Someone should tell CNN that the fire-eaters at Coney Island don’t really eat the fire either.
The TV news channel fell for some old time Coney Island carnival buskering, when it posted a story about the “discovery” of a “140-year-old hot dog” that turned out to be a big hoax.
Officials at the Coney Island History Project had put the “ancient” frank on display, saying that it was unearthed during the demolition of the historic Feltman’s Kitchen, which is the site where the first hot dog was made.
The historians claimed the geriatric snack was preserved because it was frozen in a hunk of ice. They put it up, bun and all, in a sidewalk display with a sign claiming it was the “1st Hot Dog.”
It was a great story, and CNN ran with it, along with local cable station News 12. But it turns out that the History Project was just pulling a fast one to get publicity for their exhibition of real artifacts from the Feltman’s site, which they are holding this summer.
“The recent discovery by an amateur archaeologist of the ‘140 Year Old Feltman’s Hot Dog’ encased in ice along with a bun, [and] an original receipt from Feltman’s, … was a publicity stunt in the grand tradition of Coney Island ballyhoo,” said Tricia Vita, spokeswoman for the history project.”
She said that the hoax was an example of Coney Island publicity history, and even dedicated it an old time press a gent named Milton Berger, known for P.T. Barnum-like hype.
“Mr. Berger was a veteran of the Damon Runyonesque school of Broadway press agentry and the last of the Ballyhoo Boys,” she said in a release. “Before he came to Coney Island in 1952, his fellow publicists always remembered that Milton Berger got a man to sue a barber claiming he had ruined his toupee giving his a haircut, the idea of course being that the toupee was so good, it even fooled the barber.
“In Coney Island, the flamboyant Mr. Berger was a master at estimating attendance.. He was famous for telling the papers there were 2 million on the beach, rain or shine,” she said.
Vita said that she was surprised to learn that in the Internet age suckers seem to be born at a rate much faster than every minute.
“I was surprised in the beginning at how many people believed it was true,” she said. “But after reading all the buzz about it on Twitter and the Internet, I’m not really that surprised because people want to believe these types of things are true.”