Kim and I are back from our whirlwind Raleigh NC - Brooklyn NY tour and I'll post pictures soon. But for now, look at this short article from the
Washington Post about an April Fool's joke:
Wednesday, April 2, 2008; Page B03
An "in memoriam" ad about a former U.S. ambassador that was placed as an April Fools' Day joke backfired yesterday.
A photo of Edward M. Gabriel, a very much alive international business consultant who was the U.S. ambassador to Morocco from 1997 to 2001, topped an ad on Page B8 in yesterday's Washington Post.
In language reminiscent of the movie "Brokeback Mountain," the $322.20 ad said, "Though I no longer have you as my partner, this day will always be OUR anniversary. . . . I could never quit you."
The ad was taken out by J. Peter Segall, a public relations executive and lawyer. Segall is paying for a retraction in today's Post. Segall said last night that he is a mature man who made an immature mistake.
"As I said in a correction that I hope is published [today], I engaged in a very stupid and ultimately cruel April Fools' joke against a man that has been my best friend for 30 years, and I deeply, deeply regret it," Segall said. (The retraction appears on Page B7.)
Gabriel said he fielded calls all day from friends who thought he had died. One woman told him she spent two hours crying after seeing the ad.
"He's an old friend who plays jokes on me every year, and some are hilarious, but they've been private," Gabriel said. "He's a good friend who went a little too far. He's apologized profusely, and I've accepted it, but not without being a little hurt. I think -- I know -- he had no ill intent."
It's the first time in 20 years that a spoof ad is known to have run in The Post, said a company spokesman. There is no formal process for checking the truth of the ads, he said. Unlike death notices or news obituaries, which are fact-checked, families often take out "in memoriam" ads to remember a deceased relative months or years after the person's death.
-- Patricia Sullivan
So, as some of you may know on April 10, 2005 I printed the following In Memoriam in the Washington Post:
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In doing this I was wanting to have some tangible proof, to show the way I think photographic images and the words (often) alongside/under them function. To me, this pairing makes a package too tidy, and effortlessly undermines most of the complicated, messy, and beautiful history of the photographed. As you can imagine, not everyone who saw the
Post that day was clued-in to why I was in the paper, and it caused a few headaches and a few people were pretty angry with me.
My question is, do I let the post know that this fake In Memoriam of
Edward M. Gabriel in fact isn't the first fake obit in the past 20 years?
I taught a silhouette-wheatpaste workshop Saturday to a bunch of kids who are a part of VACR's Young Artist Society. This is the same group I taught a little over a year ago.
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