Marcia Brady and the Intertubes

I wasn't going to blog about this, but my readership is pleading, nay - demanding - that I address certain topic of interest. Namely, the rumor that Maureen McCormick (Marcia Brady) and Eve Plumb (Jan Brady) had a bit of a physical relationship while filming the iconic TV series The Brady Bunch.
It has actually turned into an interesting tale about the Internet, publishing, and the media in general.

At 0236 on September 21, contactmusic.com posted a short piece stating that in McCormick's upcoming tell-all autobiography, she reveals that she had a lesbian fling with Plumb. The article quotes an unnamed source who told the National Inquirer about the details of the book. Unnamed sources, especially third-party ones (the source told the Inquirer. Who told contactmusic.com?) are notoriously unreliable, and have gotten plenty of mainstream media outlets into trouble. Just ask Stephen Glass and Scott Beauchamp of the New Republic or Jayson Blair of the NY Times. For the most comprehensive list I've found of journalistic fraud, check out this list at the American Thinker.

Sorry. Back to the lesbians.

It didn't take long before fark.com had posted the article with the obligatory "cool" tag, and the article started making the rounds. Even at this early stage, there were some readers who smelled a rat. At least one commenter remarked that this is probably the result of someone that the publisher "leaking" information to the press in order to get a mention somewhere. According to ABC News, doubts about the story's authenticity didn't deter at least "one major newspaper" picked up the story on Saturday.

By Sunday, the fun was over, and the publisher was "rushing" to deny the rumor that McCormick and Plumb had a fling.

Of course, all this hoopla served everyone's interest in the end. Contactmusic.com got traffic, and now we all know that McCormick's book, entitled "Here's the Story", published by William Morrow (a division of HarperCollins) hits bookstores next year. Even Barry Williams (Greg) gets a bonus. His book, "Growing up Brady" got a mention in almost every article I've found.

Happy now? I'm going back to Lex's place to see if he's posted more pictures of the luminous Keira Knightly.