Click Or Treat

Can you believe Jose Canseco lied to us all? Hard to believe a man of such sterling credentials would stoop so low as to perpetrate an Internet hoax. About himself? The ugliest part about this is not how easily I personally was fished in. I wasn't the only one. What strikes me now is just how believable it was for me, and millions of other fish, that Jose Canseco who shot his own finger off might have enlisted such a bad surgeon that his feeble attempt at reattachment resulted in some sort of ugly personal embarrassment. After all, Al Gore's Internet is where we go to confess our sins and weaknesses.
How quick are we to gasp at a headline and click without thinking about what sordid event we may be perpetuating? I was completely guilty of giving Jose Canseco yet another three or four minutes of infamy, long after his shot at Dancing With The Stars had passed by. Still, I can't find it in my head or my heart to make him into the villain. I only have myself to blame for the level of gullibility I choose to maintain. This system of tubes and wires that allow information to fly through them at such blinding speeds is not the culprit. I wanted to click on that morbid little piece of fiction, and what is worse, I wanted to believe it.
That is precisely what is keeping me from delving into the litany of complaints against Bill Cosby. Is it news? It gossip? Is it sad? Is it true? Is it a train wreck in slow motion? I'll go with that last one. As much as everything I know about Doctor Cosby up until the present tells me that this is as real as Canseco's detachable finger, I was completely willing to buy that ridiculous premise. Why shouldn't I believe that this comic genius has more than a few skeletons in his closet. Comic genius. Closet. That juxtaposition is more than a little uncomfortable even now. What should I believe?
I believe that I should refrain from jumping into that information stream. A difficult task, given how fast and full that river runs these days. It's hard not to feel like you're missing out if you haven't seen the latest video or seen the picture where - well, you know. I think I liked Al Gore's Internet better when it was just about the cat videos.