“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” Winston Churchill
Imagine, 30 years from now, reading historical accounts that point to “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” for its significant and lasting contribution to both American life.
Imagine academics teaching that “Millionaire” was of great service to society because it inspired legions of Americans to rush to libraries and college campuses in order to better educate themselves.
And while you know that it’s ludicrous nonsense, it’s too late for the truth because an absurd notion has taken hold as an irrefutable, widely held – and taught – fact.
And yet, historians, social scientists and sociologists, with the help of TV programmers, are today attaching – and have been for several years – a similarly ridiculous significance to a made-for-TV event that occurred 30 years ago.
In September, 1973, Billie Jean King, 30 and at the top of women’s tennis, defeated 55-year-old Bobby Riggs, a trash-talking, self-promoting hustler/tennis pro who wore thick glasses and knew how to make something out of nothing.
The “Battle of the Sexes,” from the Astrodome in Houston, was televised on ABC. It was presented as exactly what it was designed to be and what it proved to be: An anything-for-ratings circus act.
The King-Riggs match was a curiosity resplendent with sarcastic and undignified glitz, including the sight of Ms. King, in the role of Cleopatra, being transported to the court in a feathered sedan schlepped by male “slaves.” Oh, the tennis was real, but the result was irrelevant to all but the weak-minded.
As made-for-TV novelty acts go, this one moved the masses – for about a week. And then it was largely forgotten.
But about a dozen years ago, as the appeal of women’s competitive sports began to grow in both participation and appreciation, the King-Riggs match was resurrected – and with an entirely new and entirely erroneous meaning attached.
Suddenly, people representing women’s sports foundations and magazines, feminists carrying impressive titles and TV producers eager to sell anything began to firmly state that the match was one of the greatest moments in the history of the women’s movement. What?
King’s victory over a 55-year-old showman began to undergo a revision that turned it into a watershed moment of lasting social, political and historical import. King began to be named in the same breaths as the suffragists, who in 1920 won for women the right to vote.
Even King, who has to know better, has in recent years fed this notion until it is now widely known as a fact. Two weeks ago during an appearance on NBC’s “Today,” she was at it again.
In April of 2001, ABC presented a TV movie, “When Billie Beat Bobby,” that fed this revisionism. The movie’s postscript told of girls and young women who were so inspired by that tennis match that they would become lawyers, doctors and corporate executives.
“To suggest that it held any social significance is absurd. I’m sure there are those who feel that it did, but it was not a serious event,” Jim Spence told me two years ago. As a top ABC Sports exec, Spence helped put together King-Riggs.
Those who would apply even a hint of historical importance to that tennis match would be trivializing the genuine accomplishments of women that have benefited women.
But it’s far too late for the facts to catch up. Last month, the The Tennis Channel, newly launched, celebrated the 30th anniversary of King-Riggs in a documentary, calling the match “The most significant event in the history of sports” and one that “had profound civil rights implications.” Good grief.
But it’s too late. Some made-for-TV silliness, a night’s diversion that held no greater or lasting social significance than a chili cook-off or a snowball fight, is now entered in American history as a significant event.