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Nov. 25, 2009
Daniel Pipes: Islamism 2.0
JWisdom.com: No God … No You! Know God, Know You! with Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (8 minutes)
Nov. 24, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran : The Atheists' unintended gift
JWisdom.com: You are a Philanthropist with Aliza Bulow (5 minutes)
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JWisdom.com: Actually, it really is all about you with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff
Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 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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