Bob CollinsIt is, perhaps, comforting to know that some recent stories depicting the very worst that humans can be, have turned out to be fake.
In New Jersey today, for example, Dayna Morales, a waitress at the Gallop Asian Bistro restaurant, has been suspended. She’s the woman who posted a Facebook photo of a meal receipt in which a family gave her no tip, leaving only a note that they disagree with her “lifestyle.” Morales is gay.
Her story is also phony. The family had saved their receipt showing an $18 tip, and no note about being gay.
Over the weekend, TV producer, Elan Gale made a big splash when he live tweeted an argument he was having with a rude airline passenger. It, too, was phony. There was no rude airline passenger.
Comedian Kyle Kinane set Twitter ablaze when his criticism of a hot sauce led to an exchange and subsequent firing of a member of the company’s social media staff who responded to his barbs. It was entertaining. It was also fake.
But there’s nothing entertaining about what’s happening in Lunenburg, Mass., where fingers pointed to the high school football team when a biracial player’s home was spray painted with racist graffiti. “Knights don’t need n******” it said. School officials demanded the guilty person step forward and when no one did, the team’s Thanksgiving football game was canceled, and remaining games on the schedule forfeited.
There was a reason no one connected with the team stepped forward. No one connected with the team did it, police say. Today, authorities spent an hour inside the home of the victims, showing up wearing latex gloves and emerging later with a bag of goods, according to a reporter on the scene.
“Did you do it?” a reporter asked the father.
“That just shows you how racist this town is,” he said.
