Urban Legends Reference Pages: Humor (Abby Rode)

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Humor (Abby Rode):

Claim: A 'Dear Abby' advice column was pulled because it included a letter taken from an episode of The Simpsons.

Status: True.

Origins: One attribute we here at snopes.com have in common with advice columnists is that we both receive a fair amount of rather bizarre mail — most of it sent in earnest, but some of it sent by pranksters trying to see if they can trick someone into publishing their bits of inventive fiction. We probably have a bit of an advantage over the advice columnists in that the false and the apocryphal are as much our stock in trade as the true and genuine — we deal with the kinds of things people believe to be true; whether or not folkloric tales are actually true is usually irrelevant. Columnists, on the other hand, generally prefer not to be doling out advice to readers seeking answers to phony, contrived problems.