'Rejected' Writer Made It All Up

By Howard Kurtz

Washington Post Staff Writer

I desperately want to appear in The Washington Post," Bruce Stockler wrote last week in National Review Online.
Now he has -- although not in the way he intended. The public relations man produced a funny column on all the opinion pieces he has submitted to The Post without success -- or, as the headline put it, "one writer's suffering at the hands of a major newspaper." But Stockler said yesterday he is "quite embarrassed to admit" that he didn't submit any of them.This piece seems to me to be pretty obvious satire," said National Review Editor Rich Lowry. "It seems to me he's obviously making stuff up to be funny . . . not necessarily right at the top, but by the end." The second paragraph of the piece says "here are the facts"; only in the last half-dozen paragraphs does Stockler openly fantasize about disruptions to his phone and television service and an ice cream truck with Texas plates circling his block. "If a couple of things are deliberately outrageous, that signals the reader it's not serious journalism," Lowry said.

Stockler did not contend that he had produced a transparent satire. He said he merely bent some facts to suit his narrative, and that he really has tried repeatedly to get published on The Post's op-ed page -- just not in the way he wrote.

Fred Hiatt, The Post's editorial page editor, said: "It's a little strange. I guess anybody who would make stuff up, it's just as well we didn't run his op-eds." ...read on

Here's the article in question: Op-Dead
One writer’s suffering at the hands of a major newspaper