By DAN FELDNER, Staff Writer
Keith Urban
You could call it the “Urban” legend that won’t die. Or is it just a shameful indictment of the Internet era?
Jennie Belle Hougestol has her own characterization.
“I think it’s a crime, really, which you can’t do anything about except say, ’That’s wrong,’” said Hougestol.
Hougestol, a 71-year-old resident of Red Deer, Alberta, was more than a little upset when she received an e-mail from a friend Aug. 15 concerning country singer Keith Urban. The e-mail stated matter of factly that while Urban was playing at the North Dakota State Fair on July 21, 2006, he had asked all the Canadians in the audience to stand up and walk out before he would perform. The rumor claims that Urban was upset with Canada for not doing more to aid the United States in its military campaign in Iraq, and that he refused to play for Canadians as a result.
“I got that (e-mail) and I looked at it and I was
ed because we’ve got too much anti-American and anti-Canadian stuff going on,” Hougestol said.
That Hougestol received an e-mail about a false rumor more than a year after Urban’s performance at the State Fair shows the undeniable power of the Internet to hinder the truth as much as it helps. Hougestol said she was “tremendously relieved” to find out the rumor was a complete fabrication, but there are still many people who don’t know the truth.
Jessica Bullinger, marketing director for the State Fair, could only sigh when asked yet again about the Keith Urban rumor. While she wasn’t present for the entire concert, Bullinger has asked several co-workers who were there and was told that Urban gave a special greeting to his Canadian fans. She thinks the twisting around of this greeting may have been how the rumor started.
“He did ask how many Canadians were in the audience, then gave them a special welcome and thanked them for attending the show,” Bullinger said. “It’s very unfortunate because it was a special welcome that he gave to Canadians.”
In the weeks after the fair, Bullinger said they started receiving several e-mails per week about it, mostly from Canadians. Far from being annoyed, Bullinger said she was appreciative that people checked on the validity of the rumor before they passed it on to someone else. She said most people were very skeptical of the rumor to begin with and were just checking the facts.
Even a year later, she notes that the rumor gains a second wind when Urban tours in Canada. This was the case when Hougestol received her e-mail. Urban will be touring Canada in September and the e-mail stated that many Canadians have already returned their tickets and it calls on everyone who receives the message to do the same.
“It seems like when Keith Urban books a show in Canada, there’ll be a little spur of e-mails that tend to go around again,” Bullinger said.
She said she still receives a few e-mail inquiries every month about it, but their frequency has come down significantly. Bullinger hopes that sometime in the near future, she will see the last question about this hoax and won’t have to deal with it ever again.
“They’ve definitely really slowed down. I don’t think we’ll be receiving them much longer,” Bullinger said. “It’s been over a year. I see very soon that we won’t be receiving any questions about it at all.”
Wendy Howe, executive director of the Minot Convention and Visitors Bureau, had a slightly different reaction than Bullinger when asked about the rumor.
“I had to laugh because I hadn’t heard about it in a while,” Howe said.
Howe was there for the entire concert, and confirms that Urban did in fact give all the Canadians in the audience a special greeting
“He said, ’I hear we have a lot of Canadians in the audience tonight. Can I have all the Canadians here stand up or give a shout,’” Howe said. “When they did (stand), he said something about a special greeting or a special welcome and that ‘It’s great to see you.’”
Howe also believes the special greeting Urban gave the Canadians in the audience is how the rumor got started. She likened it to a story that gets changed slightly every time it’s retold until it only vaguely resembles what actually happened. Whatever the reason it began, Howe believes rumors such as this one, no matter how ridiculous they may sound, are hard to let go of.
“It’s one of those urban legends, if you’ll excuse the pun,” Howe said. “A rumor gets started and it takes a long time for people to forget about it.”
There are several grains of truth attached to the rumor that probably give it just enough validity for people to wonder if it actually happened. The version of the rumor Hougestol received stated that the incident occurred during a concert at the North Dakota State Fair in Minot. Keith Urban did indeed play at the State Fair last year. The e-mail also mentions some personal information about Urban — that he is a New Zealander by birth, grew up in Australia, and finally moved to Nashville, Tenn. This is also true. These small bits of truth might be just enough to convince people that the rest of the e-mail is true as well. The fact that Urban played north of the border in Sarnia, Ont., one week before the Minot concert was conveniently omitted.
To stir up the emotions of the reader, the e-mail closes by stating that eight Canadian soldiers have recently died while helping the United States, though no mention is made of when and where this took place. According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., 25 Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan this year as of Aug. 22. While the wording in the e-mail of these deaths is intentionally vague, the fact that Canadian soldiers are fighting and dying on foreign soil cannot be denied, which may be just enough to tip the scales for some who were sitting on the fence about the rumor’s veracity.
This isn’t the first time the Internet rumor machine has claimed a major singer has spurned part of his audience. According to the Web site (www.snopes.com), which is dedicated to finding the facts behind many different myths and legends, Phil Collins was accused of asking Jewish members of his audience to leave a concert, and before that John Denver supposedly asked Jehovah’s Witnesses to do the same. Like the Keith Urban rumor, both of those are patently false.
