The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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The Crab Cracker asked if I could maybe whip up an April Fool’s sketch again this year. You know, something in the line of the new Amazon Distribution Center down just south of the South End Diner or maybe Two Toke Tom’s Cannabis Emporium Grand Opening’s free edibles. Course, we already did something on this order. The editors got angry calls from some of their readers who had driven clear down to our remote regions here only to find … well, an empty storefront half lost to encroaching blackberry vines. Half of em ran out of gas before they could find their way back to the Colton Harris-Moore Memorial Bridge. I seriously doubt they’ll be back to this sunny end of the island, I don’t care how many of those glass balls we hide down here in the backwash we’re sprucing up for our Annual Spring Nettle Festival.

Folks apparently believe what they read. When the Cracker ran the issue on the new Alpaca Hunting season regulations, holy moly, you might suppose it would be fairly obvious only a Fiend of the Worst Sort (or the figment of a very sick writer’s imagination) could think he could purchase a license down at Elger Bay Store, dress up in llama camouflage and crawl on his beer belly across blackberry razor wire to sneak up on these poor cute defenseless little critters, I don’t care HOW good they taste on the grill.

The Cracker could photoshop Big Foot behind the plaza, Colton in a Cessna over Mabana, Donald Trump quaffing a pint of nettlle IPA at the Tyee Brewery, the South End String Band playing Benaroya — and folks would just naturally believe their eyes. Not simply because the Cracker is a bastion of journalistic professionalism with all their sources checked and double checked, but we’ve just become folks who either believe everything or believe nothing.

On the internet April Fool is everyday. The political e-mails and pundits’ blogs that spread faster than Covid variants are more and more outrageous, most of them outright lies if anyone bothered to fact-check. You either buy it hook line and stinker before calling the editor to complain or you walk away shaking your fist vowing never to believe ANY of this stuff.

So in all honesty I just can’t be a party anymore to the Crab Cracker’s misguided (even if humorously intended) attempt at public deception this last issue before their sale to the Stanwood/Camano News. And when the new owners vow complete journalistic integrity, I hope you know Skeeter’s going to be 100% honest in his reporting. And it won’t have one iota to do with my new raise from these really great new editors. You have my word. As any who know me can attest, my word is my bond. And I’m not talking bail.

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