The American Spectator

But Murphy, now a baroness and a former professor of psychiatry of old age at Guy’s Hospital in London, has admitted her supposed medical complaint was a spoof. “Perhaps after 34 years it’s time for us to confess we invented cello scrotum,” she wrote with her husband John, who had signed the original letter, which was published in the BMJ on Wednesday. “Anyone who has ever watched a cello being played would realize the physical impossibility of our claim.”

Murphy, who said the couple had been “dining out” on their story ever since they made it up, said they had decided to reveal the hoax after it was referred to in a recent BMJ article on health problems associated with making music. She also said she suspected “guitar nipple” had been a joke.
(January 28, 2009)

From the Archives

Timeless Tosh from Current Wisdoms Past

New Republic

Observations of a sociological nature from Miss Margaret Carlson, tomorrow’s Mother Teresa:

I went to visit one of George Bush’s thousand points of light three weeks ago bearing blankets and canned goods collected in the neighborhood. I was hoping to play Lady Bountiful for a moment but instead I got a look at Yuppie Philanthropy in action. All around were people like myself thirsting for a season fix, reassurance that their lives of wretched excess and self-absorption had not drained them of all mercy. Soup-kitchen turns as a way of making reparations aren’t to be discouraged just because they make yuppies feel good. They are better than nothing at all. But as you see leather-bound datebooks being pulled out to make lunch dates, and overhear conversations about the best frequent-flier programs, you know how slim Bush’s vision thing really is. The light of those to whom much has been given is a low-wattage bulb at best. It’s no substitute for government programs to feed and clothe and house people.(January 23, 1989)

New York Post

A magisterial new film, elucidated by the philosophical John Carpenter, its Shakespeare:

“I had this idea for a pair of sunglasses you could look through and see the truth,” says the 40-year-old Carpenter, who based “They Live” on an early '60s science-fiction tale.…”The sunglasses show things in black-andwhite,” explains Carpenter, sitting in his hotel suite. The so-called real world is in color. “Sort of like Ted Turner colorizing the classics. You see, the aliens have colorized us.

“Then I thought, why not just do this message about the Reagan Revolution being controlled by free-enterprising aliens from outer space? They’re dismantling the middle class, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. Planet Earth is the Third World to these people. They’re Republicans.(November 2, 1988)