It’s starting to look like our most sensible course from now on will be to assume that claims of social-injustice victimization are hoaxes, unless proven otherwise.
You’d think aspiring hoaxers would be learning by now. Someone’s going to figure it out, and you’re going to get busted.
As Mollie Hemingway says, writing at The Federalist, it probably won’t be the mainstream media doubting you, or outing you. They’ll play right along.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
But bloggers and tweeters and Facebook skeptics are another story. They went to work right away deconstructing the tale spun by Austin pastor Jordan Brown, a gay man who recently ordered a “Love Wins” cake from Whole Foods for someone in his congregation. According to Brown, the cake was given to him with the word “Fa*” inscribed in icing in the center of it. He’s now suing Whole Foods.
The army of Internet skeptics weighed in promptly to question things like how he didn’t see the word through the transparent plastic top of the cake box before he left the store, and how no one else did either, and how this could happen at Whole Foods anyway, which isn’t exactly Redneck-knuckle-dragger Central, if you know what they mean.
Professional cake decorators pointed out that the word “Fa*” was clearly added by someone other than the original icing-writer, and in a different shade of blue. Some of them helpfully noted that whoever wrote “Fa*” had no technique and was obviously an amateur.
Then Whole Foods – which originally apologized to Mr. Brown, and promised to look into it – came out and said that (a) their cake decorator is a member of the LGBT community him/herself; (b) they stood by the employee and were sure he/she had not written a gay slur in icing on the cake; and (c) they have security video showing the stick-on seal on the cake box in a different place from where Brown depicts it, in his inevitable YouTube video bemoaning the event. The relocated seal would be evidence that someone tampered with the cake after it left Whole Foods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p972qntg1qM
So now Whole Foods is counter-suing Mr. Brown. The good news would seem to be that the litigation industry is thriving, at a time when America badly needs jobs.
If there’s another upside to this trend, it’s hard to see. And it is a trend. LU writers have posted quite a bit about similar hoaxes, such as Howard Portnoy (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here); Rusty Weiss (here); Renee Nal (here, here, and here); and yours truly (here, here). So, you know, bookmark this page, because you may want to keep the links for reference.
I don’t know if the MSM have followed up on the Brown story and reported on the counter-evidence from Whole Foods. If you want to pursue it, knock yourself out.
