BUSTED! Plagiarists, Fakers & Literary Hoaxes

[shriekingeel]

Defonseca says her real name is Monique De Wael and that her parents were arrested and killed by Nazis as Belgian resistance fighters.


If this actually is true, why couldn't she have just written that story? What...not traumatic enough?

Yes. This is part of the problem with the many fabrications of Nobel Prize Winner Rigoberta Menchu . It wasn't enough that several of her family were killed by paramilitaries, she had to invent a story of how she witnessed her brother being burned alive. She also described how she watched another brother die of malnutrition before her eyes. The New York Times later found him alive and well.

[huntergrayson]

Suburban white girl from Sherman Oaks pretends to be gangbanger living in foster care in South Central. The best part is her "apology":

"I thought it was my opportunity to put a voice to people who people don’t listen to,” Ms. Seltzer said. “I was in a position where at one point people said you should speak for us because nobody else is going to let us in to talk. Maybe it’s an ego thing — I don’t know. I just felt that there was good that I could do and there was no other way that someone would listen to it.”

It's okay to make stuff up as long as you're speaking for the minorities that apparently can't speak for themselves?

You'd think publishers would be checking this shit like crazy after Freygate, but they aren't...why, exactly?

[kanding]

It don't mean a thing
Without child mo-les-tiiiiiing!
Doo wop doo wop doo wop doo wop doo wop doo wop doo wop doo-waaaaah!

I am now going straight to Hell for laughing about child molestation!

[Auroranorth]

Two tickets on the straight-to-hell express.

The wolves would have done it for me, Julie of the Wolves notwithstanding.

[cantienne]

Suburban white girl from Sherman Oaks pretends to be gangbanger living in foster care in South Central.

Pretending to be a member of the Bloods. Now there's a safe career move.

[ownlife]

It's funny that her own sister blew the whistle, now that's a story.

[jaghetersimon]

Yeah, I wonder about those family dynamics! I really don't know how people think they can get away with this stuff.

[intlschizo]

huntergrayson said:

Suburban white girl from Sherman Oaks pretends to be gangbanger living in foster care in South Central. The best part is her "apology":

And yet, when REAL gangbangers tell their stories through prose, poetry, movies or music, they're told that they're glorifying gang culture. I guess it's only moving and harrowing when you're white and female - and have a Mammy-like character watching over you (see also: The Secret Lives of Bees). She better hope some REAL Bloods don't track her ass down.

[groovethang]

ownlife said:

It's funny that her own sister blew the whistle, now that's a story.

Ms. Seltzer’s story started unraveling last Thursday after she was profiled in the House & Home section of The New York Times. The article appeared alongside a photograph of Ms. Seltzer and her 8-year-old daughter, Rya. Ms. Seltzer’s older sister, Cyndi Hoffman, saw the article and called Riverhead to tell editors that Ms. Seltzer’s story was untrue.

Yes, you would think that if you were going to completely fabricate a story, you'd want to get your family members and others who can blow the whistle on you on board.

[addison]

The interview that led to her sister turning her in as a faker is even more fun to read (and ironic) now that it's confirmed it's all a lie - though I have a hard time believing anyone really took her seriously -

Besides being a consummate storyteller and analyst of inner city pathology, she is one of the few people who in the same conversation can talk about the joys of putting up her own jam (“I’m going to give you a couple of jars!”) and the painful business of getting a tattoo of a large, weeping pit bull across her back the day the state of Nevada set a close friend’s execution date. “It’s the most ghetto thing on my body,” she said.

and she raises pit bulls! Yes, she's
a refugee from gangland