Product Lie Ability

If I said "I screwed up" by reporting fiction as fact in an earlier article, that would be admitting to a mistake. So I'll say, "The article contained an error." That way it's the article's fault.

This is what I call the Diaper Defense. A child doesn't say, "I broke the lamp." That would be taking responsibility. The kid says, "It broke, Mommy," thus implying that the lamp, disconsolate with its dreary lot in life, committed suicide by hurling itself to its shattering demise on the floor.

The Diaper Defense was most infamously employed by the woman who bought coffee at a MacDonald's drive-thru, clutched it between her thighs and promptly scalded her crotch. Not her fault. The coffee did it, Mommy. Bingo: $2.9 million product liability award.

So here's my story. In a previous prose product dubbed "Pizza Schmizza and Blazing Bagels" I offered a trio of vignettes on homegrown capitalism and its inevitable faultfinders. A Pizzeria proprietor paid street slackers to carry posters promoting his business and earned a rebuke from Commercial Alert for not shelling out minimum wage. A street corner sign-holder for a bagel baker became jobless because the city decided their local anti-sign ordnance trumped the First Amendment. And, Microsoft planned to pass out MSN-emblazoned jackets and sweats to NYC's homeless hoards as a promotional gimmick, prompting accusations of exploitation.

The first two tales were based on articles harvested from allegedly reliable mainstream online newspapers around the internet. Alas, my sole source for the Microsoft moment was a website called. NewYorkish.com.

The NewYorkishites subsequently posted a portion of my Microsoft commentary and followed it with this comment: "Apparently the author didn't realize that the original article was satirical."

Apparently? Of course I didn't realize it was satire! It sounded just as unbelievably believable as the bagel and pizza stories. They deceived me! This is a product liability case. NewYorkish did it, Mommy! There were no warning labels plastered across the article proclaiming:

CAUTION -- this is SATIRE -- story not true - just kidding -- don't believe this!

I even complained about this quandary in my previously previous posting "Parody Parity" in which I lamented:

"How do you out-Mad Mad magazine? How do you parody reality when reality itself is parody? I'm never quite sure any more when I see a political cartoon if it's meant to be a caricature of some contemporary idiocy or just a realistic illustration."

So you see, it's not my fault that I was goofed by a spoof. It could happen to you, too. Suppose I wrote the following story, based on all of those allegedly reliable mainstream online newspapers around the internet, and then suppose that I slipped my own little lampoons into the list. Think you can sort the serious from the satire? Ha! Try it! No fair doing research -- just peruse and choose:

After the Leader of the so-called free world demanded 87 billion in taxpayer plunder to rebuild the very countries he just finished pounding into the sand, details on how the dough will be blown have been emerging. Leave it to our Washingtoncrats to create a list of pork barrel expenditures for people who won't touch pork. The original list included:

$8 million for an Afghan Highway Patrol

$20 million for 200 election experts for six months

$9 million to establish a postal system with Zip codes

$10 million to build four industrial parks and 50 crop-and-livestock markets

$2 million for garbage trucks

$9 million for tax collection

$20 million for Iraqi business classes at $10,000 per student

$10 million for prison-building consultants

While you're pondering the possibilities, let me get disgustingly serious for a moment and state that if I had done my homework, as Miss Karrer, my 5th grade teacher, had taught me to do, I would have easily discovered that NewYorkish.com was a satire site. They said so themselves, right behind a single button-click. In fact, I'm a regular fan now. So, in the libertarian spirit of Individual Freedom and Personal Responsibility, I humbly apologize to my readers for rotten reportage and promise never to let it happen again until next time.

As for the money-laundering list above -- none of it is satire. I didn't invent any of it. (I did say "suppose" after all.) Which just goes to prove a sound bite of my own devising: Satire is never necessary when Congress is in session.

And now, in keeping with my acquired Texas tastes, please pass the chicken-fried crow.