Life Imitates Art

"There has been a lot of discussion as to whether J. Edgar Hoover should be asked to resign from the FBI after his recent remarks about Martin Luther King and the Warren Report," wrote Syndicated Columnist Art Buchwald last week. "I can now reveal for the first time why President Johnson can't ask J. Edgar Hoover to resign. The reason is J. Edgar Hoover doesn't exist. He is a mythical person first thought up by the Reader's Digest.'" Buchwald went on to develop his theme: that even the name was a phony, attached over the years to 26 "hired people" who took turns posing as the FBI's nonexistent chief.

As usual, Buchwald was only kidding. But his column, syndicated in 207 newspapers, reaches millions of readers, not all of whom saw through his whimsical jape. Soon newspapers all over were fielding telephone calls from anxious subscribers seeking assurance that there really was a J. Edgar Hoover, or angrily offering to prove Buchwald wrong. "Hundreds took Buchwald seriously, and thought he was just misinformed," reported the Austin (Tex.) Statesman.

In Phoenix, a similar avalanche of reader inquiries inspired the Arizona Republic to set the record straight with some whimsy of its own in an editorial entitled, "YES VIRGINIA . . ."* Said the Republic: "Telephones have not stopped ringing as one after another caller has demanded that we either present proof that Hoover does in fact exist or else print a retraction. After a thorough day-long investigation, the Republic is now in a position to report that J. Edgar Hoover does in fact exist and is in the best of health. What our investigators further turned up is the fact that Art Buchwald does not exist. He is a mythical person first thought up by MAD magazine."

* A reference borrowed from an 1897 editorial in the New York Sun, written in response to a letter from a worried eight-year-old girl, assuring her: "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.