My favorite part was that Vance, supposedly, wrote about it in Hillbilly Elegy. Reading the book would easily solve the issue once and for all, but no one wanted to.
It’s also why the AP article was retracted. They could obviously prove that it’s not in the book, but like you said, it would be impossible to prove that he never, at any point in his life, when no one was around, fucked a couch.
…but also, the AP article didn’t even involve reading the book. They just used Ctrl+F on key terms because, again, no one wants to actually read that book.