Readers, you’ve lost it

One of the great benefits of this job is reading the reactions in the newspaper. Over the years, they have ranged from scary to comical, but none matches the reactions to my April Fools’ Day column last week.

In case you didn’t read it, I claimed that I had been lying about not watching TV for the last 10 years and described three ways in which I fed my addiction. One of them was so outrageous I was sure it was a dead giveaway that the column was a spoof: I described how I had a small satellite dish installed in a hollowed-out swamp cooler on my roof.

That silliness was by design. I dropped two other hints that readers should have picked up on, one of which was clearly stating the date, April 1, near the end of the column.

But some people didn’t get the joke. Not only did they not get the joke, but their reactions were just plain mean.

I can handle the mean part. As I wrote, I’ve had over-the-top reactions before. The difference here is that those other overreactions were about serious issues such as the El Toro airport, the $480-million in school taxes over the past five years and the wisdom of putting mayonnaise on a pastrami sandwich.

One reader who was disappointed that I would continue to write offered, “After all, so many of us in Newport-Mesa were sincerely wishing it would be Smith’s last diatribe” and then, “? as it is certain that Smith will continue to make a fool of himself on a weekly basis rather than once a year on April 1.”

Here’s another excerpt: “I want to know who thought up the hiding of the dish in the swamp cooler. Obviously, Smith isn’t bright enough to have come up with that on his own, nor would he be dexterous enough to get up on that roof ? after all he is just a writer.”

But the best one was an e-mail from someone who shall remain anonymous: “If your column today was not true it is in very poor taste and I feel quite sorry for you. It is not at all funny. If your column today is true then your life is a tragedy.”

These responses make it official: We have completely lost our sense of humor.

But just to be sure, I asked for a second opinion from my friend and former colleague, Mike Wapner.

Mike is a guy who will tell you exactly what he thinks ? not in a mean way, but in an honest-appraisal way.

Mike read the column and the letters and was also flabbergasted by the response. He told me that one of the reasons these people may have reacted the way they did was because the column was “well-written.” That’s another way of saying it was believable.

Mike also told me that the company for which he works put out an April Fools’ version of its newsletter in which it broke some devastating advertising business news. They, too, got some unusual reactions because it was well-written.

I don’t know what to tell the people who took that column so seriously, particularly the people who were happy to see me go but still decided to trip me on my way out the door.

No, on second thought, I do know what to say: Lighten up.