[nyt]
Alan Abel, Hoaxer Extraordinaire, Is (on Good Authority) Dead at 94
Alan Abel, a professional hoaxer who for more than half a century
gleefully hoodwinked the American public - not least of all by making
himself the subject of an earnest news obituary in The New York Times in
1980 - apparently actually did die, on Friday, at his home in Southbury,
Conn. He was 94.
.....
Mr. Abel's first major hoax, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals,
or SINA - which sought "to clothe all naked animals that appear in
public, namely horses, cows, dogs and cats, including any animal that
stands higher than 4 inches or is longer than 6 inches" - began in
1959. It starred his friend Buck Henry, then an unknown actor and later a
well-known actor and screenwriter, as the group's puritanical president,
G. Clifford Prout.
.....
There was the putative winner of the New York State Lotto jackpot in 1990,
who was billed as a cosmetologist from Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., but who in
reality was an actress; she poured champagne by the gallon in a hired
Manhattan hotel suite and threw dollar bills from the window as the news
media salivated. "$35 MILLION AND SHE'S SINGLE," the front page of
The New York Post crowed the next day.
====
rest:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/17/obituaries/alan-abel-dies.html
Deb... or anyone else... wasn't there another media hoaxer
he was in friendly competition with? I'm pretty sure I remember
another one but I'm blanking on the name.
(No, not Richard Nixon...)
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dan...@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
