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The first day of April, commonly known as April Fool's Day, is an occasion for much pranking in the real and online worlds, and among the common japes that take place in the latter realm are news sites' presenting their readers with absurd and ridiculous stories offered as straightforward reporting. That mechanism occasionally works in reverse, however: in some years, news stories that sound far-fetched but are actually true break on April 1, leading many readers to dismiss them as mere April Fool's humor. That was the case in 2010, when a video clip of an odd exchange which had taken place during a House committee meeting a week earlier was circulated widely on April 1: During a House Armed Services Committee meeting held on 25 March 2010, Representative Hank Johnson, a Democrat from Lithonia, Georgia, questioned Admiral Robert Willard, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, about a proposal to move 8,000 Marines from the Japanese island of Okinawa to the U.S. Pacific island territory of Guam. In the course of that questioning, Rep. Johnson expressed concern that adding thousands of Marines and their families to Guam might cause that small island to tip over and capsize: This exchange was the subject of much ridicule and speculation: Was Rep. Johnson really expressing concern that the addition of 8,000 Marines and their families to Guam would literally cause the island to become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize, or was he engaging in a metaphor about concerns over the level of environmental degradation that might result from a sudden 14% increase in Guam's population? The latter viewpoint is bolstered by the fact that immediately after his tip over and capsize statement, Johnson did explicitly say he was concerned about the sensitive areas of the environment, coral reefs and those kinds of things. On the other hand, Johnson's prefacing that statement with the words And also things like the environment ... (and his curious fixation on Guam's exact dimensions) could be taken to mean that his previously expressed fear that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize was a different subject and was therefore not a metaphor for environmental issues. Or perhaps Johnson was clumsily trying to express the notion that adding another 25,000 people to Guam would create an unsustainably large population (and thus the island would reach its tipping point). Only Johnson knows for sure what he was thinking as he questioned Admiral Willard, and he later claimed he was speaking metaphorically and kidding (although critics noted no trace of humor was apparent in his words, tone, or body language, nor did he react or offer correction when Admiral Willard addressed his concerns about the island's tipping over as if they were meant literally): As of this writing, Hank Johnson Jr. is still the U.S. Representative for Georgia's 4th congressional district.
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