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Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review April 4, 2008 / 28 Adar II 5768

April is cruel, that's no joke

By Wesley Pruden


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Some of our editors and news producers, adrift in the Sea of Red Ink, seem to think they've found at last the formula for permanent success: "Let's put a lot of fake stories in the paper and on the air."


This is just what newspapers need to reassure readers who don't believe much of what they read, anyway. Some newspapers and television networks have turned to junior-high school journalists for inspiration: the April Fool's joke. Celebrities are yukking it up, too. Hillary Clinton challenged Barack Obama this week to settle the Pennsylvania primary with a "bowl-off," winner take all. But then she said she was only kidding. Ted Turner told a television interviewer that global warming will turn us all into cannibals. (I think he was April Fooling, but Cap'n Ted plays the fool most of the time.)


The April Fool's joke is more popular abroad, particularly in Britain and Australia. But it's spreading here. The most embarrassing joke on newspaper readers this year was in The Washington Post. A "friend" of Edward M. Gabriel, a business consultant and the former U.S. ambassador to Morocco, bought a $322 "In Memoriam" advertisement in The Post to express his "sadness" at the demise of Mr. Gabriel. "Though I no longer have you as my partner, this day will always be OUR anniversary," wrote Peter Segall, a lawyer and public-relations flack. "I could never quit you."


Mr. Gabriel spent April 1 taking calls from friends and associates, seeking reassurance that he was not, after all, permanently dead. Mr. Segall apologized for what he called an immature mistake by a mature man (an exaggeration, for sure), and Mr. Gabriel says they're still friends, sort of. Some people figure this is what you expect from lawyers and consultants, and they deserve the embarrassment simply because of who they are. That seems harsh, but the real offense is against the readers who still expect that what they read in the newspaper is more or less true.


The London Daily Telegraph, which affects to have the cachet of the New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print"), published a story that a colony of penguins had flown thousands of miles from Antarctica to bask in the sun in a South American rain forest, and illustrated the story with BBC footage of a flight of penguins. (Ha, ha.) The London daily Independent reported that a famously dirty-mouthed Sydney chef had opened a restaurant banning profanity after Australian authorities denied on grounds of "decency" his application to open a new restaurant. (Tee, hee.) Google Australia announced that it would introduce a new feature "enabling you to search for content on the Internet before it is created," enabling customers to get "tomorrow's news today," including closing stock quotations and sports results. Giggle, giggle.


Such wit and humor surely deserves a museum, and there is one. The Museum of Hoaxes exists only on the Internet, and Alex Boese (who describes himself as the "hoaxpert") says he has traced April tomfoolery to the late Middle Ages. One of his Top Ten toppers dates from 1957, when the BBC program "Panorama" reported that Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop due to a mild winter and illustrated it with film footage of Swiss peasants pulling spaghetti from trees. Saddam Hussein's lunatic son Uday once ordered his newspaper to report that President Clinton had lifted finally sanctions against Iraq and soon there would be plenty to eat. An editor to emulate, that Uday.


Australian police in Queensland are considering whether to file charges against a woman who called medics this year to say that her baby had fallen off its bed and was not breathing. When two ambulances with paramedics arrived to help the woman met them at the door with a thigh-slapper: "April Fool!"


Not so long ago the penalty for slipping a fake story into the newspaper, on April 1 or any other day, was swift, unforgiving and with extreme prejudice. The Internet, with its insatiable appetite for "content," whether true or not, is changing that. Any lie can look forward to a long life, bouncing across the ether to break hearts and ruin reputations. Reader, beware.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

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