From ZeroZeroKappaKappa collective:

Spoof campaign poster for Cardinal Turkson appears in pre-conclave Rome
Reuters
March 1, 2013

Spoof “vote for Turkson” posters have popped up in Rome along walls still plastered with campaign posters from Italy’s general election on Sunday and Monday. Campaigning for the papacy is officially forbidden and even suggesting one is a candidate is usually enough to end any cardinal’s chances of ascending to the throne of Saint Peter.

Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Turkson is the Irish bookmakers’ favorite to replace Pope Benedict, putting a non-European in pole position to lead the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church for the first time in more than a millennium. (more…)

Editor’s note: Media literacy alert!

From Nancy:

Really Cute, but Totally Faked
by Dave Itzkoff
New York Times
February 26, 2013

It seemed too adorable to be fake, but it was too good to be true.

On Sept. 19 a 30-second video appeared on YouTube, depicting a baby goat that had become stuck in the pond of a petting zoo and that was heroically rescued with a helpful nudge from a pig that swam out to it.

Within hours the video had been posted around the Web; it had been shared with the Twitter followers of Time magazine and Ellen DeGeneres; and it had been broadcast on NBC’s “Today” show and its “Nightly News” program, ABC’s “Good Morning America” and Fox News, where the “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade said of it, “You couldn’t do this at Warner Brothers as a cartoon and make it seem more realistic.”

But the video was thoroughly staged. It was created for a new Comedy Central series, “Nathan for You,” with the help of some 20 crew members, including animal trainers, scuba divers and humane officers, and required the fabrication of a plastic track to guide the pig to the goat (which was never in jeopardy).

Video by jebdogrpm

That a faked video had been so rapidly disseminated by unskeptical news outlets was both surprising and dispiritingly familiar to professional experts on the news media. (more…)

…isn’t the pot calling the kettle black?

Original: By The Big Questions. You can watch the complete episode here: Part 1, Part 2.

via Upworthy.com

CIA whistleblower Kiriakou gets posh send-off to prison
by David Montgomery
Washington Post
February 21, 2013

John Kiriakou stood in the ninth-floor banquet hall of the Hay-Adams hotel Thursday night and took in the spectacular view of the White House and the Washington Monument. He recalled briefing two presidents during his career with the CIA. “It’s ironic,” he said, spreading his arms as if to embrace the tableau. “This really is the reason I came to Washington 30 years ago in the first place.”

But next Thursday he will check into the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pa., to begin a 30-month sentence for divulging information that prosecutors said could harm his country.

Kiriakou, 48, seemed unbowed and almost content at the prospect of prison as he basked in the well wishes of about 100 supporters, who gathered for a posh send-off at the luxury hotel. The guests wore orange jumpsuits and other mock prison garb and serenaded Kiriakou with a reworked version of the protest anthem “Have You Been to Jail for Justice?”

“I’m proud of my career,” said Kiriakou, who lives in Arlington County. “I still love the CIA — crazy as that may sound. . . . I wear my conviction as a badge of honor.” (more…)

Posted on YouTube by John Pemberton:

via Upworthy.com

From Larry C.:

Bigfoot Is Real, And We Have DNA To Prove It: Researchers
by Lee Rannals
RedOrbit.com
February 14, 2013

We thought the first evidence would emerge from some backyard video footage, or a smartphone photo, but the real proof of the existence of Bigfoot actually lies in the DNA.

A team of scientists has published the results of a five-year study of DNA samples from Sasquatch in the journal DeNovo Journal of Science.

Researchers claim they have sequenced three whole Bigfoot nuclear genomes, helping to prove that the legendary creature exists in North America, and is a human relative that arose 13,000 years ago.

The scientists hypothesize that the Bigfoot creature is a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens, with a novel primate species, giving it the species name Homo sapiens cognatus. (more…)

From Emerson Dameron: An homage to a great prankster!

The Man Behind The Brilliant Media Hoax Of “I, Libertine”
by Matthew Callan
The Awl
February 14th, 2013

In the 1950s, a DJ named Jean Shepherd hosted a late-night radio show on New York’s WOR that was unlike any before or since. On these broadcasts, he delivered dense, cerebral monologues, sprinkled with pop-culture tidbits and vivid stretches of expert storytelling. “There is no question that we are a tiny, tiny, tiny embattled minority here,” he assured his audience in a typical diatribe. “Hardly anyone is listening to mankind in all of its silliness, all of its idiocy, all of its trivia, all of its wonder, all of its glory, all of its poor, sad, pitching us into the dark sea of oblivion.” Shepherd’s approach was summed up by his catchphrase: a mock-triumphant “Excelsior!”, followed by an immediate, muttered “you fathead…”

Shepherd inspired fierce loyalty in his listeners who would tune in to listen to him in the middle of the night. These listeners embraced his term for them, “night people,” and under his direction they would execute one of the biggest and most bizarre media hoaxes of the 20th century. The hoax was meant as a strike against their opposite: “day people,” that is, against phoniness and squareness—all those 50s words—as well as a joke on New York pretension.

In our time of memes, virality, and reality blurring, the hoax Shepherd dreamt up seems extremely modern and prescient in its contours—as does the fact that, eventually, it got out of his control. (more…)

From Linda: Hilarious street performance…

Produced by actor/comedian/jackass Gary Lee Mahmoud of Panhandler Party Productions, LLC. More credits and info here

From Fresh Juice Party:

California Group Mails Chocolate Corpses for Valentines

Instead of sending a chocolate heart this Valentine’s, send the entire mutilated body! The limited edition FUBAR comes in both white and milk chocolate and is decorated to depict an American soldier’s corpse returning from war. FUBARs are packaged in refrigerated, flag-wrapped coffins, equipped with hidden sound devices which play the FUBAR Memorial Theme Music when opened. The group has posted this music video that demonstrates these features for those who will not be receiving one of their own.

Who will the lucky recipients be? (more…)

Police say Mont. TV zombie hoax likely linked to others
Michael Beall, Great Falls (Mont.), Tribune
USA Today
February 13, 2013

Fake emergency alert warned of dead bodies walking the streets and attacking the living.

GREAT FALLS, Mont. — Zombies weren’t walking the streets here Monday, but a false alert that aired on two local TV stations went through the same channels on which true emergencies are aired, raising questions and concerns of how the hoax occurred.

The hoax reached around 10 stations in Montana, Michigan, California, Utah and New Mexico, said Greg MacDonald, the CEO of Montana Broadcasters Association.

The alert featured a scrolling warning for various Montana counties and a voice-over claimed there were “dead bodies rising from the grave and attacking the living” and urged people to use caution.

“Do not attempt to approach or apprehend these bodies as they are extremely dangerous,” it said.

MacDonald said the FBI and the FCC are investigating the cases, and initial findings have officials believing the hoax originated somewhere overseas. (more…)

Sarah Palin Wins Correction Of The Day After WaPo Runs Patently Unbelievable Al Jazeera Scoop
by Jason Linkins
Huffington Post
February 12, 2013

So, despite what you’ve heard, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is not going to be proselytizing from a perch at Al Jazeera English. This is something that The Washington Post briefly reported Tuesday, on its “She The People” blog, and it is 100 percent wrong. So now, the Post gets to run this fun correction:

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post incorrectly reported that Sarah Palin planned to contribute to the Al Jazeera America news network.

Palin and Al Jazeera, eh? Well, that would sure be a weird fit, wouldn’t it, given their past intersections. Almost too impossible to believe? Well, the source for the Post’s story was this piece from a website called “The Daily Currant,” and if you can believe this, then you’ll believe anything: (more…)

Spoiler alert! According to author John Reed, Joey Skaggs’ Metamorphosis: Cockroach Vitamin Pill hoax headlines the Golden Age…

The Golden Age of the Cockroach
by John Reed
Vice.com
February 6, 2013

Illustration by Michele Witchipoo

Every era in art has a new favored subject. The Etruscans looked to Hercules; painters of the Renaissance reenvisioned the Bible; the American Ashcan School rendered sensitive tableaus of poor urban life; and the later half of the 20th century, dominated by the PoMo-ism of downtown NYC, crowned a new king, the cockroach, which was not only an available resource, but a stand-in for the artist—a heroic outcast, thriving in the ruins of civilization.

The oeuvre of the cockroach is best understood as a series of distinct ages that, in turn, comprise a whole. During the Reformation, the cockroach was reconsidered; the Enlightenment percieved the cockroach as potentially “divine”; the Golden Age saw the pinnacle of the discipline; the Silver Age was consumed by celebrity; the Bronze Age refigured the subject as metaphor and victim; the Age of Decline represented the subject in absentia and/or in parts. As far as I can tell, no one has completed, or even attempted, to survey the cockroach’s place in the art world, so consider this seven-part piece that examines an artistic era that scuttled by so quickly, hardly anyone even noticed it. (more…)

From Larry C.: Brings to mind Joey Skaggs’ Metamorphosis: Cockroach Cure hoax.

Communicating with the future: a cockroach DNA archive of the New York Times
by M. Scott Brauer
dvafoto.com
Oct 30, 2009

One of my favorite things to think about is the difficulty of communicating with humans generations from now, or even tens of thousands of years from now. An example: The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management overseeing Yucca Mountain, the proposed Nevada site for disposal of nuclear waste, has been working with artists to develop a warning system that would alert future visitors to the area of the dangers buried in the mountain. From the website, “The monumental challenge is to address how warnings can be coherently conveyed for thousands of years into the future when human society and languages could change radically.” The purpose of the warning sign is “to deter intentional or inadvertent human intrusion or interference at the site and to effectively communicate over the course of the next 10,000 years that the integrity of the site must not be compromised in any way in order to prevent the release of the radiation contained within.” It’s an interesting visual challenge that must not rely on our own cultural biases. Here’s one artist’s response to the challenge, though perhaps it’s too reliant on the 20th century “Radioactive Danger” symbol. (more…)

Notre Dame Football Star Manti Te’o Says Dead Girlfriend Was Hoax
ABC World News
by Colleen Curry and Dan Harris
January 16, 2013

The star of Notre Dame’s championship football team said the widely-reported death of his girlfriend from leukemia during the 2012 football season was apparently a hoax, and said he was duped by it as well.

Manti Te’o, who led the Fighting Irish to the BCS championship game this year and finished second for the Heisman Trophy, said in a statement today that he fell in love with a girl online last year who turned out not to be real.

He said during the season that his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, died of leukemia in September on the same day Te’o's grandmother died, triggering an outpouring of support for Te’o at Notre Dame and in the media.

“While my grandma passed away and you take, you know, the love of my life [Kekua]. The last thing she said to me was, ‘I love you,’” Te’o said at the time, noting that he had talked to Kekua on the phone and by text message until her death. (more…)

From Jim E.:

Red shows you how to make a complete Christmas dinner without a kitchen.