![]() ![]() The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. While I can cite no empirical evidence, it is possible that the most quoted sentence in the history of newspapers is the one that begins this paragraph: Her story and the editorial it inspired have become part of Americana, as evidenced by their retelling in a children’s book, television drama, a classical music cantata, an animated TV special, a made-for-TV movie, a holiday musical and much more. Virginia grew up to become a well-respected educator. Please tell me the truth is there a Santa Claus? Papa says, “If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.” Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. The daughter of a medical doctor in New York’s Upper West Side, Virginia wrote: ![]() His editorial - described as “the most copied” in newspaper history - responded to a query from an 8-year-old girl named Virginia O’Hanlon. It appeared in an unsigned editorial in the New York Sun, titled “ Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” The author was Francis Pharcellus Church, a former Civil War correspondent, who has earned a place as a patron saint of fact-checking. Arguably the most famous case of fact-checking - long before the Tampa Bay Times’ PolitiFact lit its first pants on fire - goes back to Sept. Good reporters have always checked things out. I hope you enjoy this reprise of the experiment in the Tampa Bay Times: I built it on this Christmas question: What if Virginia had asked an editor today if Santa Claus was real? What I wrote wasn’t meant as a parody of PolitiFact, but as a jocular manipulation of the form of journalistic fact-checking these days. Lincoln may have said: “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation …” Ike’s version might have been, “I haven’t checked these figures but 87 years ago, I think it was, a number of individuals organized a government set-up here in this country …” Then he applies it to the Gettysburg Address. First Jensen must learn the quirks of Ike’s awkward rhetoric. He includes an example of journalist Oliver Jensen making fun of the way President Dwight Eisenhower talked. That’s a lesson I learned from poet Donald Hall and his 1973 textbook “Writing Well.” To ridicule something well, you need to discover its actual elements. One sign of mastery is the ability to parody. No doubt, good writers learn how to fulfill the requirements of a particular writing form, whether it’s the inverted pyramid or the three-act play. ![]() As I got a little older, I left Hopalong Cassidy behind in favor of parodies of cowboy movies, the kind of thing Mad Magazine produced or Mel Brooks perfected in “Blazing Saddles.” 25, 2014.Īs a boy, my favorite story genre was the cowboy movie. A version of this story was originally published Dec. ![]()
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