Whatever Happened To Bullshit Detectors?

Lets see, a white woman pitches a story about growing up in South-Central. She writes of running drugs, getting a gun at age 14, of life with her foster mother "Big Mom" (why not Momma?) and her step-brothers, one of whom was lost to gang violence. Oh, and she managed to get out of that urban blight and graduate from the University of Oregon.

Turns out none of this is true. All it took was for the New York Times to be suckered into a feature story on Margaret Seltzer for her sister to phone the paper and call bullshit.

Why didn't anyone figure out this woman was full of shit before? I'd like to think that if I'm sitting in a publishing house and I'm pitched this story that my eyes would roll. At least I'd be a little wary. But as James Frey, Stephen Glass and countless others have shown us, the bigger the lie, the more we believe. There's a great line in "In Cold Blood," where Dick is asked why he is able to pass so many fake checks. The secret, Dick says, is people are stupid. At least I hope Dick said that. Who knows anymore.

This would have been so easy to check out. A couple of phone calls and this could have been stopped in its tracks. The worst part is there are plenty of stories like the one portrayed in her book that are worth telling. Only problem is the skin color of the teller.

But there is another problem and that has to do with our society. Seltzer could have pitched a non-fiction book about gang kids. Sure, it's been done before but so what?

Now though that is not enough. Better to make it more dramatic by making yourself part of the story. What's the problem with a little fudging as long as there is some "greater truth" to be told? Of course, once your caught your greater truth looks just like the rest of the bullshit you wrote.

She said she wanted to "put a voice to people who people don't listen to." She could have easily done that. All anyone has to do is read "Random Family" to see how that's done. Instead she decided her voice was more important.