By TheRealGuyFaux
With all this talk of “Fake News,” I’m put in mind of the late sick comic Lenny Bruce (who is ACTUALLY dead, not just his career), and a story he would relate…
Basically, the idea was that Lenny is appearing in some city somewhat off the usual circuit that comics like Lenny would play. His publicist sends a press release ahead. When Lenny gets to the hotel in that hick burg, he finds that there’s a message that somebody from the local fishwrap wants to interview him.
Cut to: The reporter shows up, and it’s some kid right outta college, who’s the “Entertainment Editor” of the rag (basically because there’s not much to write about, and hey, SOMEBODY has to do it). Lenny figures he’ll have some fun with the kid.
At some stage of the interview, the kid asks some question to the effect of, “Do you REALLY hate some of the people you mock in your act, or is it just for effect?” And Lenny replies that there are some people who ARE worthy of hatred and mockery– “Like who?” “Like George Bernard Shaw…” Why Shaw, of all people?” “Yeah, well, we think of him as this great playwright and political activist, but you don’t know the REAL Shaw!”
It goes on from there, with Lenny concocting a cock-and-bull story about Shaw having an affair with Edith Wharton on the sly– Reporter (attempting to sound “sophisticated”): “Well, Lenny, you know what they say about affairs, people get into them for what they get outta them, right? How are Edith Wharton and Shaw any different?”
Lenny realizes at this point that (A) the kid doesn’t know what Lenny is talking about and (B) the kid doesn’t know what he himself is talking about, because by this point, any reporter woulda called BS and said, “Lenny, you’re a card– you had me going there for a second, you sly dog!”
Lenny proceeds to regale the kid with even more phony details, but tops it all off with “I mean, sure, get a bit on the side, but don’t make everybody else’s life miserable in the process– THAT’s why I hate Shaw, he didn’t need to do what he did to her, with those compromising photos!”
The kid comes back with, to the effect of: “Sadly, Lenny, not everybody shares your sense of moral outrage…” Lenny thinks to himself, “Jeez, I got a live one here, looks like…”
Anyway, they wrap the interview, and Lenny waits to see the story in the paper– it was done with the understanding that the kid could paraphrase and condense for length. The lid’s lede is: “Lenny Bruce, appearing at the Boom-Boom Room, will blow the roof off the joint when he gives everybody the REAL dope on the affair between Edith Wharton and George Bernard Shaw– so you thought you knew about these literary giants? Think again, folks– and Lenny’s here with his usual satiric eye, to make it an uproarious laugh riot!”, yadda da yadda dee…
So Lenny, who hadn’t planned to do such a bit at the Boom-Boom Room, now has to incorporate some of this into the act, lest the patrons think “WTF?” So he does a bit where he essentially says how you can take some details about some people, and string them together to make a plausible story, and that a controversial character like Shaw– together with a writer like Edith Wharton, who was a divorcee the details of whose break-up were never really publicized– could be linked because they both were in London in the same era, and that it is easy to say, “Of course, everything about this story was suppressed, y’know…” with a knowing nod and wink: “WHAT? You think they DON’T do stuff like this nowadays?”
Now, Lenny’s story about Shaw and Wharton was strictly off the top of his head, but he could make it sound perhaps marginally plausible, something which the “crazy kids in the Balkans” who were supposedly behind those “Pope and Trump” stories weren’t concerned with doing. The Leftie-Media types proceeded to step on their collective dick by coining a phrase like “Fake News” to apply to these fantastical stories, riding tall in the saddle of their moral high horse. Then, it was turned back on them, with the retort of “As opposed to ‘True News’ such as [slanted story with a scarcity of verifiable details], which YOU report?”
But when you have a comedian in Hick Burg who wants to sell tix, and a credulous reporter not averse to “sexing up” what might have been a boring little blurb about said comic, for the reporter’s own benefit, you get stories like the one just related.
Here’s where I get “meta”– I will admit that I’m telling this yarn based on a passage in a book Lenny wrote called How To Talk Dirty And Influence People, but I’m doing it from memory. Lenny could very well have been embellishing too. How much of the story is actually TRUE, and how much of it is “apocryphal, but hey, it SOUNDS like him, so, benefit of the doubt…”?
And there, friends, you see the problem…I hope.
