4 thoughts on “above the fold retraction: there was no Little Red Book ILL”

  1. The only surprise here is that anyone took the story seriously in the first place.

    Why lie? Because the facts aren’t strong enough to condemn. Lump this one in with the distortions — Say the FBI is spying on Quakers even though you know it was the overzealous local police who gave the report to the FBI.

    But here’s real dishonesty. Say you work at UMass Amherst, and say someone asks whether federal agents requested information on a student’s inter-library loan request. You would break no laws by saying, “No, not as far as we know.”
    But you answer, “the university is not allowed to discuss whether federal agents have visited or requested information.”
    Keep the lie alive. Pretend that saying what the government didn’t do is against the law.

  2. Do you think I could persuade the FBI to come after the people who keep filing ILLs for Sylvia Browne books?

  3. Which still begs the question: why did he make it up? It could just be that the guy’s an attention whore, but I can’t help but reflect on the fact that, from now on, any report of this sort of thing, perpetuated by any agency, will get the response, “Oh, right, just like the kid in Massachusetts with the little red book.” Maybe the boy who cried wolf wasn’t actually working for the wolves, but…

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