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I generally don't like pranks. I don't like "jokes" that play on people's trust only to see that trust rewarded with being made a fool of.
However...
Howard Stern was on a break from his Sirius radio show last week taping segments of the TV show "America's Got Talent" for which he is now a judge. So Stern and company ran highlights of years past. (I know...bad me for listening to Howard Stern.) As I hauled along I-94 between Minneapolis, MN and Fargo, ND, I heard an exchange that is one of the funniest and most astonishing I have ever heard on the radio. (This coming from a guy who was once on the radio.)
You've heard the quote, "If you believe that, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you," right?
In the summer of 1999, a little movie called The Blair Witch Project was released and was a sensation. In the run up to the release, the marketers of the movie tried to peddle it as real; that the film was salvaged from real footage found in the Maryland woods.
With this backdrop came a phone call to Howard Stern from one Stacy, a twenty-year old administrative assistant from Memphis, TN. This was no comedy bit. She asked Howard if he thought Blair Witch was real because she had read on the internet that it was. And he said, "Oh yessss, it's real."
Quickly, he convinced her that it had to be real because it said so on the internet, that the lead "actress" was too fat to be a real actress, that there really is a Blair witch, that he knew the guy who found the tapes in the woods, that the FBI was questioning him (Stern) about it, and that there was a ten-minute section of the film missing because it showed the real Blair witch and the federal government banned it. The missing footage, however, would be included when it came out on DVD.
As Stacy prattled on about how amazing it all was and how much she believed him, Stern muted himself so she could not hear him. He asked his sidekick Robin, "Do you think I could sell her the Brooklyn Bridge?" Robin laughed hard. "I'm going to try," he mused out loud. "How can I do it?"
He thought for a moment and then dived back in.
"You know Stacy," he began to weave his web. "You sound like a great girl and so smart too. I want to tell you about something I got involved in a while back."
He proceeded to tell her about an "investment" he had begun to make several years earlier. That for $300 per month he owns a portion of the Brooklyn Bridge, and that he gets a small piece of the tolls that people pay for using the bridge every day.
"I probably net about fifteen hundred bucks a month at busy times," he soft pedaled it. "I'm not saying it's going to make you rich, Stacy, but maybe in twenty years you could retire. You don't want to rely on some man your whole life do you?"
"Oh, no I don't," Stacy responded. The poor woman was hooked. You could hear the enthusiasm in her voice. She ran to get a pad of paper and pen to scribble down a phone number so she could begin making payments for her part of this historic New York City landmark.
Howard sat back in amazement. "Oh my God," he marveled, "I just sold someone the Brooklyn Bridge."
I strangely didn't feel sorry for Stacy. (Well, maybe just a pang.)
Stacy didn't know enough, and wasn't responsible enough, to be skeptical. Skepticism is a sign of self-respect. It's an assertive characteristic that aids human beings by helping them discern the truth, and by that, keeping them safe.
Skepticism is not cynicism. Cynicism assumes wrong. Skepticism doesn't assume anything, it simply questions...it only wants the truth.
Skepticism is Ronald Reagan's "trust, but verify." Having a trusting nature and giving people the benefit of the doubt is good, but being gullible isn't. Neither cynicism nor gullibility will get you to the truth. That is the job of skepticism.
And if you don't believe that, then I've got some swampland in Florida you might be interested in...
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