Fish in a barrel

It struck me today that the JT LeRoy hoax is the latest entry in a string of classic San Francisco stories. Classic SF stories must have an element of the bizarre, and they must develop slowly over time like an excellent cheese. The biggest classic SF story of recent years was the dog-mauling case in which a woman was killed by two guard dogs in the hallway outside her apartment. This had sex, violence, and the requisite San Francisco weirdness -- in spades. The dogs, it turned out, were owned by an equally vicious white supremacist prison gangster; they were cared for by a strange lawyer couple who represented the convict and had a strangely crypto-sexual relationship with him through notes and pictures. And when the lawyers came to trial on manslaughter charges, they were represented by an equally kooky attorney who "wept, stood on tiptoes, got down on all fours and kicked the jury box repeatedly to portray how her client fought to save (the victim's) life."

Man, that was as good as it got -- but that's not all! The victim was a lesbian, and public sympathy for (and some clever politicking by) her bereft partner wound up changing state law on same-sex partnerships, granting domestic partners greater rights.

Now that's a classic San Francisco story. But how does the JT LeRoy hoax measure up?

Sex - yes
Money - yes
Death - no, unless you count the death of the innocence of many wee trannies who hero-worshipped JT LeRoy
Bizarre factor - yes
Celebrity - yes
Happened largely in SF - yes
Took advantage of SF liberal fantasies about itself - yes

I rest my case. But what of the movie of JT LeRoy's The Heart is The Seat Full of All Things? SFist's Sarah Hromack lights it up for us.

JT LeRoy, SFist, Sarah Hromack, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, San Francisco