Let’s make fake news fun again

The Washington Post ^ | 5:45 a.m. EST | Marc Fisher

[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...

[TBP]

“Hello, Mrs. ___. I’m from teh phone company. We’re testing the lines for the next 20 minutes, so if your phone rings, please don’t pick it up, OK?”

“OK.”

“Thank you.” Hang up.

Wiat about five minutes. Call back. Keep it ringing until they pick up.

“Hello?”

(Simulate elctrocution noises, then scream “Aaaaahhhh!”

Hang up.

[Allegra]

Bwahahahahahaha! You had some good ones. Love the bowling alley one. 😂

(202) 456-1414 was the number we used to call for the White House. I don’t remember if we had to put the 202 in front from Fairfax County back then.

Those White House switchboard operators had lots of patience but no sense of humor. For example, they didn’t see any humor in getting calls for Amy, followed by “But I need to get today’s Science homework assignment” when told Amy wasn’t available. They didn’t care for snide comments about peanuts either. Or gas lines.

[Allegra]

Call a friends house and tell their parents to come pick them up at the police station to bail them out.

Good one!

When three-way calling came out (way before star-69 and Caller ID), we used to connect “Teenagers Telephone” listings to the main(parents’) number late at night and listen to the parent yell at the kid for playing around.

Or we’d connect up a couple who had just broken up.

Living in Houston at that time, we’d connect up two astronauts’ homes (it was amazing how many of them were listed in the phone book) and listen to them (or family members) debate who called who. “But my phone rang and I answered.” “But mine rang too. This is strange…”

[TBP]

Somewhere along the line, they changed it from 1414 to 1111, maybe because of pranksters like us.