The Stench Gets Beaten With Sticks

The first time I read Roger Simon was about 30 years ago. Back then, he was a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and was a standard-issue liberal. He would periodically issue columns called "Simon Says" in which he would make observations on the passing scene that tended to be, well, a little snarky. He would often suggest that things (or people) that annoyed him should be "beaten with sticks." Here's an example:

People who lick their fingers before turning the pages of magazines should be beaten with sticks.

You might think it's the soul of wit. Or not. But Simon has been doing this shtick for a very long time now. In fact, I remember reading his columns on the 3rd floor of Whitney Hall at Beloit College with Ace Commenter Rich/Dick back in the day, along with a few of our other ne'er-do-well floormates. That "beaten with sticks" thing was pretty damned funny to us at the time, but we'd often had a few highballs by the time we had received the paper.

So when I saw the latest Roger Simon piece in Politico, it didn't take long to figure out that he wasn't being serious. Especially this part:

“I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him,” Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa, told The New York Times on Sunday.

Coming from a resident of Iowa, a state where people are polite even to soybeans, this was a powerful condemnation of the Republican nominee.

Though Ryan had already decided to distance himself from the floundering Romney campaign, he now feels totally uninhibited. Reportedly, he has been marching around his campaign bus, saying things like, “If Stench calls, take a message” and “Tell Stench I’m having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later.”

Satire isn't supposed to be something where you beat people with sticks. And whether you think Simon's faux reportage is amusing, it was clearly satire. I'll admit, I like the bit about eating finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan, because that's snarky on a couple of levels.

We all believe what we want to believe, of course. And because a lot of people with bigger soapboxes than mine want to believe that Mitt Romney is d-e-d dead, they were happy to pass this little bit along as a scoop. The most notable hoaxee was none other than Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate:

Intrade still gives Romney a 27 percent chance of winning, not far off Nate Silver’s estimate. But if this Politico piece is to be believed, Paul Ryan has already bailed out:

Though Ryan had already decided to distance himself from the floundering Romney campaign, he now feels totally uninhibited. Reportedly, he has been marching around his campaign bus, saying things like, “If Stench calls, take a message” and “Tell Stench I’m having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later.”

Can I say that even though I’m not exactly a fan of Mitt Romney’s, this is just bad behavior? You’re supposed to wait until it’s actually over before you do this kind of thing.

The strikeout appears there now, since Krugman's finally been tipped that he was had. He was hardly the only one, though.

Here's the thing -- there's plenty in the Simon piece that should tip even a slightly addled reader that the quote is fiction and intentionally so. Look at the setup -- Iowans are polite to soybeans? Perhaps Simon needed to embed a .wav file in his piece with a rimshot and an Ed McMahon-style "Hey-oooo!" to tip his audience, but if that's the case it's a pretty strong indictment of his readership's acumen.

Ann Althouse suggests a more sinister motive for Simon's piece (link in original):

I call bullshit. People don't read and read down into an article. Simon intentionally put a fake quote out there knowing it would be taken as real. You have to get 2/3 of the way into his piece to see the euthanize-cattle nudge. That's not the way people read these days.

Here you can see page 1. Who would click to page 2?

This was a deliberate attempt to pollute the public debate, to promote Simon's candidate. He would never fun with Obama like that. He kept his deniability, but he put it way down where no one would read. His writing doesn't merit the click to page 2.

I don't really buy that -- I think the click-through game is pretty well-established on most websites and that the websites really want you to click to page 2, because it increases their traffic numbers. And although Althouse's question is rhetorical, I'll tell you that I did click to page 2, where you see Simon dispense with the subtlety entirely:

A word about PowerPoint. PowerPoint was released by Microsoft in 1990 as a way to euthanize cattle using a method less cruel than hitting them over the head with iron mallets. After PETA successfully argued in court that PowerPoint actually was more cruel than iron mallets, the program was adopted by corporations for slide show presentations.

Presumably the iron mallets are a substitute for the sticks that Simon usually recommends. He's a very violent fellow, this Simon, and apparently he hasn't mellowed with age. But I digress.

To prevent further confusion, or being like Paul Krugman, I'd recommend the following:

• When you see Roger Simon's byline, remember that he likes to make jokes. He's not necessarily that good at it, but he's always in there pitching.
• When you read anything from Politico, it's safe to assume there's a chance it's unintentional satire.
• There are a lot of people out on the internet who aren't necessarily telling you the truth. That might even include me. Caveat lector, always.