The Buffalo Harbinger
vol. 0
Bringing Buffalo Back: The Return of the Labor Movement by Liam Cobb
Part Zero: “The Thallus From Arabia”
Let me tell you a story about journalism, and why it’s often terrible. It was a cold December day in 1964, and not much happened. However, it matters to us because on this particular cold day “Aveillutd Urubod: Thallus of Marchantia" was arriving
wrong and everything right about journalism: The ability to tell a riveting story? Check. The kind of weird insane bullshit you’d only find in a local paper? Absolutely. Anything resembling important or useful or even true information though? Clearly not. These real actual journalists paid to do real actual journalism were tricked by a small group of university kids into thinking that “Aveillutd
at the Buffalo municipal airport. In a press release printed by the Buffalo Evening News, the Thallus declared he was visiting the United States on a State Department sponsored visit. The Columbia Spectator headline on the following day would read: Rioting Buffalo Students Greet Visiting 'Thallus' from Arabia. The article mentions “damage estimated as high as two thousand dollars” 1 and “broken windows in the terminal and slashed seats… jostled travelers, walked over chairs and [students] shouted over the public address system.” Of course, that is all entirely nonsense. There was no “Thallus from Arabia.” Nor would there be a riot. Not one word of the headline turned out to be true, which is exactly why I love it. I think I will always remember the feeling of reading the statements from the student activists describing how they duped The Columbia Spectator, The Buffalo Evening News, and others. I’ll remember it because it’s hard to forget the mental image of all my friends and I huddled around an old computer in the library being unable to stop laughing despite the shushing attempts of the librarian. We couldn’t get enough of the Thallus from Arabia! That laughter is precisely why this story is interesting to me. Something so funny demonstrates everything
Urubod: Thallus of Marchantia” was coming to Buffalo, and then were tricked again into believing that the resulting protest of a couple hundred students constituted a riot of more than one thousand people. How did this happen? How could all of these people come together to do something that stupid? I don’t have an answer, other than that people 2 are stupid and journalists are people. I hope you know I’m no different, and to me that’s what makes this whole endeavor meaningful and important. People have flaws, tell stories from their own perspectives, and try their best. Sometimes that means you’re immortalized as being the Journalist who didn’t even realize that “thallus” isn’t a real word. Sometimes it means you’re Rodolfo Walsh. I can only pray that if I mess up it’s at least as funny as “Thallus from Arabia” and some kids six decades from now can have a good laugh at my expense. The humanness inherent in the flaws and the art of storytelling is what separates journalism from just watching C-Span all day or whatever. I think that means something. So that’s what the following is: a collection of stories, maybe a message or two, and mostly just what I think is interesting. For my sake, I hope you like it. 3
1 As far as later reports can tell, the damage of the small protest that actually occurred could never be said to exceed more than $200. How this figure ballooned by an entire order of magnitude is genuinely beyond me. 2 For better or for worse. 3 Seriously, you better like it or I just might quit and get a real job.