For several years, "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening has beencredited as the author of one of the most widely circulated humoressays on the Internet.
It's titled "Women Speak in Estrogen and Men Listen inTestosterone," and it's about the fundamental differences between menand women. For example:
"SHOES: When preparing for work, a woman will put on a Mondi woolsuit, then slip on Reebok sneakers. She will carry her dress shoes ina plastic bag from Saks. When a woman gets to work, she will put onher dress shoes. Five minutes later, she will kick them off becauseher feet are under the desk.
"A man will wear the same pair of shoes all day."
You can find the entire article on hundreds of joke sites.Sections have been quoted in newspaper articles, and it's been readon the air by radio DJs.
Only one problem: Groening didn't write it, nor has he everclaimed it as his own. He has even disavowed the piece in interviews-but once something like this has been unleashed on the Internet,there's no stopping it. Not only has it been forwarded thousands oftimes, it's even been translated into several foreign languages.
As a matter of fact, someone sent it to me just last week-andthat's what prompted my search for the real author, whose identitywill be revealed later in this very column.
"TIME: When a woman says she'll be ready to go out in fiveminutes, she's using the same meaning of time as when a man says thefootball game's got just five minutes left.
"OFFSPRING: A woman knows all about her children. She knows aboutdentist appointments and soccer games and romances and best friendsand favorite foods and secret fears and hopes and dreams.
"A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in his house."
In 1997, the New York Daily News did a story about the essay.
"On a piece of e-mail that's been forwarded to thousands ofInternet users, Groening is trumpeted as the author of `Women Speakin Estrogen and Men Listen in Testosterone,' a humorous articlecomparing the sexes . . .
" `I didn't write it! I didn't write it!' Groening told the DailyNews."
Groening called the piece "mildly amusing" and admitted he"laughed out loud" when he read the line, "Women love cats. Men saythey love cats, but when women aren't looking, men kick cats."
The Daily News article said the mix-up is "a near rerun of anepisode . . . when Internet users started circulating a copy of agraduation speech that (Kurt) Vonnegut supposedly had delivered toMIT's class of 1997. The purported speech, though, was actually anewspaper article written by Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich."But the News was unable to ascertain the true author of the"Estrogen" piece.
Two years later, Groening told Mother Jones magazine: "One of (thedrawbacks) of being successful is that stuff is out in my name that Ididn't do. There's an essay floating all over the Internet on thedifference between men and women attributed to me. I did not writeit."
Denials notwithstanding, the urban legend continued to grow. Justa couple of weeks ago, in an article about the now-infamous studythat says men listen with half their brains, a reporter for theAugusta (Ga.) Chronicle wrote, "Humorist Matt Groening defines thedifference simply and succinctly: Women speak in estrogen and menlisten in testosterone." And, as I said, the essay only recentlylanded in my mailbox.
I talked to a publicist for Groening who was well aware of thiscyber-mystery, but we were unable to get a comment from the"Simpsons" creator by deadline-so I'll let him find out the identityof the true author in the same way as everyone else, through thiscolumn.
It's me. I wrote the damn thing. In 1986.
The article appeared in the Sun-Times on May 11, 1986, under theheadline, "It's time to face facts: men and women ARE different." Insubsequent weeks, it was syndicated to a few other papers, includingthe San Diego Union-Tribune.
How it leapt from the Internet Dark Ages of the mid-1980s to cyber-immortality-or, for that matter, how Groening's byline replaced mine-is beyond my ken. Somebody somewhere probably made an innocent cut-and-paste mistake, and the error was multiplied a thousandfold overthe course of several years.
D'oh!
Other than the disappearance of the original intro I wrote, andthe emergence of that clever "estrogen/testosterone" headline, theessay as it appears in cyberspace is a verbatim reproduction of theoriginal. Sigh.
I have no illusions that setting the record straight here will puta stop to the avalanche of postings attributing the essay toGroening, but here's hoping the truth strikes at least a small dentin this urban legend.
Either that, or this column will get passed around under a sharedbyline from the "South Park" guys.
"Ebert & Roeper and the Movies" airs at 6:30 p.m. Saturdays onWBBM-Channel 2.
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