{"id":836,"date":"2013-03-06T17:54:02","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T17:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=836"},"modified":"2016-01-01T18:08:09","modified_gmt":"2016-01-01T18:08:09","slug":"unc-sociologist-sought-to-deflate-moral-panic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?p=836","title":{"rendered":"UNC sociologist sought to deflate moral panic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"style187\" style=\"text-align: right;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-837\" src=\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/130306Oberschall.jpg\" alt=\"130306Oberschall\" width=\"120\" height=\"180\" \/>March 6, 2013<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.unc.edu\/~tonob\/\" target=\"_blank\">Anthony \u201cTony\u201d Oberschall<\/a>, professor (now emeritus) of sociology at UNC Chapel Hill, wrote extensively \u2013 if not prominently \u2013 about the insanity of the Little Rascals case. How was Oberschall able to resist the storyline that seduced so many others?<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">\u201cBefore retiring from UNC in 2005,\u201d he recalls, \u201cI taught in universities for 40 years. One of my fields of writing and research concerned collective behavior \u2013 collective myths, false beliefs, rumors, how they originate and why they are believed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">\u201cAs the Little Rascals prosecution unfolded right before my eyes (actually, as reported in the News &amp; Observer), it became obvious to me that this was but one more instance of moral panic, false beliefs and miscarriage of justice&#8230;.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">Oberschall likens the prosecution narrative to \u201cthe widely believed Iraqi WMD story disseminated by the Bush administration in 2002. Unthinking acceptance of what the authorities are asserting, alas, happens all too often.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">In early 1993, Oberschall sent the N&amp;O both an\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/130301OberschallCommentaryColumn.pdf\">op-ed column<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/130301OberschallLetter.pdf\">a response<\/a>\u00a0to a Dennis Rogers column, but neither appeared nor drew a response from the paper. (They have now been posted on the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/?page_id=81\">Bookshelf of Case Materials<\/a>\u00a0on this site.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">\u201cAt that point,\u201d he says, \u201chaving been stonewalled, I decided to research Little Rascals in depth and wrote several times about it in scholarly publications in subsequent years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"style184\">More about Oberschall\u2019s research in Thursday\u2019s post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>March 6, 2013 Anthony \u201cTony\u201d Oberschall, professor (now emeritus) of sociology at UNC Chapel Hill, wrote extensively \u2013 if not prominently \u2013 about the insanity of the Little Rascals case. How was Oberschall able to resist the storyline that seduced so many others? \u201cBefore retiring from UNC in 2005,\u201d he recalls, \u201cI taught in universities [&hellip;]<\/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-836","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\/836","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=836"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":843,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836\/revisions\/843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}