ABSTRACT
The term fakelore seems to have come from academia, meaning phony or fake folklore. A central spot for double talk, sound bites, and fakelore in the late twentieth century is Washington, where fakelore invaded the Congress, White House, and Belt-way. Writers such as Frank Murdock were getting rich from fakelore. Jeremiah Jones refined fakelore by combining the appeal of sailors and cowboys—his Bowleg Bill specialized in riding giant tunas. Both folklore and fakelore keep up with the times. Perhaps fakelore in the grim days of the Great Depression was a form of escapism. Life published a “remarkable new series” on “The Folklore of America”, which was mainly fakelore. The most famous example occurred on Sunday evening, October 30, 1938, when CBS carried Orson Welles’ version of H. G. Wells’ story, The War of the Worlds. It has become the best-known example of electronic fakelore and mass hysteria in the twentieth century.
