At the New Yorker, fact checking seems to be viewed as a personal choice

 I've never really gotten what people saw in Adam Gopnik and we've been down this road with the New Yorker at least a couple of times so I wasn't exactly shocked when writer and pop culture historian Mark Evanier pointed out this bizarre statement:

In 1933, he was fired by Louis B. Mayer, essentially for being too smashed, on and off the set, to work. Keaton's M-G-M experience, despite various efforts by Thalberg and others to keep his career alive as a gag writer, ruined his art. The next decades are truly painful to read about, as Keaton went in and out of hospitals and clinics, falling off the wagon and then sobering up again. His brother-in-law, the cartoonist Walt Kelly, recalls that "nobody really wanted to put him under control because he was a lot of fun." 

Evanier was co-editor of the Complete Pogo and was in a long-term relationship with Kelly's daughter and this was the first he had heard of the connection. He discussed the matter with other experts on both Kelly and Keaton and finally got the answer from the man who literally wrote the book.

So we became intrigued about this mystery. In the latest New Yorker, author Adam Gopnik reviewed two new books about Buster Keaton and offered a quote about Keaton from — and I quote: "His brother-in-law, the cartoonist Walt Kelly." That would seem to be the cartoonist Walt Kelly who created and drew my favorite comic strip (and yours if you have a lick o' sense), Pogo.

Walt Kelly scholars — like, say, me — were amazed at the claim that Kelly was Keaton's brother-in-law. So were folks who knew Walt personally — like, say, his son Peter. We all began puzzling and puzzling 'til our puzzlers were sore…and I'll single out a couple of folks who went to work on this mystery and came up with some solid clues: Maggie Thompson, Harry McCracken and Mike Whybark.

...

And here's an e-mail that I received this morning from James Curtis…

I think I can clarify the matter regarding Buster Keaton and Walt Kelly, but only somewhat.

I am the author of the upcoming book Adam Gopnik was referencing, and Buster Keaton did indeed have a brother-in-law named Walt Kelly. But why Gopnik made the completely unnecessary assumption that the Walt Kelly who was married to Eleanor Keaton’s younger sister Jane was the same Walt Kelly who created Pogo is beyond me. As you know, that Walt Kelly died in 1973. As of two months ago, the Walt Kelly I interviewed was still alive and living in Southern California. He is certainly not identified as the other Walt Kelly in my book.

The review appeared on line yesterday morning, and Leonard Maltin wrote to congratulate me. I mentioned this odd situation of confusing a career military officer with a world-renowned cartoonist. He said: "So much for fact-checking!" I also heard from a gentleman in Seattle who was writing on behalf of a Facebook group called "I Go Pogo" asking if I could throw some light on the matter. I told him what I knew, and he thanked me for the clarification. "It’s sort of amusing," he commented, "even if it's disappointing to read it from a pen of such a high caliber. I've been pondering this all day…"

I wonder how many others have been pondering it as well.

I checked out the Gopnik review and.... let's just say there are enough issues for another post.

And as for that passage, here's how it looks online two and a half years later.