Associated Press: J.D. Vance did not (bleep) that couch

Is this really the best way to correct misinformation?

I honestly had not heard the story about J.D. Vance having sex with a couch until the Associated Press helpfully alerted me on Wednesday night to the fact that, no, J.D. Vance did not have sex with a couch.

I wish to God I was making this up.

Another X post states: “In his dreadful novel, ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ JD Vance described having sex with a rubber glove secured between cushions on his couch. Republicans chose him to be one heartbeat away from becoming POTUS. Voters in NC, the U.S. furniture capital, should be particularly horrified.”

An Associated Press reporter reviewed pages 179 to 181 in a physical copy of “Hillbilly Elegy” — a first edition from 2016 — and found that they actually recount Vance’s first days as a freshman at The Ohio State University in 2007. Topics he covers include arriving on campus for orientation, his proximity to his hometown, the “brain drain” phenomenon, filling out financial aid forms and his desire to go to law school.

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This is part of the AP’s effort to address widely shared false and misleading information that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.

There you go.

There’s been a lot of talk over the last decade about misinformation, disinformation, lies and propaganda. And it’s a problem, no doubt.

But also: I’m not really sure this is the best way to fix it.

Weird stories and half-joke half-serious ideas have always circulated in the culture. If you’re old enough, you remember the notorious story about the actor Richard Gere and his (alleged) predilections. Americans of a more recent vintage will remember the “Ted Cruz is the Zodiac killer” meme.

Google it if you want to know more, I guess.

At some point, though, I wonder if we’ve just decided to give up on Americans having a little bit of common sense. Or at least brains enough to take certain extraordinary pieces of information with a grain of salt.

And maybe Americans don’t deserve that benefit of the doubt. Maybe they really need one of the world’s most powerful news-gathering organizations to say that, no, J.D. Vance did not have sex with that couch. And in so doing, draw much wider attention to the stories that are going around about him.

In which case, I doubt a simple fact-check will do much to dent the tide of stupidity.

Just consider this though:

When I saw the headline, I was sure the “fact check” was itself the hoax.

UPDATE: The link to the AP fact check is dead. Apparently editors thought better of what was clearly a pretty misguided attempt at rigor.