One Thing Is Not Like the Other Thing 0
With all due respect to Clyde Evely, “suspension of disbelief” and willfull abandonment of reality are not the same thing.
Aside:
The fabled panic created by Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds broadcast, to which Evely refers, was not as remembered in popular folklore (we covered this in my Sociology 101 class [mumble] years ago, for Pete’s sake). It affected a very small portion of the audience, mostly persons who listened to other radio shows and tuned into War of the Worlds after it was already about 15 minutes in and who lived in the area of New Jersey where the drama was set.
It’s not that persons disregarded the disclaimer at the beginning of the broadcast. It’s that they weren’t listening when the disclaimer was aired.
By the way, you can listen to that broadcast at the OTR Network Library.
