{"id":11483,"date":"2016-04-10T08:33:53","date_gmt":"2016-04-10T14:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=11483"},"modified":"2016-04-10T16:27:41","modified_gmt":"2016-04-10T22:27:41","slug":"prairie-lights-some-readers-buffaloed-by-april-fools-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/04\/prairie-lights-some-readers-buffaloed-by-april-fools-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"Prairie Lights: Some readers buffaloed by April Fools’ fun"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Impressions\"<\/a>

John Warner<\/p>

Early on in the Photoshopping process, John Warner combined some bison in Yellowstone National Park with some runners, for initial impressions. A lot of work lay ahead.<\/p><\/div>\n

Some years back, I wrote an expose<\/a> of an article that ran in the now-defunct Weekly World News.<\/p>\n

The article claimed that Montana Highway Patrol officers had gunned down a Bigfoot, also known as a sasquatch, after the brute terrorized a New Zealand couple in Beaverhead Rock State Park near Dillon.<\/p>\n

Using my vast reporting skills, I poked the story so full of holes that my piece was picked up a few months later by Skeptical Inquirer magazine, published by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.<\/p>\n

That surprised me. I wouldn\u2019t have guessed that anyone subscribing to that magazine would have been tempted to believe in the existence of Bigfoot to begin with.<\/p>\n

But you never know what people will believe. I found that out again recently when I wrote my own fanciful account of marauding hairy creatures<\/a>. Regular readers of Last Best News will have figured out that I\u2019m referring to my April Fools’ Day spoof on the \u201cRunning of the Bison\u201d in downtown Laurel.<\/p>\n

Most of those regular readers got the joke eventually, but there were plenty of people who swallowed it whole. I can\u2019t tell you how gratifying it was to read comments like these, culled from Facebook<\/a> and the comment section under the story on Last Best News (edited for clarity, since people write so hurriedly online):

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n

\u2666 \u201cI think this is ridiculous. People are trying to get the running of the bulls shut down and now Montana is being irresponsible!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2666 \u201cThis is terrible. I hate to see these things. It’s mean to do this to the animals. Think about how tormented they feel, they have no idea what’s going on, they just know they’re being chased.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2666 \u201cBuffalo should not be used like this!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2666 \u201cWhat an incredible bunch of morons. Typical selfish stupid human behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was just as gratifying to read the comments of people in the know, like the person who wrote: \u201cThe sheer amount of people that think this is real is funnier than the actual article.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is nothing wrong, though, with being snookered by an April Fools’ Day spoof. The late Mark Henckel, the Billings Gazette\u2019s longtime outdoors editor, was a master of the form, consistently coming up with April 1 spoofs that never failed to elicit outpourings of shock, outrage and wonderment.<\/p>\n

Like the time he \u201creported\u201d that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was going to restrict outboard motors on Fort Peck, Canyon Ferry and Holter reservoirs to 25 horsepower, to prevent the stirring up of dust on the lakes. The Corps was flooded with calls from furious fishermen.<\/p>\n

\"Essential\"<\/a>

John Warner<\/p>

In this closeup of the main photo that accompanied our Running of the Bison story, John Warner points out how distance-perspective and shadowing on the ground are the essential components of successful Photoshopping.<\/p><\/div>\n

One year he told of the marvelous \u201csnow snakes\u201d discovered up on the Rims, which changed their color to snow-white in the winter months. Speaking of snow, there was his utterly believable piece on the chap from Scobey who was in training for the little known Olympic Snow Team.<\/p>\n

In the singles competition, Henckel soberly reported, these shoveling athletes would compete to clear a 100-yard-long, 10-foot-wide patch of ground in the shortest possible time. Year after year, the great outdoors writer reeled the suckers in.<\/p>\n

In the case of the Running of the Bison, much of the credit goes to John Warner, the photographer who came up with the idea and then spent sleepless nights on Photoshop. (Actual quotes from the Warner household, from his 16-year-old son, Jeremiah: “Good God, you’ve been working on this all week,” and from his wife, Sheela: “I guess you didn’t start on the taxes either.”)<\/p>\n

What resulted were images so convincing that readers apparently didn\u2019t even pause to ponder some of the story\u2019s more outlandish details.<\/p>\n

A bison charging through the window at Caf\u00e9 Mabel\u2019s? A couple being thrown in the air after a bison gored and tossed the beer cooler they were sitting on? Ted Turner, the supposed provider of the animals, comparing the event to yacht racing?<\/p>\n

Such is the power of realistic imagery\u2014one picture being worth a thousand words and all that. His doctored photograph of a ditch-riding surfer helped<\/a>\u00a0sell our 2014 April 1 spoof, too. (Why didn\u2019t we have one last year? We forgot!)<\/p>\n

While I\u2019m giving credit where it\u2019s due, allow me to dole out the discredit as well\u2014to the thieving bastards at a website called the Texarkana News Hub<\/a>, who stole my story, changed a few details, put a new byline on it and pretended they had come up with the spoof for their readers.<\/p>\n

And then they stole John\u2019s main photo and changed \u201cLaurel\u201d on a banner across Main Street to \u201cTexarkana.\u201d Later, after we called them on their thievery, they cut the story way down and added an editor\u2019s note trying to excuse their theft.<\/p>\n

All in all, their professions of ignorance on matters having to do with intellectual property were so sincere that it was hard to stay angry at them. As the reader said above, \u201cWhat an incredible bunch of morons.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some years back, I wrote an expose of an article that ran in the now-defunct Weekly World News. The article claimed that Montana Highway Patrol officers had gunned down a Bigfoot, also known as a sasquatch, after the brute terrorized a New Zealand couple in Beaverhead Rock State Park near Dillon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[4167,4169,125,3259,117,4168],"class_list":["post-11483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prairie-lights","tag-april-fools-day","tag-bigfoot","tag-john-warner","tag-montana-highway-patrol","tag-ted-turner","tag-weekly-world-news","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}