Navigation & Music Control
 [ BACK]  [NEXT]                       Issue #154 - 07/25/1999

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SCHEME

Hoaxes and Scams

Hi again, Seekers of Truth...
     Truth is a slippery commodity.  Philosophers often claim to
be seeking the truth - seeking but never finding.  Perhaps
because there are so many shadings of truth.  Almost all of us
are guilty of adjusting the truth.  For example, we can
rationalize that we are "protecting our friend's feelings" if we
don't mention that our friend is wearing a really hideous and
unflattering dress.  But saying nothing actually hurts our
friend, since no one wants to appear in public in a foolish
looking dress.  Especially if our friend in the unappealing dress
happens to be male.
     Very few hoaxers are convincing enough to push a lie uphill
- that is, trying to prove something that no one believes.  The
most successful hoaxes are those that tap into some deeper
cultural circuits.  Things that people already half believe are
easy targets for someone who knows what buttons to push.

     There seem to be four major reasons for hoaxing:

          1.) To promote the author's own agenda.

          2.) To prove a point or expose some greater falsehood.

          3.) To make money.

          4.) For fun.

     While all of these involve questionable moral practices such
as lying and trickery, only fraud to steal money illegal.  And
only, it seems, if the people cheated feel that they haven't
gotten their money's worth in entertainment value.  In the late
1860's, a promoter in Cardiff, New York made a fortune with a
phoney statue that he claimed was the fossil remains of a giant
from biblical times.  When the promoter refused to sell the
Cardiff Giant to showman P. T. Barnum, Barnum had his own statue
made.  That's right - Barnum made a fortune exhibiting a faked
fake.  Maybe it's easier for us to forgive Barnum for his
deception because, in those days, there were no advertising
agencies to lie for him.
     One truth is that we have many people to thank for their
contributions to SUNFUN every week.  Hello and Thanks to: Laura
Hong Li, Sylvia Libin He, Kiyomi Kanazawa & Celil Glucu, Helen
Yee, Morris and Jerome Howard, Dick Ginkowski, Lawrence Fine,
Yasmin and Meredith Leischer, Fumiko Umino, Carol Becwar, Beth
Butler, Kerry Miller, Dale Frederickson, Ellen Peterson, Timothy
T. McChain, Harry Cherkinian and Sue Yan.  Lying is often the
wrong course, and we try to avoid it whenever possible.  But I'll
leave it to you to decide if all of the names in this list are
real or not.
     Have A Truthful Week,

--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--

TRUE BELIEVERS...
--------------
     The Catholic Diocese of Dodge City, Kansas was faced with a
dilemma - a woman in Lewis, Kansas had claimed she had a plaque
of the Virgin Mary that wept blood.  The plaque also drew
visitors - up to 10,000 according to some sources.
     Trying science to fight superstition, the diocese
commissioned DNA tests of both the blood on the plaque and the
plaque's owner, Margarita Holquin Cazares.  The blood was
identical, which should end all of the speculation, right.
     Not quite.  The local newspaper editor and true believer,
Cathy Woolard, wrote that the DNA tests actually made the plaque
more miraculous; God obviously created blood that exactly matches
Cazare's to weep from the plaque.


--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--

WIN A VACATION...
--------------
     When President Bill Clinton visited Dakar, Senegal in April
of last year, he inadvertently triggered another scandal.  (I saw
all you Republicans perk up when I put "Clinton" and "scandal" in
the same sentence.  Relax!)  The Senegalese government newspaper,
"Le Soleil" announced that visas would be presented free to the
first fifty people who showed up at the U.S Embassy in Dakar with
identity photos and and passports.  The lucky immigrants would
also receive free airfare and $3,000 in cash.
     The embassy was besieged by thousands of people who failed
to notice that the article came out on April 1st.  (Reuters)


--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--

ANOTHER FREE VACATION...
---------------------
     In May of 1998, a group of students at the University of
Leeds School of Fine Arts in England raised school and private
funds for a special project.  This class project was intended to
"challenge people's perception of art."
     After all of the money had been collected, the students
revealed that the project consisted of the 13 students taking a
vacation trip to Spain's pricey Costa Del Sol resort.  Not
surprisingly, most of the sponsors angrily demanded refunds and
denounced the school and students in the media.
     Only when articles had appeared in Daily Telegraph and other
respected British newspapers did the students reveal that they
hadn't gone anywhere but the local tanning salon, and to shoot a
few faked beach pictures.  The art involved was the fine art of
demonstrating how easy it is to fool the press.


--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--

ONLY PARTLY DEAD...
----------------
     In case you think that in some mythic "good old days" of
journalism such deceptions would never be possible, SUNFUN
presents for your enjoyment the story of "Richard Saunders" and
his chief rival, the "late" Titan Leeds.  
     Richard Saunders was the pen name American revolutionary Ben
Franklin used for writing his famous "Poor Richard's Almanac." 
Titan Leeds was Franklin's chief rival in the almanac business. 
Unlike Franklin, Leeds took astrology very seriously, claiming
that the star charts in his almanac were unsurpassed for use in 
accurately predicting future events.
     In response, Franklin wrote an article that made fun of
astrology, using his own star-based mumbo-jumbo to predict the
exact day and hour that Titan Leeds would die.  The article
caused a sensation, even after the announced time of Leeds' death
passed without the rival publisher suffering so much as a
palpitation.  Though Leeds continue to publish his almanac
regularly, Franklin calmly assured his readers that Leeds was, in
fact, dead.  Titan Leeds was reduced to trying to convince people
that he wasn't pushing up daisies.
     Things continued this way for a few years until Leeds
actually did die.  At which point Franklin calmly announced that
Leeds' friends had finally decided to admit the truth that the
early Titan of media had died some years before.
     The hoax worked so well that a few modern reference works
still list Titan Leeds' date of death a few years before it
really took place.


--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--

A PRINCE OF A FELLOW...
--------------------
     Late last year, an exiled prince from Borneo received praise
and a standing ovation at a United Nations meeting in Melbourne,
Australia.  The prince, wearing a regal white robe and royal
sash, announced that he was donating $1 billion to U.N. programs
to help the poor.
     Which must have come as a great surprise to his family. 
They are decidedly not royalty and he still owes them $7,000
after walking out on them years before.
     They knew "His Royal Highness Prince Hadji Mohd Al Alsagof
van Eldik" as simply Bep van Eldik, a construction manager whose
building business failed a couple of decades ago in Queensland,
Australia.  Until this recent flap, his family only knew that van
Eldik had gone abroad, abandoning his wife and children and
leaving a pile of debts.
     While the bogus prince's sister only admitted to confusion
about van Eldik's sudden elevation to the royalty, his brother
was less forgiving.
     "If he's that bloody rich he can send us some money,"
brother John van Eldik told the newspaper "The Australian." 
(Reuters)


--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--

TROJAN WARNING!
--------------
     Good Times!  Pen Pal!  Win A Vacation!  And all of them just
stupid hoaxes.  How many hundreds of these silly Emails have
floated past screens over the past few years?  I can hardly begin
to count them.  What a relief to finally find one that could be
true.  Or, was true.  With all of the traffic now, these network
Email delays are getting really serious...

-------------------------------------------------------------
From: waterboy@hercules.temple.com
To: hector@asia-minor.net
Date: 4/1/-2569,  2:51 AM
Re:   FW: Trojan Warning!!

Subject:  Trojan Warning!! 

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

IF YOU RECEIVE A GIFT IN THE SHAPE OF A LARGE WOODEN HORSE DO NOT
DOWNLOAD IT!!!!  It is EXTREMELY DESTRUCTIVE and will overwrite
your ENTIRE CITY!

The "gift" is disguised as a large wooden horse about two stories
tall.  It tends to show up outside the city gates and appears to
be abandoned.  DO NOT let it through the gates!  It contains
hardware that is incompatible with Trojan programming, including
a crowd of heavily armed Greek warriors that will destroy your
army, sack your town, and kill your women and children.  If you
have already received such a gift, DO NOT OPEN IT! Take it back
out of the city unopened and set fire to it by the beach.

FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!

Poseidon


--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--

KING OF THE HOAXERS...
-------------------
     It was a particularly ungrammatical letter from a "Korean
company" that first made me aware of Joey Skaggs.  The letter
said it was from Kim Yung Soo, the president of the "Kea So Joo"
company, and was sent to over 1,500 animal shelters around the
U.S. in 1994.  It proposed a very practical solution to the
number of excess dogs in American animal shelters.  Part of the
letter said:

     "We like make proposal to your dog shelter to sell us
     dog. You save money, you make money. We buy all dog,
     regardless of size or color. We prefer big, young,
     strong dog but we take all dog from your dog shelter.
     We cook dog in America. We can dog in America and sell
     some dog in America in Asian market place. Lot people
     in America eat dog. Most dog we ship oversea. Lot
     people eat dog. Many country eat dog. Korea, China eat
     dog, Philippines, Japan, Thailand, Cambodia eat dog.
     Dog is healthy for you."

     It's a little hard to tell with the weird grammar, but the
basic proposal is that the company would buy hound by the pound
and turn them into canned canine soup.  That seemed clear enough;
the name "Kea So Joo" means "dog meat soup" in Korean.
     The very idea of collie consomme sent many animal lovers and
animal protection groups off the deep end.  Articles were written
and editorials published hurling abuse at any company that would
dare to touch our abandoned and unwanted animals.  The  authors
of these stories howled about such an uncivilized and horribly
un-American practice.
     Few of the reporters bothered to check their facts, other
than trying to call the company's phone line.  That phone
answering machine and a Post Office Box would be all that anyone
could ever find.  There is no dog soup company, and the letter
was a hoax.
     Only the racism and cultural bias that made the letter
believable is real.  The Korean government banned eating dog
years ago, mostly on the basis of outside pressure.  (Turn THAT
one around - imagine the reaction in the U.S. if pressure from
India made us ban beef!)  It is true that eating dogs was fairly
common during the terrible times of the Korean War, when many
people there were starving.  Our own bias somehow makes the story
more believable because it involves an Asian culture we don't
quite understand.  Are we too polite to remember what happened to
the animals in the Berlin Zoo when the Berliners ran out of food
at the end of World War II?
     The letter was the work of media hoaxster and performance
artist Joey Skaggs, who uses the media's - and our own - biases
to make his points.  The media certainly isn't as careful about
checking facts as it should be.  None of the journalists that
rushed into print or grabbed microphones for this shaggy dog
story had done their homework.  Even the letter itself should
have been a clue; it was far too poorly written to have been
serious.  It isn't even a good attempt at a Korean accent.
     Skaggs has a long history of hoisting the media on their own
scaffolds.  Some of his previous hoaxes over the last 30 years
have become classics.  On everything from newspapers to TV game
shows, Skaggs has used lies to show truth.
     On May 13, 1986, "Joe Bones" was interviewed on the ABC
morning news show, "Good Morning America."  Bones claimed to be
the head of a group of "diet commandos" called the Fat Squad. 
For $300 a day, they would move in with you and keep you from
eating too much.  It was Skaggs and his associates, of course. 
Skaggs even got into the New York Times by appearing as "Jo-Jo,"
a gypsy who was leading a protest against the destructive insect,
the "gypsy moth," claiming that the name was insulting to gypsies
everywhere.
     But maybe Skaggs' crowning achievement was his interview on
the TV show "Entertainment Tonight."  That TV show was doing a
segment on media hoaxes, and wanted to interview a leader in
fooling the media.  ET taped the interview and ran it on
September 14, 1988.  Only later did they find out that they
hadn't interviewed Skaggs at all; the king of tricksters had sent
an imposter in his place.
          [ Game, set and match, Mr. Skaggs... ]


--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
© 1999 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.