Self reviewed? Seems to document the 'untrues', including the various hoaxes. What is it with these guys????
http://www.nypost.com/seven/06282009/posto...foot_176534.htm
QUOTE
BIGFOOT
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A LEGEND
By JOSHUA BUHS - Posted: 3:27 am, June 28, 2009
Bigfoot. The name evokes mystery, foreboding -- a huge monster stalking the edge of civilization -- and more than its share of silliness. Bigfoot is perhaps most associated with the ridiculous headlines of supermarket tabloids: "Palin Bags a Bigfoot." "I Was Bigfoot's Love Slave." "Bigfoot to Fight Aliens."
The beast was born in the summer of 1958 when construction workers building a road through the northern California wilderness noticed mysterious tracks around their worksite. They blamed "Bigfoot," as they called him, for lost lunchboxes and misplaced tools.
By the fall, the story reached the newswires and Bigfoot went global, as the tales about California's monster blended with similar accounts of the Canadian Sasquatch and the Himalayan Abominable Snowman (or Yeti) and Native American tales of wildmen.
Since then, interest in Bigfoot has ebbed and flowed. He was unpopular in the 1960s, after Sir Edmund Hillary declared the Abominable Snowman a myth, but saw a revival in the 1970s, after Roger Patterson claimed to have filmed Bigfoot. Most recently, media interest was piqued last year when two men claimed to have a Bigfoot body in a freezer. That turned out to be a Halloween costume stuffed with opossum innards.
But no matter how silly Bigfoot might sometimes seem, the constant curiosity about the beast raises a serious question: What is the fascination with Bigfoot?
Delusion and naiveté play their part. In 1986, Anthony Wooldridge, while hiking through the Himalayas, photographed what he thought was a creature with a large, square head. Anthropologist John Napier declared the picture proof of the Yeti's existence. A year later, Wooldridge admitted that he had been confused: the Yeti was a rock outcropping.
Hoaxes, too, account for much of the Bigfoot lore. Reasons for hoaxing can be blatant: fame, fortune, fun, revenge. Back in the 1970s, Ray Pickens, a bricklayer from Arden, Washington, faked tracks because he resented the Bigfoot hunters who disparaged him as a "hick."
Still, all Bigfooters cannot be dismissed as deluded or gullible. Contrary to stereotype, they are not idiots. Often, they are highly literate.
Rene Dahinden never saw Bigfoot, never found tracks when he was on his own, but he devoted his life to the hunt for the beast, leaving his family, working a dead-end job, severing friendships. He fantasized that when he caught the beast, "I'd take the scientists by the scruff of their collective neck and rub their ******* faces in -- actually, I would like to see all the people -- the scientists -- who have opened their mouths and made their stupid, ignorant statements, fired from their jobs."
To stand up for Bigfoot is to stand against consensus, science and elite opinion, and to defend the dignity of the individual confronting the world as he or she sees it.
Bigfoot and Bigfooters should not be dismissed, but understood, and understood sympathetically. Even the hoaxers.
Buhs is the author of "Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend" (University of Chicago Press) out now.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A LEGEND
By JOSHUA BUHS - Posted: 3:27 am, June 28, 2009
Bigfoot. The name evokes mystery, foreboding -- a huge monster stalking the edge of civilization -- and more than its share of silliness. Bigfoot is perhaps most associated with the ridiculous headlines of supermarket tabloids: "Palin Bags a Bigfoot." "I Was Bigfoot's Love Slave." "Bigfoot to Fight Aliens."
The beast was born in the summer of 1958 when construction workers building a road through the northern California wilderness noticed mysterious tracks around their worksite. They blamed "Bigfoot," as they called him, for lost lunchboxes and misplaced tools.
By the fall, the story reached the newswires and Bigfoot went global, as the tales about California's monster blended with similar accounts of the Canadian Sasquatch and the Himalayan Abominable Snowman (or Yeti) and Native American tales of wildmen.
Since then, interest in Bigfoot has ebbed and flowed. He was unpopular in the 1960s, after Sir Edmund Hillary declared the Abominable Snowman a myth, but saw a revival in the 1970s, after Roger Patterson claimed to have filmed Bigfoot. Most recently, media interest was piqued last year when two men claimed to have a Bigfoot body in a freezer. That turned out to be a Halloween costume stuffed with opossum innards.
But no matter how silly Bigfoot might sometimes seem, the constant curiosity about the beast raises a serious question: What is the fascination with Bigfoot?
Delusion and naiveté play their part. In 1986, Anthony Wooldridge, while hiking through the Himalayas, photographed what he thought was a creature with a large, square head. Anthropologist John Napier declared the picture proof of the Yeti's existence. A year later, Wooldridge admitted that he had been confused: the Yeti was a rock outcropping.
Hoaxes, too, account for much of the Bigfoot lore. Reasons for hoaxing can be blatant: fame, fortune, fun, revenge. Back in the 1970s, Ray Pickens, a bricklayer from Arden, Washington, faked tracks because he resented the Bigfoot hunters who disparaged him as a "hick."
Still, all Bigfooters cannot be dismissed as deluded or gullible. Contrary to stereotype, they are not idiots. Often, they are highly literate.
Rene Dahinden never saw Bigfoot, never found tracks when he was on his own, but he devoted his life to the hunt for the beast, leaving his family, working a dead-end job, severing friendships. He fantasized that when he caught the beast, "I'd take the scientists by the scruff of their collective neck and rub their ******* faces in -- actually, I would like to see all the people -- the scientists -- who have opened their mouths and made their stupid, ignorant statements, fired from their jobs."
To stand up for Bigfoot is to stand against consensus, science and elite opinion, and to defend the dignity of the individual confronting the world as he or she sees it.
Bigfoot and Bigfooters should not be dismissed, but understood, and understood sympathetically. Even the hoaxers.
Buhs is the author of "Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend" (University of Chicago Press) out now.
