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Friday, September 3, 2010
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Two moons on 27th August!
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Just like any other creative process, creating a hoax that is going to fool many people and gain the hoaxter widespread acclaim takes a lot of imagination. It also takes a unique sense of humor, which most people, especially those who have been duped by a hoax, won’t appreciate. But the payoff of pulling off a successful hoax far outweighs any criticism the hoaxter may encounter. For purposes of this discussion, we are not talking about hoaxters who use the power of ruse to deceive people out of property, but rather those who gain pleasure in “pulling the wool over one’s eyes” strictly for the sake of a laugh or a gotcha moment, or a need for notoriety.
No one knows what really drives a person to go to great lengths to dupe other people. Perhaps, as a child he or she was mercilessly aggravated by a parent or siblings and this is their way of paying it forward. Perhaps, it is a need to be noticed that starts out with small practical jokes on friends and family and upon getting the proper response of “oh you got me good,” to gales of laughter, propels the hoaxter to a larger, more elaborate hoax. Perhaps, it is the desire to see just how gullible people really are. At any rate, pulling off a successful hoax is a special talent and there are only a few individuals who rate high on the hoax scale.
A hoaxter who is recognized in pop culture as one of the most prolific is Alan Abel, who has been at it since the late 1950’s. His first hoax involved him posing as a golf pro teaching Westinghouse executives to use ballet moves to improve their golf games.
One of Abel’s best hoaxes began with a story concocted by Abel on The Today Show wherein Abel’s brainchild “Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA)” was announced. The hoax actually began as a satire of media censorship, but over the course of several years, actor Buck Henry appeared on TV and radio and touting the tagline “A nude horse is a rude horse.” The SINA “cause” ended up receiving contributions which Abel returned, as well as citizens issuing summonses for walking naked dogs and other attempts to clothe naked animals.
In addition to elaborately staging his own death from a heart attack at the Sundance Ski Lodge, Abel created fictional characters who were embraced by several talk show hosts as being the real deal, including a man by the name of Omar, of Omar’s School for Beggars, a school that supposedly taught panhandlers how to properly beg for money. Abel can definitely be credited with being one of the most believable hoaxters of our time, but he is not the only one.
Sacha Baron Cohen, aka Ali G, aka Borat, aka Bruno, fancies himself an actor; however, some of the stunts that he has pulled definitely puts him in the same category as Alan Abel. Cohen’s first alter-ego, Ali G, an uneducated “junglist,” first appeared on Britain’s The Eleven O’clock Show, and gained rave reviews. As Cohen got bolder, he trotted his Ali G character out to scheduled interviews and through a series of maneuvers would ultimately end up tricking such notables as Gore Vidal, Donald Trump, Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, and others to respond to his interview questions, none of whom realized that Ali G was an act.
A recent prank of Cohen’s alter ego, Bruno, an overly flamboyant gay fashionista hailing from Austria, garnered Cohen even more media attention when, at the 2009 MTV Movie Awards, Bruno, dressed as a white, barely clothed angel, complete with wings swooped down into the audience and landed his rear end right in singer Eminem’s face. Eminem immediately got up and walked out of the theater; however, it was later determined that the stunt was staged. So, in essence, this was more a hoax perpetrated on the attendees at the awards show and not on the intended victim of his “teabagging.” The initial and intended result, however, was widespread media coverage, making Bruno a household name.
The above hoaxters have something that most ordinary people don’t have and that is (1) the desire to pull something over on someone; (2) the imagination to come up with an elaborate plan; (3) the wherewithal, i.e. money, accomplices, and connections to allow them to perpetrate their hoax on a national level; and most of all, the chutzpah to carry it off. While this is just a sampling of the more well-known hoaxters of our time, it by no means is an exhaustive list as most people will tell you they have at least one “Uncle Harry” in the family who lives and breathes to put one over on you every time he visits.
Step right up folks…prepare to be amazed at what you see…right this way to the greatest show on earth. Before radio and television, human beings had to depend on live shows for their entertainment and while most people would attend a play or a concert, the more adventurous sought out sideshows at carnivals, where odd, unusual and downright weird people performed behind closed curtains.
The practice exists today, while certainly not as prevalent as in the early 1800’s to the mid-1900’s. Still, we wonder, are those shows real or are they fake. The answer may be a little bit of both. Much of what is touted as real is actually a trick to make it seem so, or it’s worded in such a way that yes, what they say is real is real, but once you get inside, you’ll see that most of the time, you’ve been had. Still, as long as there are curiosity seekers, there will be those who deliver the curiosities.
Bearded Ladies, Wild Man of Borneo, Siamese Twins, and Tom Thumb, the Smallest Man Alive
Although many of the sideshow acts at circuses in the 19 and 20th Centuries were fakes, some actually were genuine and caused by genetic anomalies. Take the bearded ladies, for instance. Some were just cleverly made up to appear to have beards while others quite likely suffered from a medical condition known as hypertrichosis wherein excess hair grew on certain parts of the body, most notably on the face. There were lion-faced boys and camel girls, but they were just names attached to unfortunate human beings who happened to have been born with atrociously deformed bodies and whose deformities were seen by men like P.T. Barnum and Samuel Grumpertz as an opportunity to make money.
While P.T. Barnum was known for pulling the wool over his customers’ eyes by doing such things as passing off a regular black man as the Wild Man of Borneo, a lesser-known sideshow manager by the name of Samuel Grumpertz was globetrotting around the world looking for bona fide “freaks” to bring back to America to show at Coney Island. While Siamese twins were a popular sideshow attraction, they did raise objections from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children who filed several lawsuits to try and prohibit such exhibits from taking place.
And yes, there were lots and lots of little people, the smallest of which was a man named Charles Sherwood Stratton, better known as Tom Thumb, whose height only reached 33 inches. Discovered by P.T. Barnum, Tom Thumb wasn’t just a sideshow exhibit, but rather became a high-paid performer who eventually travelled all over the world and met some of the most famous people of his time.
Sword Swallowers, Human Blockheads and Fire Eaters
Using the body in scary ways has always been a staple of the carnival and circus sideshows. Most everyone believes when they seen a man swallowing a sword or pounding a long nail up his nostril or even putting a fiery torch in his mouth that it is just a magic trick. In reality, it’s a little of both. Believe it or not, the sword is real, not fake and not collapsible, the nails are real and they really are being pounded into the man’s nasal passageway, and the fire, yes, it is real and it is hot.
So how do they do it? The trick is the performers know a lot about human physiology and they have found ways to put dangerous items in their bodies without causing permanent damage to themselves. In the case of a sword swallower, it takes years of practice and the ability to ignore their body’s automatic reflexes to allow themselves to stick long, unbendable objects down their throats. The same goes for the human blockhead. He really can hammer a nail into his head through the nostril, but it will have taken him years of practice to get to the point of doing it in front of an audience.
So, in essence, most sideshows are not hoaxes. They are real. But a good dose of healthy skepticism is warranted before you decided to spend too much money on the next really big show.
Don’t know if Saturn spinning retrograde for a good part of this past year was responsible for some of the wackiest goings on we’ve seen for quite some time, but suffice it to say that 2009 has turned out to be one for the books when it comes to hoaxes. Reality TV wannabes offered up a good portion of our hoax news stories, while more elaborate and well thought out hoaxes also showed us exactly how far someone is willing to go for attention, whether it’s for a cause, some cash, or just a few laughs.
1. Up, Up and Away in My Beautiful Balloon – On October 15, 2009, Americans were glued to their television sets as they watched a silver saucer-shaped balloon fly over the Colorado countryside supposedly carrying a small boy inside. When the balloon finally touched down, emergency crews approached the balloon cautiously only to find that there was no kid to be found and slowly from there, Americans realized they’d been had. Richard Heene, the father of 6-year-old Falcon Heene, was forced to admit that the entire “balloon boy” incident was a stunt he conjured up in hopes of getting his family a reality television show deal. On December 23, 2009, Heene and his wife received jail sentences for the stunt and were forbidden to profit from the balloon stunt for the next four years. The judge didn’t say anything about perpetrating a totally new and different hoax though, so stay tuned.
2. Rush Limbaugh Falls for Fake Obama Thesis Story – Not even a well-known radio personality such as Rush Limbaugh is immune from being hoodwinked by the occasional hoax, which is what happened in October of this year when he began commenting on a story about a thesis paper entitled “Aristocracy Reborn” supposedly written by President Obama while attending Columbia University, in which Obama basically disses the founding fathers and the Constitution. Unbeknownst to Limbaugh, the origin of the story came from a satire site and was completely false. Even so, later in his show, when confronted with the news that he had just reported a false story, Limbaugh admitted the story to be false but refused to apologize and instead stated “So, I can say, I don't care if these quotes are made up. I know Obama thinks it.” Nice save.
3. Pennsylvania Mom Perpetrates Abduction Hoax to Take Her Daughter to Disney World? – In the early afternoon hours of May 26, 2009, Bonnie Sweeten of Philadelphia made frantic calls to 911 to report that she and her 9-year-old daughter were abducted and stuffed in the trunk of a car by two black assailants after being carjacked. This sparked a city-wide investigation that ended the next day when the pair was picked up at the Grand Floridian Hotel at Disney World, and Sweeten was charged with identity theft and false reports, both misdemeanors. The daughter was released to the custody of her father. Interesting thing about this story is that Sweeten has two other children, a 15-year old daughter from a previous marriage and an 8-month old daughter with her current husband. We can understand her not wanting to take the baby on a fake abduction adventure, but hey, we’re wondering why the 15-year old got gypped out of a trip to Disney.
4. TMZ Duped by Alleged Photo of JFK Aboard Yacht With Naked Ladies – You have to be pretty good to put something past the folks at TMZ. Then again, maybe not. At any rate, what was first shown in a TMZ December 28, 2009 exclusive story as an old beat-up photo, circa 1950’s of what appears to be a sunbathing JFK on the deck of a yacht while naked ladies frolic around the ship, has been claimed by the folks at Playboy Magazine as not JFK, but a model hired to look like him for a photo shoot in 1967 entitled “Charter Yacht Party: How to Have a Ball on the Briny with an Able-Bodied Complement of Ship's Belles." TMZ claims they got the photo from the son of a deceased car salesman who just recently found the photo in his father’s locked desk drawer and that they (TMZ) had the photo authenticated by several experts. We could have told TMZ that it wasn’t JFK in that photo simply because JFK would never have laid idly by while a bunch of naked ladies frolicked so close in proximity.
5. Jeff Goldblum Debunks His Death on The Colbert Report – On June 25, 2009, both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died. For real. Jeff Goldblum, contrary to similar death reports however, did not fall to his death while filming a movie in New Zealand. And to prove that he was very much still alive, Goldblum spoofed the hoax of his death by appearing on The Colbert Report, announcing his own death and telling the audience “I will be missed.”
6. German Television Station Stages Michael Jackson Come Back…After His Death – On August 25, 2009, a German television station produced a video showing a live Michael Jackson stepping slowly out of a coroner’s van. Obviously a hoax, the station’s spokesperson explained why they did it. “It was a broadcasting ‘experiment’ to show how easy it is to spread rumors online.” While the television station issued a release prior to showing the video claiming it was fake, that did little to quell the desire of every Michael Jackson fan from here to Timbuktu to catch one more glimpse of a live Michael Jackson as he did the “moon walk” outside the hearse that carried him to his final resting place.
7. Hoax Within a Hoax – By now, most everyone has heard the conservative right accuse the liberal left of “perpetrating the biggest hoax on the American people” by claiming that there is a global warming crisis and it is largely man-made . Well, the political activist group known as The Yes Men decided they didn’t necessarily agree with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s stance against public interest on climate change and decided to do something about it. The group, posing as U.S. Chamber of Commerce officials, held a fake press conference at the National Press Club declaring “the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reversed its position on climate change policy, and promised to immediately cease lobbying against the Kerry-Boxer bill.” Once the real spokesperson for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce caught wind of the prank, he hightailed it over to the National Press Club and put a stop to the shenanigans, but not before Reuters ran the story as true, which was picked up by several mainstream media outlets including CNBC.
8. Elf Arrested for Threatening to Blow Up Santa – In early December, an Atlanta man dressed like an elf waited patiently in line to see Santa and when it was his turn to sit on the big guy’s lap, told Santa that he had dynamite in his bag and was going to blow him up. He was arrested for having hoax devices and making terrorist threats. We’re wondering if the little elf suffered from stress due to longer toy-making working hours and lower pay, or if he had some other beef with the boss. At any rate, he was being held without bond and it is doubtful he’ll be returning anytime soon to the North Pole.
9. Gosselin NY Apartment Break-In Declared Hoax – Just when we thought the Jon and Kate Gosselin saga was winding down and we could get on with more pressing issues, came the news on December 27 that Jon Gosselin’s NY apartment had been robbed and vandalized with damages nearing $100,000. Reports indicate that furniture and clothing were slashed with a butcher knife and a note purportedly signed by Jon’s ex-girlfriend, Hailey Glassman, was left behind. But Glassman’s attorney is hotly denying his client had anything to do with the crime and is calling the whole thing a hoax. If so, by whom was the hoax perpetrated? Possibly someone not yet ready to give up on his celebrity status in hopes of scoring another television reality show deal?
10. White House State Dinner Crashers Take the Cake - Although considered more of a publicity stunt than a hoax, the fact that two lesser known Virginia socialites, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, sans invitations, sashayed their way into a White House state dinner being thrown by President Obama in honor of the Prime Minister of India, comes pretty darned close to the definition of a hoax. Not only did they have the Bravo network believing they were invited to the party, but they had the entire White House staff and attendees of the state dinner welcoming them with open arms and photo ops galore. No word yet on whether Michaele Salahi will be featured in an upcoming Bravo series “The Housewives of Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Finally, here’s a true story, but we’re betting the person behind it wishes like anything that it really was a hoax.
What if Your Real Dad was Charles Manson? – Los Angeles DJ, Matthew Roberts, not too long ago found out that his biological father is Charles Manson, one of the most evil men of this century. As he tells his story, Roberts likens finding out his father was Charles Manson to being told he was fathered by Adolph Hitler, so we can only suppose that he is one person who would have loved for this news to have been a hoax. You can’t help but feel very, very sorry for this guy’s luck.
And that wraps up this years’ list of some of the most talked about hoaxes on and off the internet. Can’t wait to see what’s in store for next year, especially with so many loose ends left behind by the Gosselins, the Salahis and the Heenes.
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General Questions
Internet Hoaxes
