February 14, 2018 Article

The Old Coot knows fake news.

By Merlin Lessler

Fake News! You hear that term a lot these days. It gets battered around as though it were a new phenomenon, but to old coots like me, fake news has been around for a long time, it just hasn’t always been called fake news. They just called it news. How about that “fake news” George Washington quote, “I cannot tell a lie; I did cut it with my hatchet.” Simply a myth invented by author Mason Locke Weems, an early biographer of Washington. And that old gem of fake news, Columbus discovering America. Somewhat of a surprise to the Chinese and Viking explorers who sailed to our shores hundreds of years earlier, and especially to the Native Americans who were living here for tens of thousands of years before he set sail in 1492.

We were brought up on, and weaned on, fake news. I guess it explains why we are so gullible; it was so easy to believe it when a news anchor, in a suit, sitting at a news desk, ended his broadcast with, “And that’s the way it is.” How about that fat, whiskered guy with a sack of presents? Or that bunny, laying Easter eggs. The tooth fairy? OK, OK, you can rationalize some of that as a kindness to little children. I buy that, but it sure helped set us up to accept news stories with little or no skepticism. Like, the forecasting ability of a ground hog, or that we shouldn’t throw rice at the bride and groom because birds eat it, swell up and blow apart. Boy, the “Church-step Sweepers Union got away with that gem of fake news. Now, we dutifully stand by and blow soap bubbles at the happy couple.

My generation was so gullible, as well as our parents and teachers, that they thought we’d survive a nuclear attack by sitting under our desks and facing away from the window. We practiced this more than we did fire drills. Fire drills were better; we got to go outside and line up on the school playground. Freedom! Of a sort, from prison duty at our desk. My childhood was loaded with this stuff. Don’t cross your eyes, they’ll get stuck. Crack your knuckles and they’ll get bigger. Sit too close to the TV and you’ll go blind. It’s why old coots are wary of all news stories. We don’t buy anything hook line and sinker.  Especially, if it comes from social media. We may not be hip; we’re Twitter and Snapchat challenged, but you seldom hear us say, “I can’t believe that story wasn’t true.” (And that’s not fake news. Trust me; that’s the way it is.)

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