New Pornographers – "The Fake Headlines" (2000)

I wrote the news today . . .

Fake headlines

Mark Twain famously said, “Truth is stranger than fiction.”

If he were alive today, I have no doubt that ol’ Mark would say, “Real news is stranger than fake news.”

There’s been a lot of talk about fake news recently.  Facebook seems to be about 99% fake news, but help is on the way: it has been reported that Facebook has hired Hillary Clinton to lead the assault on fake news.

Or that was the plan until Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Clinton “hired a lesbian death squad to smother [the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice] Antonin Scalia with a pillow.”

Angela and Hillary

“Scalia knew that Hillary was having an affair with Angela Merkel,” Zuckerberg said . . . “so she had no choice but to personally contract a roving gay-lady motorcycle gang to take him out, Texas-style.”

Click here to read the entire story.

JUST KIDDING!  That’s obviously an example of fake news.  (The lesbian death squad part of the story, that is – everyone knows that Clinton and Merkel have been an item for years.)

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Do you know the difference between fiction/fake news and truth/real news?

Following are several statements about actress/author Ali Wentworth.  Your mission (should you decide to accept it) is to read each of them and figure out whether it is true or false:

1.  Ali Wentworth, who got her big show biz break when she was selected to be a member of the cast of  In Living Color (where she played a character named Candy Cane, an out-of-control kids’ TV show host who had one failed relationship after another with her male coworkers) is the daughter of Muffie Cabot, who was Nancy Reagan’s social secretary.

2.  Wentworth has been married to Good Morning America anchor (and former advisor to Bill Clinton) George Stephanopoulos since 2001.  (If you’re not sure about this one, here’s a clue: Wentworth is often described as a comedian, while Stephanopoulos is one of the most humorless men in America.)

Ali Wentworth

3.  In 2015, Wentworth unzipped her sweater and flashed the audience of the Jimmy Kimmel Live show.  Wentworth, a mother of two daughters who was 50 years old at the time, bared her boobs after Miley Cyrus appeared on the show topless (but for pasties) only minutes earlier.    

4.  A few days ago, Wentworth appeared on The View, and said that “I have an eleven-year-old daughter who does’t really understand what ISIS is, but she knows that she’s scared, and she’s now sleeping bed with us every night.”

5.  Later during that same The View appearance, Wentworth said that her fourteen-year-old daughter was so upset by the outcome of the recent Presidential election that she walked around “screaming ‘NO ABORTIONS!’ really loudly.”

Here are the answers:

1.  True!

Check out this video of Ali Wentworth as Candy Cane:

2.  True!

(Yes, he is short.)

3.  True!

Here’s the Jimmy Kimmel Live video:

4. and 5. True and true!

Here’s the video of Wentworth’s appearance on The View:

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“The Fake Headlines” is the second track on the New Pornographers’ debut album, Mass Romantic, which was released in 2000:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: