Carson's Yale Story was Embellished, but not Fabricated

[M.G.]

Last edited Tue Nov 10, 2015, 12:28 PM - Edit history (2)

Source: Buzzfeed

A former staff member of the Yale Record says that he recalls many of the details of a prank that Dr. Ben Carson wrote about in an autobiography.

The incident has been the subject of media coverage in recent days, after the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that it found no evidence to support Carson’s claim that he was a victim of a hoax that led him to take a fake psychology test, as he wrote in his 1990 autobiography, Gifted Hands.

In an interview with BuzzFeed News on Monday, Curtis Bakal, an editorial assistant at the satirical Yale Record who says he helped write the fake test, said he was “99% certain the way Carson remembers it is correct.”

“When I read about the story in the Wall Street Journal, I immediately said, to my wife and friend, ‘That was the prank we played at the Record! And Ben Carson was in the class,’” said Bakal, who noted he wasn’t actually present during the taking of the fake test. “We did a mock parody of the Yale Daily News during the exam period in January 1970, and in this parody we had a box that said: ‘So-and-so section of the exam has been lost in a fire. Professor so-and-so is going to give a makeup exam.’”

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/ben-carsons-yale-classmate-we-did-the-prank-test-that-carson#.iq1mbY0oaX

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I posted here about Carson's Yale story a few days ago. The story is all about honesty, and honesty compels me to post that the most recent addendum to the story is somewhat more favorable to Carson than was the initial coverage. It seems that the hoax test he took was perpetrated by Yale's parody paper. The long and short of it is that Carson distorted things and recast the event as a morality tale. By any reasonable metric, he fibbed. He also fudged some of the details and got others wrong.

Still amusing, considering he embellished a tale about his supposed honesty, but less of a fraud than the Wall Street Journal story made it appear.

[Nye Bevan]

1. Folks are making a bit too much of these college recollections IMO.

Much more concerning to me are the awful policies that Carson would implement as president.

[M.G.]

2. I would now agree

When this story first broke, the Wall Street Journal made it out to seem like a complete fraud.

If it had been a complete fabrication, that would cut to Carson's ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality, which I would consider a legitimate issue.*

Now that the truth is out, it seems like it was an embellishment of actual events, with Carson casting himself as a hero. Carson has already admitted on national television that parts of his autobiography were stretched for color. That's amusing, and gives insight into his character, but it's not as consequential as his policy prescriptions, or general ignorance on issues like the debt ceiling.

*I erred in making this statement. Carson fibbed, so it's a legitimate issue and he earned the bad press which he has received.

[Chakab]

14. This guy has no record in government, and he's running on his life story.

How could it possibly be out of line to vet all of these stories especially given the fact that he's written several books about them and recounted them in literally hundreds of speeches?

There's no point in covering his policy positions because he doesn't have any, and he starts whining about media bias when asked in depth questions about what his plans are.

[M.G.]

19. His candidacy is indeed a farce

Carson's candidacy is largely a farce on its merits.

In this instance, the initial reporting made it seem like Carson wholly fabricated an incident. The truth is that he didn't fabricate it from sheer cloth, he embellished it, transforming a campus prank that he fell for into a morality play with himself as hero.

Since I helped spread the initial story, and the embellished incident was all about honesty, I felt it appropriate to share the truth now that it is out.

It's pretty clear Carson fibbed, he just didn't totally fabricate events.

[Arkana]

18. Wrong. Carson's made his campaign about his background and his character

and when that background is fabricated, that strikes at the campaign's very heart.

No. He put his college career on the table. It's fair game.

[M.G.]

20. It's fair game, but....

You are right.

It's fair game, but since I helped spread the initial story, which was misleading, I do want to present the truth of what happened as best as I can. (Ironic, because this whole matter was framed, falsely, by Carson as a test of honesty.)

I probably should have written above - "it's amusing, and there's enough legitimate evidence that Carson fibbed that this is fair game for coverage, but I wouldn't now consider it as consequential as his atrocious policies."

[840high]

3. I don't care.

[FSogol]

4. Honesty? Carson is a disastrous choice for Commander in Chief.

Why try to clean up his bullshit?

[M.G.]

5. Don't get me wrong...

Don't get me wrong - there are loads of legitimate reasons to have contempt for Carson, from his shilling for Mannatech to his utter ignorance of basic policy.

That said, on this particular matter, the initial reporting, as written up by the Wall Street Journal, made some exaggeration on Carson's part sound worse than it was. (And even with the truth out, Carson couldn't be said to have wrapped himself in glory.)

If I'm going to attack someone for their honesty, as I did the other day, it's appropriate for me to be honest about it.

[7962]

8. Most of us appreciate your honesty.

Some others would just ignore this latest news

[Javaman]

15. frankly, I think carson, once again, distorted facts so he didn't come off...

as a moron falling for a parody.

that is lying, no matter how you slice it.

[M.G.]

21. He fibbed.

No doubt he fibbed, recasting a prank as a test of morality.

He didn't totally fabricate the incident. He embellished it and fibbed about its import.

[Javaman]

24. potata, pahtata. He lied. nt

[7962]

7. Maybe because the facts changed? He's not cleaning up carson,

He's merely posting the new information. Which is what we ALL should do, even if its something we may not like.
Everyone here always is quick to point out falsehoods and distortions by the RW, so everyone here should also strive not to do the same thing

[pnwmom]

6. So the true story is that he was an idiot who fell for a prank,

the only one to sit through the whole test and not realize it was fake.

And he was still bragging about being duped decades later.

[6000eliot]

9. From what I heard, he did not claim that the text was a "hoax" or a "prank."

He claimed that the professor was testing the class's honesty and that he was the only one who passed it. When did the story change? As I said before, versions of this fake story have been going around in higher education since long before I was an undergraduate 30 years ago.

[M.G.]

10. He embellished a prank and turned it into a morality story

Basically, there was a hoax by the Yale Parody paper in which students were tricked into believing some test had to be retaken. Carson fell for it, and the people who hosted it gave him a tiny cash prize as a way of showing good faith.

Carson embellished the story into a morality play where he was rewarded by a Professor for his honesty. He has already admitted on national TV that his autobiography contains incidents which were stretched for color.

Carson got a lot of incidental details of the story wrong in his autobiography, and he definitely embellished what happened. It was not, however, a complete fantasy (which is what the Wall Street Journal article suggested.)

So, basically, he fibbed. He is not, however, a complete fabulist.

[6000eliot]

12. He's a fucking liar who should get nowhere near the Oval Office.

I doubt his sanity at this point. Who comes onto a DEMOCRATIC website to defend this asshole?

[former9thward]

25. Bringing facts is not the same as a defense.

I would think intelligent people would like to know the actual facts while discussing something. Who comes onto a DEMOCRATIC website to attack facts?

[M.G.]

27. I agree

Basically, we should stick to facts, even when engaged in political combat - and be willing to revise our understanding of events in light of new information.

The plain facts here are more then enough to make Carson, who recast being a prank victim as a supposed triumph of personal morality, look pretty bad.

[Maeve]

16. A half-truth is a whole lie. eom

[LanternWaste]

22. "He is not, however, a complete fabulist..." By the word's very definition, that is precisely what h

"He embellished a prank..."

Embellished, stretched, wrong, fibbed... known commonly as "lying," regardless of how one attempts to rationalize distinction without a difference.

"He is not, however, a complete fabulist..."
By the word's very definition, that is precisely what he is.

[M.G.]

23. I'll put this way.

I'll put it this way.

When the Wall Street Journal story appeared, it sounded like Carson spun the incident out of sheer cloth.

It now appears that something more or less like what he described happened, but he embellished the tale and made it look like a test of virtue by a Professor and not a hoax by Yale's parody paper.

Bottom line, Carson lied in his telling of the tale, but it was not a complete fantasy the way the initial coverage made it appear.

That's basically my point in posting this.

[dembotoz]

11. so bush jr only embellished the reports of weapons available to saddam

still resulted in lots of dead folks

[truthisfreedom]

13. It was a bullshit story.

Sorry, carson, you suck and you lie like a rug.

[M.G.]

17. Josh Marshall sums it up

"It now appears that the college humor magazine did more than print up the hoax announcement of a test retake. They actually sent a student to the lecture hall to impersonate a teaching assistant to administer a made up test. By the end, when only one or two students remained out of several who showed up (still not getting that it was a hoax apparently) the fake teaching assistant even gave out "a small cash prize." No one has been able to identify the fake teaching assistant or specifically attest to Carson being one of the last or last students still taken in by the joke. But if you step back you now have independent corroboration for a chain of events which - giving some allowance for exaggeration and imperfect memory - largely matches up with Carson's account.

The only problem of course is that the whole thing was a practical joke that the extremely earnest young Ben Carson not only fell for at the time but hasn't realized was a prank for the last 45 years. Even now Carson either doesn't seem to realize or won't cop to the fact that even if it was an innocent and honest mistake, what actually happened isn't remotely what he described. As with so many other anecdotes and examples, this latest incident reveals Carson as a sort of lifelong self-awareness Mr Magoo, with perhaps a dash of Chauncey Gardner, walking through life often with little awareness of what is going on around him but consistently interpreting things in the most self-glorifying and parablistic terms possible." Josh Marshall - Talking Points Memo

[merrily]

26. Who cares? He's a extreme Bible fable lunatic who wants to end OASDI and Medicare.

Mainstream fundamentalists (oxymoron?) don't even believe that the pyramids were used for anything but warehousing dead Pharaohs and their "needs" for the afterlife.

Tell people he wants to end OASDI and Medicare and only Pete Peterson and some of his fellow billionaires might vote for him.

Yale, Schmale.

[M.G.]

28. It's an issue, though not a major one.

I agree this isn't a major issue. It does go to honesty.

Carson's policy cluelessness is a much bigger deal.

[niyad]

29. the man is a young earth creationist--that alone disqualifies him from ever even setting foot

in sane society, let alone the oval office.

seems that every time he opens his mouth, a fabrication, stretching the truth, lies, or insanity fall out.

[M.G.]

32. Pretty much.

Carson saying Satan inspired evolution disqualifies him from being taken seriously about much of anything.

[niyad]

30. what I still don't get is how this cover-up prank (how convenient)reflects on anybody's honesty.

if I took a test, and was told that it was lost in a fire, I would see no reason to take it again. would the grades not already have been recorded. this whole incident has not made sense to me.

[M.G.]

31. He turned a prank into a morality play.

Basically, Yale's parody paper played a prank where they spread the word that a psych. test was destroyed and needed to be retaken.

A couple students fell for it, took a retest that was designed to have intimidating, nearly impossible questions. Many realized it was a prank and left. Carson stuck it out, not realizing he was being pranked. After a while, he and whoever remained were told they got spoofed and were given a small cash amount as a show of good sportsmanship.

Carson rewrote the incident in his autobiography as a test set up by a Professor to determine whether or not students were honest enough to retake a test they had already taken. He did not mention it was a prank set up by the Yale parody paper and claims he was given a small prize for being the most honest student in the class.

So, basically, he took a silly prank and recast it as a morality play, with himself as hero.