Really?

During the Fall of 1941, several New York City newspapers reported on their sports pages the success of the Plainfield Teachers College football team. On successive weeks Plainfield defeated Winona 27-3, Randolph Tech 35-0, and Ingersoll 13-0. Plainfield was led by a phenomenal halfback named John Chung, whose feats were relayed to the papers by a press agent named Jerry Croyden.

Alas, truth be told, there was no John Chung—or Jerry Croyden, either. Or even a Plainfield Teachers College. It was all an invention of Morris Neuburger, a stock broker. In other words, it was all a hoax.(1)

*

Three years earlier, a truly momentous hoax took place.

On the evening of October 30, 1938, radio listeners across the U.S. heard a startling report of mysterious creatures and terrifying war machines moving toward New York City. But the hair-raising broadcast was not a real news bulletin—it was Orson Welles' adaptation of the H. G. Wells classic "The War of the Worlds.”(2)

Welles’ Mercury Theater program was formulated as a simulacrum of a true emergency broadcast. And listeners were fooled and some even panicked about a Martian attack in New Jersey. 

The Martian invasion broadcast stands as the premier radio hoax.

*

Last weekend, enthusiasts gathered at Scotland’s Loch Ness to participate in what organizers billed “as the largest organized ‘Nessie’ hunt for 50 years.”(3)

The serious “Nessie” hunters 

came armed with high-tech help: sonars for mapping the lake bed, thermal-imaging drones for scanning the surface and hydrophones to hear strange sounds from the depths.

Perhaps most of them hoped to see for themselves the monster which was supposedly captured in a famous photograph in 1934 attributed to a London doctor (it is known as the “surgeon’s photograph”).

[T]he photo shows a long-necked creature with a small head rising from the lake.(4)

Unfortunately for true believers, the photograph is not that of a water monster but of a fabrication made of a plastic wood head grafted onto the conning tower of a toy submarine. 

In other words, a hoax.

*

“The climate change agenda is a hoax … The reality is more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change.”

— Vivek Ramaswamy

Leaving aside the fact that the words were spoken by the most obnoxious personage newly sprouted in the GOP nomination derby, let us examine the language and the content of the above statement.

First off, there is the matter of evidence. Where is there proof that “more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change”? What are those “bad climate change policies” and how have they contributed to the death of many people? And how has Ramaswamy ascertained the number of alleged climate change policy deaths? What standards of proof were involved? 

I think you can guess the answers.

Now for the language. What is it with the word “agenda”? Rightwingers love to scare people with that alleged bogey word. You must have heard about the Gay Agenda, the Trans Agenda, and lord knows how many other Agendas out there. 

I always associate an agenda with a meeting—it’s the list of what will be discussed and acted upon. So I wonder where did the meeting take place that the nefarious Agenda was part of? Specifically, where was the “climate change agenda” drawn up? (And what are its particulars?)

But the most significant idiocy of Ramaswamy’s rant is the claim that the “climate change agenda” is a hoax.

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What have we learned about hoaxes from the discussions of Plainfield Teachers College, Welles’ “War of the Worlds,” and the Loch Ness monster photograph? They were are all deliberate attempts to deceive the public. I’ll say it again: Hoaxes are deliberate; they are not accidents, errors, or unwitting outcomes. But for Ramaswamy, “hoax” is just another scare word (like “agenda”) to stir the bowels of the credulous fools who follow him.

Of course, if young Vivek can produce evidence that some maleficent cabal has in fact deliberately manufactured the “climate change agenda” as a fake-fact cocktail, a “hoax" in other words, then I take back every thing I said here and will vote for him for president.(5)

***

(1) Reported in The New Yorker, Nov. 29, 1941.

(2)  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/infamous-war-worlds-radio-broadcast-was-magnificent-fluke-180955180/  

(3)  https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/loch-ness-monster-hunt-largest-decades-rcna102002

(4)  https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lochness/legend3.html

(5)  Now, that wouldn't be a hoax, would it?