April Fool’s joke fools VFR

Three readers wrote to me overnight pointing out that the story from scotsman.com about the EU forcing Scotland to get rid of “insensitive” place names was an April Fool’s joke. It certainly fooled me. One, it is written so realistically and convincingly, including even the irritating blandness with which it fails to explain why some of the names are considered offensive, that it didn’t even occur to me that it was a fake. Second, scotsman.com is a straight news site. I’ve never seen an ordinary newspaper run a straight-appearing news article that wasn’t. After reading the first two letters from readers, I thought the piece was likely an April Fools prank, but was still not completely convinced. But then I received this, from Ron Kyser:

Googling the German official’s name, “Arlo Pilof”, brought up only a single page, which is the one to which you linked. He is truly one faceless bureaucrat.

Where The Scotsman found this fellow certainly appears to be a mystery— until one moves the letters of his name around.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 02, 2005 07:15 AM | Send