April 1st has long been an important date in journalism. From the BBC’s “Bumper Spaghetti Crop” story in 1957 to the ads saying that Taco Bell had bought and renamed the  Liberty Bell to Taco Liberty Bell in 1996, the date has always offered a fun diversion — and a good opportunity for self-reflection. Just how gullible am I?

FortScott.biz publishes a few April Fool’s posts each year. Past stories have included everything from a new snake pit going into Gunn Park to an alligator petting zoo that organizers pointed out would help keep the local emergency room in business. This year, we had a resolution against light pollution in which commissioners said they would outlaw any light source stronger than “a jar of lightning bugs with a towel draped over it.” Another described efforts to build a new monument where important events could be inscribed. Originally, the plans called for it to be 15 feet tall, but to accommodate the many lawsuits, organizers were now trying to raise trillions of dollars for a 4.5-mile-tall monolith.

(Archive of FortScott.biz’s April Fool’s posts.)

Usually, I feel we do a good job of including enough absurdity that any reader paying attention will quickly catch on to the joke. This year, though, we reached a new milestone. On April 3rd, I started getting messages that KOMB was reading our April Fool’s stories as part of their news segment — without mentioning they came from FortScott.biz or that they had been published on April 1st.

I’m not sure how you read stuff like this with a straight face:

And yet, here we were. What should be an obviously absurd joke was being read as actual news. I called the radio station and explained that while we’re happy to have them share content from FortScott.biz, it would be nice if they mentioned the source — and suggested they might want to exercise a bit of caution with absurd stories published on April Fool’s Day.

We find ourselves in a situation where a “photograph” of nothing but a black rectangle — purporting to show the commissioners signing an ordinance that would require nighttime driving to rely on “moonlight” and “quiet-instinct” — doesn’t seem far-fetched enough. (Commissioner Allen texted me to say thank you for capturing his “good side” in the blank “photograph.”)

On one hand, maybe I’m losing my ability to think of things that are truly absurd. Maybe that’s a faculty that diminishes with age, and statements like this just reveal my waning capability to conjure up silliness:

On the other hand, maybe the absurdity of what is actually happening has simply caught up with fiction. Consider the following:

Any of these things would pass as a fine April Fool’s story. Unfortunately, these are the things that are actually happening in our community.

We find ourselves here because of a lack of leadership — not a lack of difficult, cerebral, highly abstract leadership ideas, but much more mundane leadership skills. Basic things like having enough curiosity and general knowledge to ask, “How loud is the 45 dB noise level that we are talking about banning?” Enough trust of employees to ask, “How much trouble will it cause if we stop letting you edit your own timesheets?” And even just leaning a tad more toward self-preservation than hubris — enough to move five feet to an adjacent room as soon as you discover your presence might be violating election laws.

Maybe this can change. There have been a few recent, small glimmers of common sense. Three of the five commissioners took feedback from employees and voted to let them edit their own timecards, as they had always done in the past. Taking months to change a trivial payroll setting to fix a problem of the commissioner’s own making is hardly something to celebrate as progress. However, without the two new commissioners, the vote would have failed. Maybe the county is starting to see some return on investment in those two additional seats.

For better or worse, that is where we are as Bourbon County — a place where even the most outrageous April Fool’s stories can pass for actual news on the radio. But maybe we are starting to turn in a better direction. Maybe, just maybe, by next year, Bourbon County’s reality will be different enough that April Fool’s articles will sound enough like fiction to not pass for news on the radio.

Mark Shead

Note: FortScott.biz publishes opinion pieces with a variety of perspectives. If you would like to share your opinion, please send a letter to [email protected].