[Ads-l] Batson D. Belfry and Batson D. Sealing, was Re: [ADS-L] batshit

[Robin Hamilton]

The Sokal [sic] Hoax was intended to deceive the editors (which it did) rather
than the readers.

The Guardian regularly, on the appropriate date [April 1], runs news from the
territory of Sans Serif [sic].

Spoof vs. hoax, but the current "fake news" is probably closest to the Black
Propaganda pioneered by the Brits in the Great Patriotic War -- for Roger
Casement, read Hillary Clinton.

Daniel Defoe got badly caught out when his _Shortest Way With Dissenters_, which
was intended as "satire", was taken at face value -- "Hang 'em all!"

The Law of Unintended Consequences ...

Robin.

> 
>     On 12 December 2016 at 12:37 Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
> 
> 
>     Cf. the long-ago Sokol Hoax.
> 
>     The "fake news" phenomenon makes such stunts no longer funny. (Though they
>     used to be!)
> 
>     JL
> 
> 
>     On Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 6:17 AM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu>
> wrote:
> 
>     > Speaking of Batson D. Belfry (from the Shoe strip), in 1990 an American
>     > Egyptologist using the name Batson D. Sealing submitted an article to
>     > the
>     > British periodical Discussions in Egyptology. The article claimed to
>     > reproduce from an old New Orleans periodical a text in an unknown
>     > language.
>     > It was a fake periodical issue, but imitated an issue of a real one. The
>     > text was in Demotic, which the new article misleadingly translated. It
>     > was
>     > actually a (modern) translation into Demotic of parts of the Coptic
>     > Gospel
>     > of Thomas. It was set in type for publication and was written up in The
>     > Financial Times as a great discovery before being recognized as a hoax
>     > the
>     > next week, and is listed in WorldCat (below). There have been many fake
>     > mss
>     > offered lately.
>     >
>     >
>     > Stephen Goranson
> 
> 

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