Image Alteration

This image of George W. Bush was taken when he was reading a story for children in Houston in 2002 at George Sanchez Charter school. It is however an altered image done to poke fun at Bush's reputation of not being very clever. The book is called America: A Patriotic Primer and it was authored by Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne Cheney. The image became famous on the internet mostly because a lot of people considered Bush a joke of a president.

Original image here.

Hoaxes

Paul is dead

One of the most famous hoaxes is the Paul McCartney is dead conspiracy. In 1969, students from an American college published newspaper articles saying that Paul was killed in a car crash in 1967 after angrily walking off during a recording and was replaced with a look alike named William Campbell. The story held because during the time, The Beatles where in the middle of breaking up and Paul was very under the radar and had not been talking with any press. The story spread when someone had called a radio station and the DJ spent the time to talk about the supposed rumors. There were also "clues" spread about his death being true in several albums like the infamous Turn me on dead man line in the song Revolution 9 when played backwards.The rumor was eventually debunked when Life magazine had released an interview with Paul himself talking about how and why the rumor gotten so much press, saying it was likely because he had been keeping to himself. The hoax has since then become a famous meme that has been parodied and satire'd in pop culture.

Brass Eye

Brass Eye is a T.V. series from the United Kingdom made by Chris Morris that was made to satire the public's societal fears like drug abuse in children, sex and the morality of science. The show also held fake charity's that people could send money to and many celebrities sent money. This was in-part of the show satirizing celebrities sending donations for publicity. This aspect wasn't staged. The episode Drugs was the most successful episode. The episode has Morris asking supposedly real life drug dealers about drugs they had made up on the spot like Triple sod and clarky cat. The episode was particularly infamous for fooling then British politician David Amess into talking about the made up eastern European drug Cake. He also, brought it up to Parliament and they assumed he was referring to a psychodelic drug. The show was eventually put on hiatus after it made reference to the murderer  Myra Hindly, who had murdered five children with her lover, after her portrait had been vandalized. It eventually came back with a special about pedophilia and then released a dvd.