WSJ Opinion

We're all balloon boys now (WSJ)
October 21, 2009

More often than not, you have to ask yourself whether what's in front of you is real, sort of real, a hoax or what. Writing about the balloon-boy fiasco in the Toronto Star, a bemused Vinay Menon wondered whether hoaxer Richard Heene was "even a real person and not a CNN hologram."

The Week: It Wasn't All Bad

Edgar Allan Poe receives his due (The Week)
October 15, 2009

When a destitute Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore in 1849, barely anyone attended his hastily assembled funeral. But this week, hundreds gathered to give the writer a proper send-off, 200 years after his birth. The mourners—some in 19th-century costume, some in “Evermore!” T-shirts—accompanied a horse-drawn hearse bearing a coffin containing a mock Poe corpse to Westminster Hall, the converted church next to his actual grave. Inside, speakers portraying Poe’s acquaintances and colleagues eulogized him; the emcee was actor John Astin, who has toured with a one-man Poe show for years. “I think Poe would have been bemused by it,” said one attendee.