Poor Johannes Gutenberg. He died broke even though his invention is regarded by many as the most important of the second millennium. His story, tortured for decades, now gets the marketing treatment in hyperbole about the iPad.

My favorite comes from The Madison Avenue Journal, a newsletter/blog for “industry leaders who are interested in understanding how contemporary culture intersects with Madison Avenue.”

To improve understanding, Mad Ave. gave Gutenberg an apocryphal story, establishing a new standard for ridiculous and wrong in just five sentences. If marketers write history, the iPad will no doubt take the idea that lit a fuse on a literacy revolution to a new level. And we’ll be able to tweet Joey G’s 42-line bible in 140 characters.

An editor’s take: