Many hoaxes are benign, designed only to amuse those who come across them, and clearly demarcated as falsehoods. In this category, we can put the occasional tall tale told by a visiting relative, or the annual April Fools Day prank. Here at The X-Spot, I’ve engaged in such hoaxes on the first of April to poke fun at myself, the site, and its content.

There are others who have effectively used hoaxing to create very interesting works of art. My latest April Fools Day prank was itself based on a hoax created by conceptual artists Joe Gore and Elise Malmberg (left). Clubbo Records, its history and paranormal activities all sprang from the minds of these two, who by intensely studying the theoretical constructs of musical expressions of different periods during the Rock Era managed to write, perform and record songs that sounded as though they came from the historical periods they claimed to be from. Ironically, Clubbo is no longer a fictional record label, but an active one that sells the product of this hoax via the Internet to consumers conscious of the ruse.

Some hoaxes, aren’t as innocent. Instead, they exist as part of a pointed agenda to expose some weakness in society and/or the powers that rule it.

Alan Abel (right), began as a musician and schoolteacher. But one day, as a young man, he decided to present himself to a bunch of Westinghouse executives as a golf pro. Once they accepted him as such, Abel then proceeded to tell them how to improve their game by performing ballet moves while they swung. Of course, this didn’t help the golfers’ games one whit. It did, however, make them look mighty silly.

On the one hand, you could see this as the puerile prank of an immature twenty-something. On the other hand, you can also see this as a weird type of social critique. Most people understood (especially during the 1950s, when Abel performed this stunt) the connection between wealth, privilege and the game of golf. We can imagine the number of deals affecting myriad lives taking place on the putting green of an exclusive country club where the vast majority of us (either because we lack the ethnic background, fame, or money) couldn’t join if we wanted to. There’s also a presumption of superiority among the individuals who have the breeding and fee money for acceptance (hence, we call them elites). In effect, by taking them down a peg, Abel questioned, and then challenged the presumed superiority that served as the rationale for their status and authority.

In 1959, while driving with his wife, Jeanne, Abel had to stop his car when a cow and bull in heat blocked the road ahead. Abel took note of the outcry from surrounding motorists. While you might expect the negative reaction came about simply because of the delay, most of the vitriol focused on the impropriety of public sex, despite the fact that the participants were quadrupeds who knew nothing of social mores. Inspired by their reaction, Abel enlisted the help of his close friend, Oscar-nominated screenwriter Buck Henry, and created a fictional organization, The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA). Poking fun at sexually repressed bourgeois propriety, Abel and Henry drafted a press release, which got picked up by the national media. Claiming, “A nude horse is a rude horse,” they called upon legislators to draft laws prohibiting the nakedness of both wild and domesticated critters.

Newspapers, television, and radio programs never questioned whether or not the group actually existed. Like an urban legend, they bought this hoax not because it sounded true, but rather, given the straight-laced button-down culture of the 1950s, characterized by such television shows as Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver, it sounded as though it should have been true.

Media weren’t the only ones taken in by Abel’s ruse. In response to the publicity blitz, a number of viewers donated money to SINA (Abel always returned the contributions), and sent him sewing patterns designed for specific animals. More than anything else, their actions proved that a sizeable number of people had really eccentric (if not pathological) views of sexuality. Moreover, he showed how the press tended to gravitate toward the sensational, with no or little concern for accuracy. Had the reporters actually done their job, they would have discovered that SINA was a sham.

Abel went on to perform a number of other stunts, utilizing his friends and family. In 1964, Jeanne (left) posed as an elderly woman named Yetta Bronstein, who aspired to the US presidency. Her platform included putting truth serum into the Senate water fountain, and rescinding Congressional salaries in favor of a straight commission. Despite the obviousness of the hoax, newspaper, radio and television reporters flooded the Abels’ phone with interview requests.

In 1975, Abel announced the opening of Omar’s School for Beggars, a vocational institution dedicated to the training of professional panhandlers. Tom Snyder, the host of NBC’s Tomorrow Coast to Coast, immediately put him on the air to discuss the topic, and it snowballed. Over the next fourteen years, Abel managed to maintain the hoax–with one media outlet after another taking it seriously–despite the fact that multiple sources exposed the school’s fraudulent nature during that time.

In 1979, Abel persuaded a friend, who looked a lot like Ugandan President Idi Amin Dada, to pose as the dictator in a stunt in which he “married” a white protestant woman in a public place, in full view of passersby and the press. In 1980, he faked his own death. In 1983, he snuck a phony referee onto the field of Super Bowl XVII. The imposter called four plays before other officials discovered him, and booted him out of the stadium. In 1994, shortly after the Lorena Bobbitt scandal, he appeared on the Jenny Jones Show claiming to be a husband whose wife glued his penis to his rear end. In 2006, he dusted off one of his older pranks, that of the non-existent lottery winner, and again, the press swallowed the story hook, line and sinker.

Recounting all of Abel’s hoaxes is not possible here in the limited space I have available. Go to his website (NSFW link) if you want to see more hijinks. Still, if you look through this limited sample, you can see certain themes emerging, chief among them the fact that no one pays close attention to anything. On a deeper level, his pranks highlight fears of a changing social order in the case of the Idi Amin and Lorena Bobbitt hoaxes. The Omar mocked the comforting fiction that begging for food and money isn’t done out of necessity, but because of a lifestyle choice opted for by ne’er-do-wells who don’t want to work. The Yetta-for-Prez stunt hinted that our government had fallen under the influence of money, a premise that many (including myself) believe, at least to some degree.

One of the chief themes in Abel’s work centers on the immaturity of Americans in dealing with sexuality in a meaningful and responsible way. He filmed a number of the sex hoaxes he perpetrated during the 1960s, and presented them in the 1971 documentary Is There Sex After Death? (NSFW). Among other things, he interviewed a number of people, some from off the street, and some semi-famous celebs of the time (e.g., Holly Woodlawn). At the same time he enlisted the help of Jeanne, Henry, Robert Downey Sr., Mink Stole, and others to assist in various pranks. In one, for example, Henry and Abel, posing as physicians specializing in sex, give an outrageously male chauvinist Q&A session to a group of college women. In another segment, Abel interviewed an attorney as to the legality of sex in 1970, getting the lawyer to state–in all seriousness–that the only way a sex crime could be within the FBI’s jurisdiction would be if the sexual act took place across state lines, with one partner, say, in Arizona, and the other in New Mexico. Other highlights include a performance by a topless string quartet, and the staging of a sexual competition, both attended by crowds thinking that they were witnessing something real and uncontrived.

Many people find the film uncomfortable to watch, especially when its at is funniest. But when at his best, Abel forces the onlooker to confront issues that the bulk of society doesn’t want to discuss openly: sex, prejudice, power inequities and so forth. He then compels people to think about their own positions, while at the same time challenging long-held assumptions.

For the most part, Abel has retired from the hoax business, although one can never be quite sure whenever he’s concerned. By now, he’s so well known among the press that whenever someone perpetrates a hoax, reporters immediately call him to ask if he was behind it. Slowed by age and fixed income, Abel’s probably done his last great scam. The next hoaxer in this series, a product of the 1960s counterculture, is still active in the cyberage of the Twenty-First Century.