US country singer-songwriter Garth Brooks attends the 43rd annual Kennedy Center Honors at The Kennedy Center on May 21, 2021 in Washington, DC ( AFP / ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS)

Satirical article about Garth Brooks dupes Texas governor

This article is more than one year old.
Published on June 27, 2023 at 15:58
2 min read
By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA

Social media users are saying fans recently booed Garth Brooks off stage after the US country music star vowed that his new bar would serve all brands of beer, despite a backlash from some conservatives against Bud Light. But the claim is false and can be traced to a network of satirical websites that publish made-up stories.

"Garth Brooks Booed Off Stage at 123rd Annual Texas Country Jamboree," says identical text featured in numerous posts that spread across Facebook on June 24, 2023.

Screenshot from Facebook taken June 26, 2023

Similar posts also circulated on other platforms, such as Twitter.

The posts spread weeks after Brooks said in an interview with Billboard (archived here) that a new bar he is opening on a famous strip in downtown Nashville, Tennessee will "serve every brand of beer." US conservatives have for months called for boycotts against Anheuser-Busch products after a Bud Light social media partnership with a transgender influencer in April.

"Go Woke. Go Broke," Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, wrote in a since-deleted tweet repeating the claim about Brooks. "Garth called his conservative fans. 'assholes.' Good job Texas."

But the story about fans heckling the singer-songwriter off stage is a hoax -- and originated as satire.

The "123rd Annual Texas Country Jamboree" does not appear to exist.

Several of the Facebook posts about Brooks cited blog posts that republished a story from the Dunning-Kruger Times, a satire site with a disclaimer that says it is part of a "network of parody, satire, and tomfoolery." Abbott linked to the Dunning-Kruger Times directly.

AFP contacted Abbott's office for comment, but no response was forthcoming.

The Dunning-Kruger Times is part of America's Last Line of Defense, a network of sites that "publishes false stories and hoaxes that are often mistaken for real news," according to NewsGuard, an organization that rates websites' credibility.

The sites are run by Christopher Blair, who told AFP in 2020 that "confirmation bias" leads people to believe and share the articles.

AFP has previously debunked other misinformation stemming from Blair's sites, including the false claim that the annual German beer festival Oktoberfest was banning Budweiser products.

Several details in the Dunning-Kruger Times story about Brooks getting booed indicate it is satire.

For example, the author is listed as "Flagg Eagleton," and the article claims the jamboree took place in "Hambriston, the famous farm of the Barron Cattle Empire." Hambriston is not a real city.

The article also attributes quotes to "Nashville Mayor Art Tubolls." But in reality, Nashville's mayor is John Cooper.

Art Tubolls, meanwhile, is a fictitious character who has appeared in previous stories on America's Last Line of Defense websites.

And in the days before the Dunning-Kruger Times story took off online, Brooks was performing in Las Vegas, Nevada.

AFP reached out to Brooks' representatives for comment, but no response was forthcoming.

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