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Google Said America’s Longest-Serving Republican Senator Was Dead, So He Gave Proof He Wasn’t

By Mohit Priyadarshi
Published on: 06:11 PST, Jul 24, 2018

Orrin Hatch, the longest-serving Republican senator in the history of the United States, can at least see some humor in his death.

Google searches for Hatch recently showed his biography mention a death date — September 11, 2017. According to the Washington Post, it was an error on Wikipedia’s part, which showed the Utah senator having died last year. Although Google had pulled up the mistaken information from Wikipedia only for a few hours, Hatch’s staff got to know about it. While it would have been routine for them to inform Google about it privately, the senator thought to have a little fun at Google’s expense.

Often applauded for his sense of humor, the Republican senator decided to provide Google with extensive evidence to prove that he is alive. And since then, Hatch has posted multiple pictures of himself going about his daily business. The first of those tweets, addressed directly to Google, had a screenshot of the search engine’s error with the following caption.

“Hi @Google, we might need to talk.”

The tongue-in-cheek comment soon took off, encouraging Hatch (or his staff) to continue in the same vein. What followed was a series of pictures of America’s longest-serving conservative senator reading a newspaper, preparing for an interview, waiting for a meeting with Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, as well as videos of him signing bills, visiting memorials, and even giving German Chancellor Angela Merkel a personal gift.

As a final piece of evidence, Hatch’s account tweeted a picture of his 84th birthday celebrations, which would have been impossible had he been dead last September, when he was 83!

It didn’t even end there. When NPR reached out to Hatch’s office about their mocking response to Google, his spokesperson Matt Whitlock wrote back saying “unconfirmed reports suggest that by 7:30 a.m., Hatch had already completed an hour of CrossFit and an hour of miscellaneous sport. When Senator Hatch first heard of his passing he was quite alarmed. Having advanced 4 major bills last night he was surprised to hear that he may have been dead the whole time. After both the Senator and staff confirmed he was in fact alive and not a part of some kind of Sixth Sense phenomenon, he had a good laugh and may have run several miles to celebrate.”

Whitlock said it was a good moment for Hatch to end on a high on social media, a medium the senator embraces, before he finally concludes his last term in Congress this year.

Wikipedia and Google have since fixed the error, although it is still not clear if it was a human fault or the algorithm messed up. But it wasn’t surprising to see Google complimenting Hatch’s sense of humor in their response.

“You are certainly alive and sporting a great sense of humor. We apologize for the error. We’ll have it fixed shortly,” the response from Google read.

It was a good distraction for a news cycle which remains inundated with negative developments, salacious allegations, and polarized viewpoints.

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