Nov. 7, 2012<\/p>\n
\u201cMass hysteria always makes perfect sense when we are trapped in it. It can take decades \u2013 or even longer \u2013 before the crazed irrationality of a particular episode shows itself for what it was.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 From \u201cWhen Mass Hysteria Convicted 5 Teenagers\u201d in The New York Times (October 27)<\/em><\/p>\n \n Thanks to a new documentary by Ken Burns, the Central Park Five \u2013 all convicted of a widely publicized 1989 rape and beating \u2013 will soon return to the spotlight. According to the Times, Beyond a shared year on the timeline of wrongful prosecutions, these urban teenagers, black and Hispanic, seem to have borne few similarities to the Edenton Seven. But I could never read\u00a0 the\u00a0 words \u201cyawning gaps in evidence\u201d without thinking of a Little Rascals prosecution built almost entirely on the resolutely manipulated, deceitfully paraphrased testimony of children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nov. 7, 2012 \u201cMass hysteria always makes perfect sense when we are trapped in it. It can take decades \u2013 or even longer \u2013 before the crazed irrationality of a particular episode shows itself for what it was.\u201d \u2013 From \u201cWhen Mass Hysteria Convicted 5 Teenagers\u201d in The New York Times (October 27) Thanks to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":711,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions\/711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBurns depicts \u201cthe forces that led citizens, politicians, the media and the criminal justice system to brush past yawning gaps in the evidence in the case.\u201d<\/p>\n