Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (56 page)

Pageant:
Ms. Downhome

Details:
A tongue-in-cheek competition for Canadian women, this pageant judges contestants on their “Canadian” skills. Events include baiting a hook, and dancing to fiddle music while holding an open bottle of beer in each hand. There’s also a swimsuit segment, in which each competitor has to carry a fish while wearing a bikini.

Pageant:
Zombie Beauty Contest

Details:
Female attendees of Comicon, a Phoenix pop-culture convention, dress up in zombie costumes and ghoulish makeup—and ball gowns—to compete for the title. Clever costumes score high points, so contestants are judged on beauty as well as
braaaaaaaaaains
.

Pageant:
Miss Drumsticks

Details:
Held since the 1940s as part of the Turkey Trot Festival in Yellville, Arkansas, this pageant judges women solely on their legs. To make the judging more impartial, most contestants wear turkey masks over their faces.

Online dating site
AshleyMadison.com
uses the tagline “Life is short. Have an affair!”

TRY, TRY AGAIN

These folks prove that perseverance doesn’t always end in success
.

•
Cha Sa-soon
, a South Korean woman, took a written driving test nearly every day for more than four years…and failed each time. Finally, in November 2009, after 950 tries and $4,200 in fees, the 68-year-old woman achieved the minimum passing score of 60 percent. Everyone at the motor-vehicles office cheered. But unfortunately for Cha, she still needs to pass the
driving
part of the exam.

•
Vincent J. Howard
, a former parking-meter attendant in the Detroit suburb of Mount Clemens, pleaded guilty in May 2005 to stealing $120,000 from meters—one coin at a time, over the course of 23 years. Police raided Howard’s home and found several thousand dollars’ worth of coins, another $500 in his car, and $2,000 in the city-owned car he drove on his rounds. In addition to losing his job, Howard was ordered to repay all of the stolen money within two years.

•
For 30 years
, British college professor Norman Sherry worked tirelessly on a three-volume biography,
The Life of Graham Greene
, about the globe-trotting English writer who died in 1991. Over the years, Sherry subjected himself to dangers and tropical diseases like dysentery and gangrene while tracking Greene’s footsteps. But by the time he finally released the last volume of the 906-page book in 2004, he’d already been upstaged by the writer’s longtime mistress, Yvonne Cloetta, who had just published
her
biography of Greene. To make matters worse, Sherry’s final volume was panned by critics (the
Guardian
said it was “badly written, full of lazy assumptions and statements of the crashingly obvious”). Sherry lamented, “I almost destroyed myself writing this book. Now that I’m finished, my life has been taken from me.”

•
In 2010 the Society
for Research of Paranormal Science forced a German fortune-tellers’ society to admit that nearly all of the 140 predictions its members had made for 2009 turned out to be wrong, including the assassination of Barack Obama and terrorist attacks in Frankfurt and Berlin. The one prediction they got right: the death of Michael Jackson. (That one had been on the “permanent prediction” list for years, so, in this case, persistence did pay off.)

Five most common GM (genetically modified) foods: corn, soy, milk, wheat, and Canola oil
.

THE RIGHT TO LIE

As kids, we all learned that lying is wrong. We heard it from our parents, family members, teachers, and clergy. Turns out that doesn’t apply to giant corporations and TV networks
.

T
HE INVESTIGATORS
In November 1996, investigative journalists Jane Akre and her husband, Steve Wilson, were hired by the Fox affiliate in Tampa, Florida, WTVT-Fox 13, to produce a series of news stories called “The Investigators.” Fox 13 put together a big promo campaign for the series, with the tagline “Uncovering the truth. Getting results. Protecting you.”

The first idea that Akre came up with was an exposé of rGBH, the recombinant bovine growth hormone sold under the brand name Posilac. A synthesized protein that farmers inject into dairy cows to increase milk production by up to 25%, Posilac was developed by Monsanto, the world’s largest agricultural biotechnology corporation, in 1994. That same year—despite opposition from consumer groups, dairy farmers, scientists, and the Cancer Prevention Coalition—the FDA approved it for public consumption.

FAIR AND BALANCED

Even though Monsanto touted Posilac as “the single-most tested new product in history,” Akre and Wilson did some digging and found that the only study the FDA conducted was a 90-day test using 30 rats. According to its own rules, the FDA cannot state that a product doesn’t cause cancer in humans unless it has undergone a two-year study using hundreds of rats. Not only that, but the FDA ignored the results of an extensive Canadian study that concluded: “Posilac did not comply with safety requirements; it could be absorbed by the body, and therefore, did have implications for human health”—among them, potential early puberty in girls and higher risks of breast and colon cancer.

Akre and Wilson knew they were on to something
really
big when Florida dairy farmers and grocers admitted to them that they used and sold Posilac because Monsanto had threatened to sue them if they didn’t. Just how far did this company’s influence go?

Lima Syndrome is the opposite of Stockholm Syndrome: a kidnapper becomes attached to the victim
.

The reporters brought their findings to Fox 13 general manager David Boylan, who—at first—was thrilled with the scoop. The station aired promos that asked viewers, “What’s in
your
milk?”

WE DECIDE. YOU REPORT.

About a week before the story was set to air in February 1997, Boylan called Akre and Wilson into his office. He told them that Fox’s lawyers, using information provided by Monsanto, had some “edits” for the story to make it more Posilac-friendly. Akre and Wilson refused to change a single word. Boylan told them it wasn’t a request—Roger Ailes, president of Fox News, had actually been warned in a letter from Monsanto’s law team that “if this story runs in Florida, there will be dire consequences for Fox News.” What consequences? Monsanto was responsible for a major chunk of advertising on the 22 local stations that Fox owned; Fox stood to lose a major sponsor. Wilson pleaded with Boylan, “But this is news! This is stuff people need to know!”

“We’ll tell you what the news is,” replied Boylan.

THE STAND-OFF

Akre and Wilson reluctantly agreed to delay the story until May and work with Monsanto to produce something that both the station and the company would approve. But every draft they submitted was returned to them with numerous changes, such as replacing the word “cancer” with “human health implications.”

“No fewer than six air-dates were set and canceled,” said Wilson. “In all my years as a print, radio, and television reporter, I’ve never seen anything like it.” After several months, it was obvious to Akre and Wilson that Fox had no intention of running the story; they were just stonewalling until the reporters either conceded to the lawyers’ edits…or just quit. Neither side would budge.

Finally, Akre and Wilson issued an ultimatum to Boylan: If they weren’t allowed to tell
their
story, they’d report Fox to the FCC for violating the Communications Act of 1934, which bars programmers from “broadcasting false signals.” Fox offered the investigators a deal instead: Accept $200,000 to walk away from their jobs, and sign an agreement that would prohibit them from ever talking about Monsanto to anyone else, ever again. Akre and Wilson turned down the offer. In December 1997, they were fired.

In 2009 a U.K. Ministry of Defense document on how to stop documents from leaking onto the Internet was leaked onto the Internet
.

TWEEEEEEET!

The following April, the journalists held a press conference to announce that they were suing Fox News for wrongful termination under Florida’s whistle-blower law, which states that an employee cannot be terminated for reporting illegal activities of his employer. “This isn’t about being fired for no cause,” said Wilson. “This is about being fired because we refused to put on the air something we knew to be false and misleading. We were given those instructions after some very high-level lobbying by Monsanto and also, we believe, by Florida’s dairy and grocery industries.”

After several delays, the case finally went before a jury in 2000. Acting as his own lawyer, Wilson called several high-profile witnesses—including consumer advocate Ralph Nader and newsman Walter Cronkite, who testified that Fox’s actions were a “violation of every principle of good journalism.” Even more damaging, however, were the admissions by Fox’s own team that there was nothing in the original version of the story that was false.

Fox’s lawyers countered that the station had given Akre and Wilson every opportunity to tell their side of the story, but only if they gave Monsanto’s side as well. In the end, said Fox, the investigators were fired because “in the view of the station’s management, the reporters were not willing to be objective in the story nor accept editorial oversight and news counsel.”

ON THE AIR

Meanwhile, Fox 13 had hired a new investigative reporter and run a “toned-down” version of the Posilac story—one that had been pre-approved by Monsanto. In response, Akre and Wilson set up a Web site and released the full text of their original story, along with updates on the case.

As the trial wore on, it looked bad for Fox. An announcement from six Canadian government scientists disclosed, according to Wilson, that they had been under political pressure to approve Posilac, and that the FDA had “misreported” their findings. But it was neither celebrity witnesses, scientists, nor Fox’s admissions that ultimately swayed the jury. It was Jane Akre’s testimony:

    As a mother, I know this is important information about a basic food I’ve been giving my child every day. As a journalist, I know it is a story that millions of Floridians have a right to know. We were fired for standing up for the truth. Solely as a matter of conscience, we will not aid and abet their effort to cover this up any longer. Every parent and every consumer has the right to know what they’re pouring on their children’s morning cereal.

THE VERDICT

Fox lost. The jury ruled that Akre had been “wrongfully fired” and awarded her $425,000. (Interestingly, the jury concluded that Wilson was not similarly wronged by Fox. He thinks it’s because he may have come off as “overbearing” during the trial.)

But Fox wouldn’t admit defeat. The network appealed the verdict, utilizing a legal loophole as their defense: “The FCC’s policy against the intentional falsification of the news—which the FCC has called its ‘news distortion policy’—does not qualify as the required ‘law, rule, or regulation.’” In other words, Fox’s lawyers claimed that Akre did not deserve whistle-blower status because, technically, Fox hadn’t broken the law; they just violated a “policy.” Fox’s lawyers also noted that there are no written rules against distorting news in the media and argued that, because of this, the First Amendment actually allows broadcasters to “deliberately distort news reports on public airwaves” if they so choose. Basically, Fox claimed they had a constitutionally guaranteed right to lie.

In February 2003, the Florida Second District Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-to-1 decision that Akre’s settlement be overturned; Fox didn’t owe her a penny. Shortly after, Fox countersued both journalists for $1.7 million to recoup legal fees and court costs. In the end, Wilson was ordered to pay Fox 13 $156,000.