Fact-checking humor

They are being responsible. If someone is allowed to speak untruthfully, then everything they say is doubted, as well as their associates. I’m reminded of Ergun Caner and how many defended his lying about his conversion story. It’s just theological leverage, right? Well, now many more will take stories told in the pulpit with a grain of salt.

It’s a very good idea not to tell “fish stories” in the pulpit!
How is the listener going to separate fact from fiction, especially as much of Scripture is “hard to believe” in the rational secular mind?

Besides, Pastors only have 10-15 minutes to teach the Word, as we do things now.
How can they possibly think of wasting any of it on untrue digressions!?

Helen @2: It’s a very good idea not to tell “fish stories” in the pulpit!

Especially when a layman can do a quick search via Google or Bing and find the “fish stories,” sometimes while sitting in the pew with his smartphone. The same goes for checking the context of famous-people-quotes and statistical factoids used in sermons.

Sedaris’ latest collection is all about furry woofland animals talking to each other and living people lives … I think this is a case of over-scrupulousness. Sedaris is a humorist. Everyone knows Twain’s stories are “realish”. What’s the difference?

The national and more so the community press engage in overblown sensationalism on a scale that would make Hearst chuckle. I cringe when I watch local news, where the ethics of reporting “fair and balanced” are often discarded for the sake of ratings and advertising dollars. NPR certainly puts a lot of effort into their journalistic ethics. I enjoy David Sedaris and knowing he is a humorist I have never had the expectation of “fair and balanced.” I do expect to be somewhat entertained. I expect it to ring with a sense of folly in reality. If he passes himself or his work as hard core reporting, in an instant that would change. I think it would be better if NPR would just call it what it is — humor and satire rooted in reality. Not fact. NPR always give the byline at the end with some small comment, perhaps it should be settled there.

The difference between Sedaris and Daisey is that Sedaris is telling tales that are to be taken simply as tales. They’re entertainment and they’re funny. Mike Daisey, on the other had, was try to elicit social change through falsehood. He was putting a large businesses and the livelihoods of factory workers and Apple employees at risk.

Since NPR leans so far to the radical left, a writer who manages to get “realish” is about as close to the truth as can be expected for NPR without actually becoming “conservative.”

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

I echo Kirk’s comment. The difference between Sedaris and Daisey is that Daisey’s story was masquerading as journalism. That is to say, Daisey’s story has an implicit call to action. Hearing Daisey’s story was supposed to impact you in some way such that you would see the world differently — and maybe take action accordingly.

Sedaris’s stories are not like that at all. Sedaris’s stories are humor. Finding out that there were fabrications/exaggerations in his Santa story isn’t going to change one iota my opinion of Macy’s, Santa, store elves, &c. Because the story didn’t change my opinion of them to begin with.

Further, Daisey pretended that his story was factual, in a journalistic sense. And TAM presented the story as factual, in a journalistic sense. Even when Sedaris’s stories are presented on TAM, there’s no risk of anyone thinking that his stories are journalistically fact-checked, because they aren’t presented as factual, in a journalistic sense.

In short, the line between journalism and entertainment is quite clear in Sedaris’s case, and we know on which side of the line he’s always been. The problem in Daisey’s case, the line was blurred by him playing the game on one side of the line, yet playing by the rules of the other side.

I thought NPR itself is fictional. They tend to be such a parody of themselves.

@10

Sadly, it’s about 10x better than any other news source out there. Like, as in they actually report the news.

Fact-check Mark Twain, anyone?

It’s about spinning a yarn. It doesn’t have to be true, that’s not the point. It just has to sound like it could be true, and be funny.

For what it’s worth, the best humorist around – Dave Barry – regularly assures his readers, “I am not making this up.”

Kirk @ 11…you are talking National Public Radio, right?

@14

Indeed I am, sir.

Well said, Kirk and Steven.

It’s bigger than just Sedaris. Just the other day, I was planning a summer vacation to Lake Wobegon, MN, based on the radio program of the same name. It seemed like a quaint place to visit, from the stories I’d heard. Well, I typed “Lake Wobegon, MN” into Google Maps and … what do you know, it doesn’t exist! And the more I searched online, the more the lie began to unravel.

Clearly, the inability to tell the truth is endemic to the LIEberal media, of which National PubLIE Radio is the worst!

If a news source can’t tell you the truth about the antics of seasonal, minimum-wage elf jobs at Macy’s, then what can you trust them to tell you?

Carl Vehse @ 3
It was dangerous when google was a gleam in somebody’s eye.

E.g., a Pastor (who did go fishing) talked about being out on the lake on Saturday, yada, yada, when people in the congregation had seen him in town, (several hours between). No way!

And then there was the time he decided to go exotic and told a (“fish”) story about a Buddha… when I had recently gotten back from Thailand. Never expect that all your congregation are gullible rubes, [especially in Houston!], and don’t pull your “personal” stories from the canned “sermon helps.”

tODD @ 17
Just the other day, I was planning a summer vacation to Lake Wobegon, MN, based on the radio program of the same name. It seemed like a quaint place to visit, from the stories I’d heard. Well, I typed “Lake Wobegon, MN” into Google Maps and … what do you know, it doesn’t exist.

You are kidding, aren’t you? [Or is it only because I'm from Minnesota?] Actually, it does exist, under 100 other names. My home town had a lake like Lake Wobegon and Catholic and Lutheran churches.

If you are serious, go to Bemidji. [OR fly to MPLS and drive to Itasca.]
From there, go to Lake Itasca State Park, the headwaters of the Mississippi.
In fact, stay in the park, hotel rooms or cabins by the lake. It’s lovely!

Wade across the Mississippi (or use the fancy schmancy foot bridge that was there last time I was); walk the trails and maybe see a black bear; go fishing, if you like fishing. It’s piney woods country and beautiful!

Any little town up there will stand in for Lake Wobegon. Down south, (no pines; corn and soybeans) there’s a Lake Wobegon called Albert Lea, on a major highway from MPLS (I-35); one called Alden; one called Minnesota Lake… and so on.

Enjoy your trip. With Texas summer on the way, I wish I were going.

Todd seems a bit woebegone over the fictitiousness of Lake Wobegon.

@Kirk

But NPR doesn’t report facts like Obama being born in Kenya and the Iraq war being a complete success, and instead reports fiction like Earth being billions of years old.

The NPR is in financial trouble, unless those who don’t listen to it and don’t care about it are forced to contribute more to keeping it going.

As for being born in Kenya, that is what ‘Barry’ Obama had his literary agent claim in 1991 and for 16 years after that, until the Kenyan Imam decided to run for president.

Carl Vehse: trusts more in book-marketing copy than in actual government documents.

Which is why your judgment is so valued around here, Carl.

Here’s a June 27, 2004, article, “Kenyan-born Obama all set for US Senate ” from the Sunday Standard in Kenya. Perhaps they misread their government’s official record of Barry’s birth certificate.

Okay then, Carl (@24). You also trust Kenyan news articles more than US government documents. Even when those news articles spell his name “Barrack Obama” (that’s some whip-smart copy-editing, boys!).

Ladies and gentlemen, Carl Vehse! He’s a nuclear scientist!

“Even when those news articles spell his name ‘Barrack Obama’ (that’s some whip-smart copy-editing, boys!).”

Restating what I wrote: “Perhaps they misread their government’s official record of Barry’s birth certificate.”

After all, even the White House misspells Steve’s name occasionally.

Carl Vehse: media defender! (Except, of course, when it doesn’t suit his conspiratorial needs.) He’s done work for our government!

Someone has to encourage the freedom of the press, especially when they publish articles like “Postman: Ayers family put ‘foreigner’ Obama through school.” The fifth-column drive-by media clymers sure don’t care about it.

Others have presented evidence indicating Obama is not eligible to be President, beside Barry being an anti-American, leftist, racist liar, of course. One recent book is Where’s the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President by Jerome Corsi, who appears to meet tODD’s posted standard of credibility by spelling “Barack” correctly.

Carl (@30), you are a continual source of entertainment.

Of course, you appear to have confused mere book-selling allegations with “evidence”. And you also hold to the curiously unconstitutional notion that being “leftist”, “racist” or a “liar” somehow makes one ineligible for the Presidency. Apparently it would give you the vapors if you found out that several of our former Presidents likely also qualified for one or more of these categories.

And then, of course, there is the issue of the Eighth Commandment, which you are to quick to run to when your own sacred ox is being gored — aren’t we all? — but always seems to slip your mind when we are discussing our current President, Barack Obama.

But hey, at least you were able to make reference to the man’s actual name for once (@30), without calling him by one of the slew of puerile epithets with which you usually refer to the man.

So that’s progress.

Some people are keeping an open mind and recognizing that either (to use a commenter’s description) Barokeydoke was born in Kenya or he wasn’t.

For example, in his article, “The Mystery of the Kenyan Birth,” Roger L. Simon offers his explanations of how the “Born in Kenya” label got put into Barry’s bio:

1. Obama told them.
2. It was in some early draft of Obama’s abandoned book (Journeys in Black and White) he submitted to them.
3. Obama wrote it in his book proposal to them.
4. Obama told them in a query letter.
5. Obama answered one of those biographical forms.
6.… Well, I’m running out because they all amount to the same thing.

Simon concludes: “Anyway, per Occam’s Razor, I am going with the obvious — the agent’s source for Obama’s birthplace was… Barack Obama.”

This explanation (of Barokeydoke as a liar, rather than a Kenyan) for the Mystery of the Kenyan Birth also serves to explain the Mystery of the Expensively Hidden College/University Records. Other presidents (and presidential wannabees) have had poor grades, as the press has previously uncovered, especially for a GOP POTUS. But uncovering a President who registered and received scholarships as a foreign student (or a foreign Muslim student) is another matter. The fifth column MSM would rather admit their boy eats dogmeat.

And, of course, Simon’s explanation fits neatly in with the Not-a-Mystery conclusion made by others that Demonrats are leftist liars.

Appear complicated so as to a lot more delivered reasonable from you!