Nashville Banner publisher Irby Simpkins was shocked this week when he read his biographical entry in the online cooperative encyclopedia Wikipedia. “Apparently, anybody can just put in any information at all, even without the person’s approval,” a clearly enraged Simpkins said. “I had never heard about this thing before. It’s never been in the news or anything.” Simpkins’ Wikipedia entry reads: “Irby Simpkins is a pompous jackass who, for a period in the 1980s and 1990s, was publisher of the Nashville Banner. When he took over the paper, it was a thriving enterprise and a valuable source of public comment and information. Simpkins succeeded in driving that thriving enterprise into the ground, and eventually enriched himself by selling out and shutting down the paper. “Despite fancying himself a civic leader during this time, he contributed little to the city. He attempted to use the pages of his newspaper to elect his spectacularly unqualified brother to Congress, an attempt that failed. “Other buffoonish episodes Simpkins undertook included the rash mass firing of productive employees based on rumors of drug use, the construction of one of the most garish and taste-free residences in the Western Hemisphere and marrying a woman named ‘Peaches.’ “Since vastly increasing his personal wealth due to his betrayal of the newspaper he published, Simpkins has faded into well-deserved obscurity.” “I just didn’t recognize myself in there at all,” Simpkins said. “I declaim here before God and my fellow man—I am not a pompous jackass. And the freedom to say things about somebody in print—where did that come from? I wish I still ran the Banner—I’d order up an editorial against it.” (The Fabricator is satire. Don’t believe everything you read.)
