it never aired.

[https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/07/24/the-mandela-
effect/](https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/07/24/the-mandela-effect/)

It's named after Nelson Mandela due to the widespread false belief he died in
the 1980's.

------
salgernon
I don’t remember the show - but it probably coincided with the global renaming
of Berenstein Bears as Berenstain Bears. [1]

[1] [http://www.woodbetween.world/2012/08/the-berenstein-bears-
we...](http://www.woodbetween.world/2012/08/the-berenstein-bears-we-are-
living-in.html)

~~~
Larrikin
This often gets mentioned, but its pretty easily explained by the fact the
books are for children, Bernstein or Bernstain are both difficult words for
the target age group, and the ending stein is far more common a spelling.

~~~
mikeash
Yes, but that explanation is a lot less fun.

------
rudeboot
"Next thing I knew I was holding his wrist, thinking, I don’t know anything
about what a wrist is supposed to feel like."

------
efrafa
Last season of xfiles have a funny episode about the stuff you think happened,
but didnt :)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Art_of_Forehead_Swe...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Art_of_Forehead_Sweat)

------
pfarnsworth
I didn't catch it live, but the school principal announced it over the PA
system. It didn't seem as big of a deal to me at the time to warrant a PA
announcement, I was in high school at that point.

~~~
sparky_z
I have to assume you meant this to be a part of the thread about the
Challenger explosion.

------
cafard
I remember reading the bit about asking his "is there a doctor in the
audience?"

------
loser777
I assume the resurgence in interest is due to an earlier submission that
showed up this week? ;)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16555592](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16555592)

