It’s funny how a little research can change what you think you know.  Or as I like to quote Mark Twain, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

With a recent discussion of the value of compromise above all else, I was looking for a story that would show how ridiculous this idea is. I remember hearing about a television interview where the interviewer asked a rape victim to hug the rapist.

With a little Googling I found the article ‘Incredibly Poor Taste’ : Suggestion To Embrace Puts George On Hot Seat.

WASHINGTON — Collectors of idiotic remarks made by Phyllis George on “The CBS Morning News” hit a bonanza Wednesday morning when George asked Gary Dotson, freed after six years on a rape charge, and Cathleen Webb, the victim who now says the rape never occurred, to hug each other. The request, at the end of a bubbly George interview, lit up CBS switchboards in New York and Washington with calls from offended viewers.

Wait a minute.  I don’t remember that the “victim” had recanted her story.  Of course, how else would the two of them be appearing on a talk show together?

WikiPedia provides a complete story in the article Gary Dotson.

Oh well, this would have been a good story to make my point if the “victim” had really been the person who I thought was the “victim”.  Turns out the other person was the real victim.  I suppose they actually did come to some sort of compromise in the end.