Filip Norrgård’s blog @ filips.net
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Lazyboy’s song “Facts of life” contains at least one false fact
6 October 2004 in Root | Comments enabled

If you live in Europe, you might have heard the song “Facts of Life” by a group called Lazyboy that has been playing quite effectively on MTV Europe and radios. Truth is, there is a false fact in the song and namely in this verse:

Donald Duck was banned in Finland, because he doesn’t wear pants

It is one of the most documented and assumed “true fact” that I’ve seen (perhaps because I’m from Finland ), in reality, the statement is actually an urban legend. This is what I like to call a case of the jungle telegraph getting things totally wrong. Fact is, Donald Duck was never banned in Finland, rather a library’s subscription to his magazine was cut. To support my claim, here is what Urban Legends Reference says:

When a similar incident had taken place in the Finnish town of Kemi a few years earlier, the international press had gleefully exaggerated the story with headlines such as “Finland Bans Donald” and “Donald Vanishes from Libraries,” reporting that Donald’s banishment was due to concerns over his lack of pants and questions about his marital status. As the foreign news reports about the alleged banning of Donald Duck filtered back to Finland (and neighboring Sweden), the local tabloids didn’t attempt to verify the story — they merely ran articles about the reaction it was receiving abroad. “Donald Not Married; Politicians Outraged!” and “Donald, Where Are Your Trousers?” were headlines in foreign papers, Finns were told.

So, there you have it quite nicely summarized. Today, more specifically last year[in Finnish], the Donald Duck magazine Aku Ankka had the biggest reader base of all Finnish magazines, at 983 000 readers! Furthermore, Aku Ankka is the third most read magazine (the two others are free membership magazines) in the country.

I hope that you are now a bit wiser…