Posted on 12/25/2024 2:35:19 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
The phrase “fake news” wasn’t invented yet. My friend Charlie and I would have preferred “pranks,” anyway. It was half a century ago, print was king, there were only three networks on TV, and people trusted one another enough that nobody at our neighborhood newspaper in the Bronx bothered to check the identity of readers who sent in letters to the editor.
We counted on that, Charlie and I. We were kids in high school, fascinated by the media and evidently burdened with too much time on our hands. We regularly read each other the most angry and appalled reader letters appearing in the Riverdale Press each Thursday — complaints about traffic and development, pleas for gentler neighbors and better rat controls, tirades about do-nothing politicians, love songs to local merchants and favorite teachers. There were even poems.
Like juvenile Juvenals, we wanted to satirize the form while hoodwinking the editors. We began a campaign to get our parodies of Press letters published. Every couple of weeks, we sent off a new missive, most of them signed with a fictional name based on characters we’d plucked out of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” The names were fabulous, and we figured no one would catch on to the pattern (though we’d have been thrilled if anyone did).
Almost every letter we sent was published. One week, “Arnold Lubetsch” advocated combating homicides by wearing dazzlingly colorful clothing. “Garb yourself brightly!” he suggested. “Mrs. Edna Purefoy” railed against a new public hazard, a metal banister installed in the center of the aisle on city buses: “Both the groceries and I spilled to the floor as the bus screeched to a halt,” she wrote. “Garry Owen” slammed as “hoodlums” neighbors who left their windows open while burning incense.
Desperate to be caught, we stepped...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Fake news is all the Washington Post ever publishes.
El Rushbo used to recount the prank phone calls he and his brother made.
They want to destroy Johnson first.
No one has said boo about the Repubs on the Committee that came up with the 1500 pages. I think it was Collins who said it was "wonderful".
In high school? So Marc, how did it go when you told your dad you were gay?
“signed with a fictional name based on characters we’d plucked out of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” The names were fabulous, and we figured no one would catch on to the pattern (though we’d have been thrilled if anyone did).
Almost every letter we sent was published. One week, “Arnold Lubetsch” advocated combating homicides by wearing dazzlingly colorful clothing. “Garb yourself brightly!” he suggested.”
In high school? Guess you didn’t have to waste time on girls. LOL
We actually prank called our state senator who was also a lawyer. We gave him some crazy story about how we were in legal trouble and couldn’t afford a lawyer instead of just blowing us off he was very very nice and solicitous and said he wanted to help us. We of course hung up immediately and felt really bad because he was so nice.
“and said he wanted to help us”
.
.
That’s what lawyers aways say...
My siblings and I were big on prank phone calls. We’d even make up our own.
To a sporting goods store: “Hi, do you have tennis balls?”
Store: “Yes.”
“I have tennis elbow. That must hurt like hell.”
We’d call people we knew and casually ask to speak to their pets. “Hi, is Caesar there?” That caused fun confusion.
We lived in the DC area as teenagers where the White House was a local call. So was the Watergate. Yeah, we had fun with that.
Kids today will never know the fun we had before *69 and Caller ID.
nice try, dipshits
Liberals confessing they have long been writing fake news.
I think Marc is pranking us now with a tale of being an insufferably precocious teen.
Pranks calls:
Call a friends house and tell their parents to come pick them up at the police station to bail them out.
Call a random Brown family and ask for Charlie.
Dial random number and cry on the phone because they picked up on our last dime needed to call home.
“Fabulous” and “dazzlingly?” Wow, he is surely competing for the high score.
“Do you have Prince Albert in a can?”
“Yes”
“Well, let him out!”
College kids used to do this to Ann Landers and Dear Abby all the time.
To the bowling alley:
“Do you have 16 pound balls there?”
“Yes”
“How do you walk?”
One of the popular pranks in college was to leave a note under someone’s door saying “Your Uncle called. Please call back collect. (202) 456-1111.” (That’s the White House switchboard.)
They would call and be told that “the White House does not accept collect telephone calls.”
Then they’d go pull the same prank on five more people.
There used to be a guy who hung out at Dupont Circle in DC in a three-piece suit asking for 85 cents “so I can call my office in New York.”
For a while, he made a six-figure income doing that.
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