Pen-Elayne on the Web

That Elusive 15 Minutes

My favorite trend lately is people fabricating stories that make themselves look stupid, presumably so they can get famous via print space or a little airtime. For instance, Anne Zook led me to this story about a guy who says he's suing his cable company for making him and his family lazy and addicted to bad habits (smoking, drinking, overeating, couch-potato'ing). Says Timothy Dumouchel, "The reason I am suing Charter is they did not let me make a decision as to what was best for myself and my family and (they have been) keeping cable (coming) into my home for four years after I asked them to turn it off." The kicker is the last line of the article: "Wisconsin Circuit Court records show no civil lawsuit papers filed in Dumouchel's name." So, barring Snopes finding out anything else, I'm thinking it's just not true, but then why would the guy make himself look like an asshole? Here's another one: Elicia Battle now admits she lied about buying and losing that $162 million lottery ticket, which also involved a lawsuit (against the person who legitimately won the lottery). In her "defense," Battle says, "I wanted to win. The numbers were so overwhelming. I did buy a ticket and I lost it. I wanted to win so bad for my kids and my family." And for the cameras, let's not forget that.

I blame reality shows. In fact, I'm considering suing them for contributing to the inanity of the press. The media's insatiable drive to cover non-stories of questionable claims in the first place only encourages more people to try to hoodwink them, and drives actual affecting-your-life news off the front pages (and blogs). Who's with me on this? I figure we have to make it a class-action in order to get maximum publicity.