'Dupe Club'

Courtesy Supernaut, here's a post by Susie Bright on being duped by the J.T. Leroy hoax. In it she admits being fooled by the complex hoax until a week before the Stephen Beachy piece appeared in New York magazine, she was late-night phone-called by the person whose voice she knew as "LeRoy's."

What's interesting about Susie's post is how much it resembles the statements, or ramblings, attributed by journalists to Leroy: at the same time it reveals a personal, embarrassing tale, it's full of references to her own fame and career.

Of course, Susie has the right to be upset about feeling personally ripped off, in a psychic if not literal way, by the frauds behind the Leroy persona. But as I said in my last post, I think the real outrage is that the Leroy hoaxers are exploiting public sympathy for people with AIDS and transgender people as a way to explain or excuse their own sloppy stewardship of the Leroy persona -- namely the appointment of an inarticulate amateur fashion model, whose command of English has no similarity to Leroy's written prose, to pose as Leroy in public.

Just look at the comments of Ira Silverberg, "Leroy's" own literary agent:

People were deceived in a brutal way: playing the AIDS card to elicit support, money, connections. That is simply unacceptable. It is morally reprehensible.

J.T. Leroy, Susie Bright