In more or less recent times (the 1980s), the hoax, if that’s what it was, that was most disturbing to me was the Tawana Brawley-Al Sharpton accusation of gang rape of Brawley by six white men. Her charges nearly destroyed the life of the assistant district attorney of Duchess County, Steven Pagones, and created a racial circus in New York for weeks. Tawana’s lawyers prevented her from testifying to a grand jury and eventually the whole thing went away. No one will ever know the truth unless Tawana tells it someday (and how would we know if it were the truth?) but the whole matter certainly had all the earmarks of some sort of sick hoax.