Portland’s right-wing talk show host Lars Larson is notorious for spinning half-truths. And that’s on one of his good days. Usually he’s only able to reach the quarter-truth level, or less.
Last month I heard Lars railing on about how an Astoria boy supposedly was attacked by a cougar. If those damn tree-hugging, gun-hating, cougar-loving liberals have their way, he frothed, cougars are going to be killing Oregonians like flies.
Not likely. As I’ve noted before, a cougar never has attacked a human in Oregon. And I’m pretty confident that no cougar attacked the Astoria boy, Drew Weil, either. The local newspaper (Daily Astorian) reported that “The big cat leapt toward him, slobbering on his shorts and grazing his left leg with two teeth before it ran off.”
Slobbering on his shorts? Give me a break. I’ll give Drew high marks for coming up with a creative story, though. Not just once, but twice. Lars Larson conveniently didn’t mention that Drew said he saw the cougar again five days later.
Now, in Lars’ defense, I may have been listening to his show in between the supposed first and second sightings. But I’m willing to bet that Lars has never told his listeners about the even less credible second “attack,” where police found no evidence of the cougar.
There’s no report of any objective evidence of the first attack either. Paw prints, for example. Nonetheless, Drew’s mother has put up a website where she discounts the possibility that Drew made up his story and castigates state officials for not doing more to take care of their cougar problem.
“What problem?” I imagine Fish and Wildlife officials concluded. No cougar, no problem.
The moral is—as if you didn’t know this already—don’t believe everything you hear on talk radio. Especially right-wing talk radio. Especially, especially, the Lars Larson show.
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