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Notes -
The appropriate denominator is the 5-20 thousand (depending what sources you trust) that moved into Springfield recently, since that's where the search for corroborating evidence has been focused, prompted by many other, less dubious grievances about the Haitians' misconduct and failure to integrate.
The Republicans looking for corroboration are treating the search space as "any dark-skinned immigrant, anywhere in Ohio, eating any kind of unusual meat". The meme went viral after an ADOS black woman was convicted of eating a cat in Canton, and we have seen African immigrants eating roadkill in Dayton cited as proof that the meme is "directionally correct". So the denominator is a lot larger than 20,000.
That said, if this police report is real, then it is the real thing and we have (noting that the date of the police report predates the meme) the source of the original game of telephone that led to the first "a friend of a friend thinks Haitians are eating cats" Facebook post. Note that most of the cat was not, in fact, eaten - even if the mystery meat is cat meat, stealing a cat and leaving chopped-up bits in the owner's back garden is what gangsters do to intimidate people, not something Mrs Lovett types do. It would be closely related to the "Sicilian immigrants are eating our horses" meme as featured in The Godfather.
50% that the police report is real (noting that the local PD said no such report existed), Conditional on the police report being real:
I also note that ex ante the search space for this kind of thing was "any immigrant, legal or illegal, anywhere in America, eats a housepet or does something similarly outrageous" Given the complete inability of Republicans to come up with anything good after a frantic search for "dark-skinned immigrant eats housepet" across right-wing social media, this looks like a single incident blown up into a national story by a combination of media crime blotter logic and conservative propaganda. If it really was the case that "they're eating our pets" was a thing, we would have found more than one questionable case by now. If it turns out that the police report is real, the cat is real, and the cat did indeed disappear under suspicious circumstances then the Republicans will have lucked out on this one. Turning a single incident into a nationwide viral meme is good politics and good tabloid journalism, even if it is bad epistemics.
BTW does anyone know the baseline rate of cat butchery in America?
And per @Quantumfreakonomics, the WSJ has found the cat (which, let us remember, is the only actual cat implicated in the whole sorry saga) alive and well. I will happily concede ln(5) calibration points for finding this outcome less likely than I should have done, and I suggest that the people who uncritically signal-boosted this shit do some soul-searching as well. This soul-searching should ideally be of the literal variety, because unrepentant Sowers of Discord end up quite remarkably close to the Fire and the eyewitness account of how they are treated is not pretty.
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Uh, what? I think a re-watch might be in order.
In one of the early scenes, the Corleone Family tries to intimidate a film director into giving Jonny Fontane a part by killing his prize horse and leaving the head in his bed. What happened to the rest of the horse is not specified in the book or film, but horsemeat is a completely normal part of traditional working-class Sicilian cuisine. (The taboo against eating horse is an anglosphere thing - almost every other European cuisine uses it, although in may countries including France it is mildly stigmatised as only for poors.)
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I've noted before that in suburban America rumors of ritual animal torture have been a semiannual tradition. There's always a rumor going around about it.
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When I bussed at Canal St we would get smartasses asking if we were serving cat. The chef would always get some FOB masters student to sotto voce ask if they REALLY wanted cat just go fuck with them.
The FOB I got close to said that he would actually do it, but there were no stray cats in New York to serve. He was convinced the rats ate all kittens and puppies, and 'only filipinos eat rats'.
I looked askance the next time I ate lumpia, then decided if it smelled this good I didn't care.
Can't say I've ever seen a stray in Manhattan but I'll bet there's plenty in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. A sack of cats wouldn't be the oddest thing brought on the Staten Island ferry I bet.
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