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Hoaxes Tag

Posted by Leslie Eastman on March 07, 2014 44 Comments

At College Insurrection, we have been covering the case of Rachel Canning, the New Jersey teen who sued her parents for college tuition. Rush Limbaugh just talked about Canning's supposed Facebook page, "Education for Rachel." The page contains posts such as this one, decrying the greed...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on December 05, 2013 7 Comments
It looks like the District Attorney’s office will not be filing any charges against the man who decided to play a Thanksgiving Day “joke” on his sister by telling her there was a bomb in her car, prompting the shutdown of a busy San Diego highway and stranding holiday drivers for hours. From NBC San Diego:
The San Diego District Attorney’s office decided not to file charges Wednesday against a man who made a prank phone call to his sister saying there was a bomb in her car, resulting in a massive law enforcement response and the shutdown of Interstate 15 on Thanksgiving. Victor Diaz, 28, was taken into custody Thursday after pulling the bomb hoax on his younger sister, Deanna Diaz, 27. He spent the holiday weekend in jail awaiting punishment for the stunt. Originally, Victor faced felony charges for making a false bomb threat. He was supposed to be arraigned on Wednesday, but the case took another turn when the DA’s office ultimately chose not to file charges. The case will now be passed onto the San Diego City Attorney’s office for review. At this point, the prankster’s case can be reduced to misdemeanor charges for making a criminal threat. He may also still face hefty fines. Officials said Victor will likely be released from jail Wednesday night, and will receive a letter in the mail notifying him of the next steps in his case.
Victor Diaz had called his sister Deanna from a number that she did not recognize (and apparently in a disguised voice), and told her there was a bomb in her car.  His sister then pulled over and called 911, triggering a law enforcement response that included multiple agencies and bomb sniffing dogs, and shut down the highway and snarled traffic for several hours on Thanksgiving Day. That call was followed by another one, threatening to follow her home.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on November 29, 2013 8 Comments
A busy San Diego highway was shut down and snarled traffic for Thanksgiving day travelers Thursday after a brother decided to play a joke on his sister by calling to tell her there was a bomb in her car. From NBC San Diego:

A prank phone call between a brother and sister involving a bomb hoax led officials to block traffic in both directions on San Diego's busy Interstate 15 on Thanksgiving afternoon.

The freeway shutdown began around 2:45 p.m. at northbound and southbound I-15 near Miramar Way.

Lt. Lorenzo Ruano with the California Highway Patrol said a woman was driving on the freeway with a friend when she received a phone call from an unknown person, whose voice she did not recognize. The person on the other end told the woman there was a bomb in her car.

Lt. Ruano said the woman immediately pulled over by the center divide on northbound I-15, just south of the Miramar Way overpass, and called 911.

You can pretty much guess at least some of what happened next.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on November 06, 2013 13 Comments
This is an absolutely fascinating story that appeared today on ABC News (via Nightline) titled Uncovering Dying Daughter Hoax That Lured in Several Celebrities, and will be featured late this evening on Nightline.  It details the story of a woman who deceived many, including several celebrities, into believing that she had a daughter who was dying of an illness.  Also caught up in her hoax were the real families who had lost children, whose online photos the woman used to pass off as being associated with her own "dying daughter." It's a hoax not unlike some you may have heard before, but this was more elaborate than the usual fare, and far more personal.  And what's most surprising about the hoax is the reason behind it - as ABC News puts it, "it was a far cry from a financial scheme." The story emphasizes the dark side of online communication and reminds us that it's not that difficult to fall victim to such deception. Here is an introductory excerpt from the ABC News article:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 19, 2013 11 Comments

Updated post: Oberlin College blames the blogosphere ---------------------------- The Oberlin College racism hoax of 2013 involved, among other things, a liberal pro-Obama "anti-racist" student activist who decided to "troll" the campus to get a reaction by posting racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and homophobic signs and messages. It worked, as...

Posted by Laurel Conrad on August 28, 2013 26 Comments
[WAJ intro: Laurel Conrad is a Cornell University Senior. This is her first post at Legal Insurrection. Laurel is President of the conservative Cornell Review, and the Cornell chapter of the Network of Enlightened Women. Laurel interned this summer at The Daily Caller. We look forward to more posts from Laurel this academic year. Follow her on Twitter.] ------------------------------------

In February 2013, a series of bias incidents occurred on Oberlin campus. The outraged campus canceled classes and received much attention from the media, including an article in the Huffington Post.

However, the two students who perpetrated the racist acts later claimed that it was a "joke" in order to "troll" the campus, according to the police report.  Notably, the lead perpetrator was a liberal student with a history of Obama activism in high school and college.

After the hoax was exposed, the Huffington Post ran an article by the Associated Press, Oberlin Racism Hoax.

However, the AP article left out one critical piece of information, that the hoax was perpetrated by a liberal.  We could not have set a better trap if we had tried.

Many of the HuffPo commenters gleefully jumped to the conclusion that the perpetrator of the hoax must be a conservative Rush Limbaugh-listening Republican.

Below, check out these hilarious 15 liberals who just can't handle the truth!

1. RNC Derangement Syndrome.

Somehow, I think that the RNC will be just fine without the pseudo-racist Obama supporter.

2. Should have gone to Liberty.

These are all certainly top-choice colleges for liberal activists!

3. Lofty conservative ambitions.

And yet on Twitter, the student described himself as an “atheist/pacifist/environmentalist/libertarian socialist/consequentialist.” Hmm, something just doesn't add up here….

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 26, 2013 29 Comments

On Saturday we posted the statement issued by the Oberlin College administration in response to conservative media having exposed the racism hoax and Oberlin's part in playing along by not disclosing the hoax to the student body.  The sentence most of us focused on was: "These actions...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 25, 2013 14 Comments

I smelled a rat in the Oberlin racism narrative, and so did some other people in the conservative blogosphere, including but not limited to Michelle Malkin and Chuck Ross of The Daily Caller (who obtained the police report that confirmed our suspicions that this was...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 24, 2013 15 Comments
As longtime readers know, we're not big fans of the White Privilege verbiage, or the White Privilege consultant and pontificating class: In an otherwise good article about the Oberlin racism hoax, Conor Friedersdorf uses the term "white privilege" to describe the actions of the perpetrators:
White kids spreading the n-word and Nazi flags around campus for kicks, without giving a damn how many minorities they scare or upset, does seem like a great example of white privilege!
The editors or Friedersdorf chose to highlight and repeat that sentence as an insert mid-article:

Friedersdorf White Privilege

The problem is that the analysis and the entire post left something out, these were white liberal kids trying to make a liberal talking point come to life in a performance-art style endeavor: https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/status/370929969913806849 Those white liberal college students had a privilege above and beyond mere ordinary whites. That extra-special privilege was to have the mainstream media largely ignore that the performance-art inspired racial narrative which covered the news cycle in March 2013 was a hoax.  Only the conservative media seems to care. I have written to just about everyone I could find at an MSM or left-wing website who ran with the Oberlin racism narrative back in March, and almost no one has updated their stories. I emailed reporters and/or editors at The NY Times, The Boston Globe, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Slate.com, Huffington Post, and CNN, among others. Here's a typical email, which I sent to Slate.com:
You covered the racial incidents at Oberlin last March. It turned out to be a hoax, The Great Oberlin College Racism Hoax of 2013. Will you update?
Here's another one, sent to the "scoop" line at HuffPo:
Huffington Post ran numerous stories in various sections about racial incidents on Oberlin College's campus in March 2013. It turns out those were hoaxes perpetrated by progressive pro-Obama activists in order to get a reaction, http://t.co/BAACsOTX0g. Will you report the hoax and correct prior stories?
And The NY Times:
You covered this story last March, Photos of Oberlin College Students Rallying Against Hate Incidents. Turns out it was a hoax. Thought you'd want to know, since NYT may want to follow up now that the story has changed.
I also sent tweets to reporters who covered the story but for whom I didn't have email addresses: https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/status/370638270067003393 https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/status/370639994714476544

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 24, 2013 19 Comments

The spate of racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, and homophobic posters and graffiti that plagued the Oberlin College campus in February 2013 was definitively exposed as a hoax led by a pro-Obama liberal anti-racist student activist seeking to get a reaction from the community. The post by Chuck Ross of The Daily...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 22, 2013 43 Comments

A massive racism hoax took place at Oberlin College in February 2013 in which two students made seemingly racist, anti-Semitic and other such posters, graffiti and emails for the purpose of getting a reaction on campus, not because they believed the hostile messages.  At least one of the...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 04, 2012 6 Comments

The Pallywood cottage industry of fake or misleading photos meant to demonize Israel never ceases. Last June I addressed this photo then circulating on Facebook purporting to show an Israeli soldier stepping on a Palestinian girl: Via information provided by Israel Matzav, I pointed out that the soldier...

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