Greeson: A fool or fact filibuster following Fool's Day

Jay Greeson
Jay Greeson

OK friends, Monday was, you guessed it, April Fool's Day.

Personally, I'm not a fan. (Although there is a large collection of my emailers who may think the Fool's Day was my birthday. It wasn't.)

While the attempts at silliness around this space may lead some to think we would be all-in on April Fool's Day, the exact opposite is true, especially when it comes to the printed word.

There has been only one good April Fool's Day joke in print. One.

That was Sidd Finch and the Sports Illustrated cover story about the alleged New York Mets pitching prospect who wore one boot and threw 140-plus miles per hour. It was the perfect farce from the subheadline of the story: "He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent lifestyle, Sidd's deciding about yoga." And rest easy if you didn't notice the first letter of each word of that blurb - H-A-P-P-Y-A-P-R-I-L-F-O-O-L-S-D-A-Y - because it is extremely subtle.

Every other attempt is a hackneyed imitation that almost always fails.

That's especially true now in a time of the often-used and occasionally accurate claims of Fake News.

Professionally, I never participate in April Fool's Day foolishness. I was part of collateral damage of an April Fool's attempt gone badly wrong.

My first job as a sports editor was at the Marietta Daily Journal and Cherokee Tribune just north of Atlanta.

One year, April Fool's Day fell on a Sunday, and the news editor of the Cherokee Tribune thought it would be a riot to have a front-page story that an airplane carrying several cows with Mad Cow disease had crashed in Cherokee County. There was no box alerting readers to April Fool's Day or a funny headline or disclaimer - just the byline that said something like Ima J. Oking or something of that ilk. By lunch, CNN and NBC had boots on the ground trying to hunt down the folks with the Mad Cow.

Ouch.

But there will always be folks trying to play the fool on this day.

So let's play a little game of Fool, Fake or Fact from Monday's news, shall we?

> There is such a thing as doggie and kitty diapers. Fact. Amazingly, those embarrassments have been around for a while but during a Monday morning TV commercial, I was made aware of products like washable pet diapers and wraps from companies like PetMagasin.com. Oh my. I seriously thought the commercial was a random ESPN April Fool's Day gag. I believe this: If you can't potty train a pet, then you don't deserve to have said pet. C'mon people.

(Yes, it makes sense for those pets with serious ailments that affect their ability to control bodily functions, but knowing the way our society embraces the easy way, we're a generation away from every dog wearing bloomers.)

> Tom Brady retired Monday. Fool. Folks, Tom Brady retiring would be like Bill Belichick telling a joke or Robert Kraft dating someone his own age.

> The awful idea of Orange-Vanilla Coke. Sadly, it appears to be fact. But we must say that this is the soda giant's second-most foolish concoction since New Coke in the 1980s. The company is spending tens of millions in advertising trying to get us to try Orange-Vanilla Coke, and it will spend almost as much this time next year trying to make us forget about Orange-Vanilla Coke. This is not a gag, like Cottonelle introducing left-handed toilet paper four years ago.

> If the U.S. shuts down the Mexican border, our supply of avocados would be gone in three weeks. Fact, amazingly. Granted, fixing a broken immigration system is far more important than you or me getting a garnish for our nachos. And of course the negative effects would go both ways. Sweet buckets, Cinco de Mayo may be hurting.

> This is my last column. Fool. Well, at least I hope so - and I know some of you just got your hopes up at the idea.

Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com.

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