Walter Cronkite steamed over Web page jest DAYTON, Ohio - Walter Cronkite to Tim Hughes: That's NOT the way it was. The former CBS anchor says he considered suing when he found a fabricated tale and "spitting" image of himself on Hughes' "Walter Cronkite Spit in My Food" Internet home page. Hughes pulled the page on Thursday, posting in its place a notice saying, "It was never my intention to hurt anyone." The newsman once dubbed "the most trusted man in America" said in a telephone interview from Chicago on Thursday that he was stunned several months ago when he spotted the page and an accompanying fable about a tipsy, cussing Cronkite accosting Hughes and his wife at a Florida restaurant. "I punched up Cronkite just to see what was on the Internet and stumbled on this scurrilous article," Cronkite said. "The whole thing is just so outlandish. ... I don't think I've ever spit in my life." It was a joke, Hughes said Wednesday. The 28-year-old Internet applications developer from suburban West Carrollton admits he made the whole thing up, doctored a photo of Cronkite to make it appear he was spitting and altered another shot that showed a smiling Cronkite standing next to several Ku Klux Klansmen in full regalia. The story on the page he posted last spring claimed Cronkite became enraged when the couple took a photo of him at a Moroccan restaurant at Disney World, and began yelling at them, spewing obscenities and boasting he had once slept with a colleague's wife, then spit into their dessert - spice cake. Hughes, who described himself on the page as a "crack-smoking, devil-worshipper who lives with his wife and 47 children in a cardboard box," also attached a tiny disclaimer that said "actual events may differ substantially from those depicted here." He said he wrote the story as a satire "in the most ludicrous light possible," so there would be no chance anyone would believe it. "If someone takes it seriously, they've missed the whole point," he said. But on Thursday, after fielding calls from reporters, Hughes withdrew the page. "Walter didn't get the joke so the page is gone," Hughes wrote on the page he posted announcing the departure. Hughes said the only truth in the tale was that Cronkite was at the restaurant that night in 1994. The couple caught him in profile in a photo they shot there. Cronkite, 80, was a fixture in America's living rooms during the 1960s and '70s, signing off his CBS news broadcasts with the words, "And that's the way it is." By The Associated Press -- [----------------------- Dental Globe ----------------------] [---------------------- (800) 475-8605 ---------------------] [------------------ http://dentalglobe.com -----------------] [--- The World's Largest Dental Resource on the Internet ---]