Is the Santa Claus-dying kid story made-up b.s.?

Did it get Web hits?

 

I am just trying to speculate how it happened based on my experience. Not excuse it.

 

Hey, I posted it here. At first glance, it reads like the Make-a-Wish stories you see a thousand of, all year long. You have to start thinking about it a little bit for it to start coming apart. It's not like the "Rolling Stone" piece, which was clearly bullshit from the get-go.

 

Bullshit, made-up Christmas tear-jerker that goes national?
Fire away, with authority: "Get the fuck out of my newsroom."

 

Knoxville is (now) a Gannett paper. They pull stuff from the farm clubs all the time to run, and my Spidey sense suggests they expect it to have been fact-checked at the local level.

 

But a significant portion will continue to believe in the face of overwhelming evidence that it's total horseshit. The Santa Story Truthers are coming to a Facespace near you.

 

Good luck "firing" the reporter. Sam's approaching 70 years old and semi-retired, writing a couple of times a week. To many readers in Knoxville, he's the only good read remaining at the paper.

 

I don't think there is any evidence that it's horsehit at present. Also, no real evidence that it's true. Other than the word of Santa. And he never did bring me that pony.

 

I remember when writing a column a couple times a week used to be a full-time newspaper job!

 

I could be a good read, too, if permitted to write fiction.

 

Surely, by now, the parents of the dead child would step up and say something, right?

Dead kid's parents? Parents? (crickets chirping)

 

Or one of the four other sets of parents whose child's death bed he says he visited.