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Sunday, December 25, 2005
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Via Erin O'Connor ...comes confirmation of the Little Red Book hoax. UD hadn't yet posted on the matter, being a veteran hoax-watcher and finding the detail in this one that the American college student apparently hounded by the feds was surveilled for reading Mao's book of all things much too neat. Recall UD's earlier post -- I can't do links on this computer, but you can search for it using a keyword or two -- listing the likely signs of a hoax. One of them is that a crucial detail fits much too well. In this case, UD's eyebrows shot right up when she read that the student claimed the government came after him for reading the little red book. Why? Because a hoaxster will choose something exactly like the Mao book -- known to everyone, inarguably subversive according to some simpleminded standard, etc. -- to make the center of his hoax. Of course the larger irony of this hoax is that the hoaxster chose wrong on two levels. Not only did the obviousness of the book choice make UD's (and other people's) eyebrows shoot way up; but the absurdity of choosing a book our government presumably finds as dead and pointless as everyone else didn't help him out much. |