Friday links! Why lie? edition

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Were it not for Valentine’s Day, April Fools’ Day would be our most resented holiday. That shit divides people. Part of the problem lies in disagreement over what constitutes a prank. Merely lying to us is A) not exactly a holiday feat and B) minimally entertaining for us, the fooled. Now, the prank depicted above: that’s a foolin’. It’s startling, efficient, and—this is important—amusing once we realize we’ve been had. It’s not just a counterfactual statement you followed with “April fool!” Mark Twain recommended the truth on the grounds that the person who tells it has less to remember. Really it’s that invention is unnecessary. Today is Friday, and what has actually happened would strain credulity even at another date. Won’t you peruse the foolish truth with me?

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WaPo on debunked claim of English-only chant: “neither side quite right”

Lifelong civil rights activist and Hillary Clinton supporter Dolores Huerta

Lifelong civil rights activist and Hillary Clinton supporter Dolores Huerta

On Saturday night, after Hillary Clinton won the Nevada Democratic caucuses, civil rights activist Delores Huerta tweeted that she offered to translate during an event at Harrah’s casino but was shouted down by Sanders supporters who chanted “English only.” It was an alarming claim, repeated by actress America Ferrera and then reported by CNN and the Washington Post. Fortunately, it didn’t really happen. Actress Susan Sarandon, of all people, posted an unedited, hourlong video of the event that showed no such chant when Huerta took the stage. Several eyewitnesses disputed Huerta’s claim, and in a subsequent account she said that Sanders supporters merely booed and offered a Spanish translator of their own, at which point the moderator opted to go ahead without translation. Snopes has rated the report false. The Washington Post, on the other hand, has updated its account to say that “neither side was quite right.” The CNN story is still up, uncorrected.

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