Y OU learn the most amazing things reading the Weekly World News, like Hawaii sumo legend Salevaa Atisanoe is training for the Olympics decathlon. Tabloid tale doesn’t
carry much weightNever mind that the former Konishiki, who retired from wrestling this year, weighs more than 600 pounds.
According to the nationally distributed Weekly World News, he can run the 100 meters in 9.9 seconds and clears 16 feet in the pole vault!
For those of you who have too much class to flip through, let alone actually buy supermarket tabloids, let me give you a little background. (I, happily, am not subject to such constraints.)
The Weekly World News is the tabloid that shames all others with its fantastic stories of alien babies and Elvis sightings. In short, it makes the National Enquirer look like the Wall Street Journal.
It's fun to pick up the Weekly World News just to see how far it will go to test readers' gullibility. A recent issue, for example, has a "bombshell photograph" of Bill Clinton with a black eye, supposedly given to him by Hillary after his Monica Lewinsky confession.
That's actually fairly mild considering they've also run a cover photo of Clinton shaking hands with an space alien and a photo of World War II aircraft supposedly crashed on the moon. The truth may be out there, buddy, but the Weekly World News is out there even further.
So I was flipping through a recent issue when I came across a photo of the former Konishiki with the explosive headline "He's on the fat track!"
Atisanoe is identified in the photo as "gold medal contender Tsutomu Katayama."
Here's the lead:
"TOKYO, Japan -- A gold-medal contender in the decathlon for the 2000 Olympics is a Japanese athlete who runs 100 meters in 9.9 seconds, clears 16 feet in the pole vault, sets records in the javelin, discus and long-distance runs -- and weighs a whopping 609 pounds."
In that entire sentence, the only thing possibly true is Atisanoe's weight, although I wouldn't put any money on it.
Konishiki running the 100-meter dash in under 10 seconds? Please. Ten minutes more like it. And as for the pole vault, Atisanoe, whose knees are more fragile than a Faberge egg, couldn't jump over chalk line.
Most people know that most of the stories in the Weekly World News are, essentially, full of it. Few from Hawaii will fall for the hallucinatory Konishiki musings.
Nevertheless, I decided to call the Weekly World News to find out how they dreamed up such an implausible scenario. I had a hunch that they wouldn't tell me and I was right. The person answering the phone in the editorial department asked me to submit questions in writing on official newspaper letterhead stationery, as if I were dealing with the New York Times, or something.
"I'll tell you what," I said. "I'll put in my column that I called you guys and no one there wanted to give me a comment on the sumo decathlete. And that will be at least as accurate as anything that appeared in this story on "Tsutomu Katayama."
She sniffed, "That's up to you," as if I were violating some sacred journalistic practice by not wasting my time to get an official "no comment" from a publication that also contains the story: "Space Alien Baby! UFO crash survivor is alive and well -- and living at a secret New Mexico military base!"
The most amazing thing about the Konishiki story is how tame it is. They could have at least come up with a story like: "Sumo wrestler abducted by space aliens! And he ATE them! Scientists think burps are distress calls to aliens' home planet!"
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
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