Females for Felons

The New York Times reported this week that Alan Abel at age 94 died--for the second time.  He first died in 1980, the Times running his obituary and calling him at that time a "satirist."  Which was true.  For his second death, the Times called him an "Ace Hoaxer."  Which is also true as he had hoaxed his first death.

His first major hoax was his 1959 campaign to clothe animals through the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, SINA, which eventually boasted chapters throughout the country and a slogan that got lots of national attention:  "A nude horse is a rude horse."  Time magazine exposed the hoax in 1963.

In 1964 he backed a presidential candidate who was never actually seen, Yetta Bronstein, a grandmother living in the Bronx, he said, who supported National Bingo Tournaments and truth serum in congressional drinking water.

The list of hoaxes went on like  Omar's School for Beggars, "which claimed," according to the Times's Margalit Fox, "to teach the nouveau poor the gentle art of panhandling."  Then there was the Topless String Quartet that Frank Sinatra reportedly wanted to schedule a recording session with, and the Ku Klux Klan Symphony Orchestra that one-time Klan Grand Wizard David Duke offered to conduct.  There were also Euthanasia Cruises "for people who wanted to expire in luxury."

Abel's crowning hoax was the one he called Females for Felons, "a group of Junior Leaguers who selflessly donated sex to the incarcerated."

I'm hoping for a third death.