{"id":166,"date":"2006-01-09T11:29:54","date_gmt":"2006-01-09T15:29:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/2006\/01\/09\/tall-tales\/"},"modified":"2006-01-09T11:29:54","modified_gmt":"2006-01-09T15:29:54","slug":"tall-tales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/2006\/01\/09\/tall-tales\/","title":{"rendered":"Tall Tales"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

There have a been a few stories about authors who invent the truth or
\nwho are inventions of others this week.  The Freakonomics duo reports<\/a> this week that one of the heroes featured in their book, Stetson Kennedy<\/a>, a man who claimed in The Klan Unmasked<\/a>
\nto have infiltrated the Klan in the 1940s as an undercover agent, had
\ngathered this information through standard reporting techniques
\ninstead. One of Kennedy’s publishers described him as an
\n“entrepreneurial folklorist,” and another historian who uncovered the
\nfabrications in his writing over 10 years ago, remained mum because “It
\nwould be like killing Santa Claus.”  Kennedy is the least bad of
\nthe three fabricators\/fabrications because at least he actually
\ngathered the KKK’s secret info, and diseminated it in novel ways (i.e.
\nhe gave it to the writers for the Superman radio show, who wrote it
\ninto their plot) to reduce some of the Klan’s power.<\/p>\n

That lovely publication, the Smoking Gun, is running a long expose<\/a>
\ndetailing how the literati’s current “I was once an addict” darling,
\nJames Frey, embellished a good portion of his own rap sheet and memoir.<\/p>\n

And finally, the piece de resistance, <\/span>the Times<\/span> finally “uncovers” the truth<\/a>
\nbehind JT Leroy, another “I used to be an addict (and prostitute)”
\nauthor.  Surprise, he doesn’t exist, but is really an invention of
\nLaura Albert and Geoffrey Knoop, the couple that “saved” him.  I
\nfind it funny that part of the NYT’s investigative reporting included
\nJT Leroy’s expense report that he submitted to the NYT for a trip to
\nhis entourage took to EuroDisney. (New York Magazine<\/span> ran a piece<\/a> questioning his existence back in October, so the NYT is a little behind in coming forward with this story).<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Also, I came across this post on young activist burnout<\/a> by one of SSRD’s associates<\/a>. 
\nIt’s interesting how coping with burnout doesn’t significantly differ
\nbased on whether one is working for the man, or out saving the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There have a been a few stories about authors who invent the truth or who are inventions of others this week.  The Freakonomics duo reports this week that one of the heroes featured in their book, Stetson Kennedy, a man who claimed in The Klan Unmasked to have infiltrated the Klan in the 1940s as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legalese"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}