Required viewing

As we sometime amateurishly attempt satire here on this blog it is also our duty to point out when the masters do it so effectively. Such was the case last night when Jon Stewart turned the Daily Show into a 15 minute parody of Glenn Beck, his paranoia, and the cancer of the liberalism that Jon finds himself afflicted with.

Broken News: Area man apologizes after his parody of religion becomes church doctrine

DOVER—Early today, after much soul searching and numerous bouts of laughing to himself, humorist Charlie Warren formally apologized for the series of events that led a satirical take on religion and religious extremism to become the officially sanctioned doctrine of the Catholic Church.

“I would just like to offer my humblest apologies to the, uh, world, the billions of followers of Christianity, the Pope, and, uh, the Baby Jesus,” a slightly perplexed Warren proclaimed to the assembled media and local religious leaders. “I was just having a bit of fun, making a few jokes or two. I didn’t expect it to go this far. I won’t do it again. My bad.”

He then threw his hands up in the air and with a tinge of complete disbelief in his voice, exclaimed “I just thought people would understand it was an obvious joke!”

The parody, in which an alleged Bishop purported to claim that rubbing children in bacon fat and yelling at them in Latin would ward off “ill gay omens” and that the church should partake in the use of a giant catapult while giving confession so that church patrons may “confess their sins closer to God”, was originally published on Warren’s blog.

Despite the ridiculous claims in the piece and the fact that the Bishop referenced in the narrative, Bishop Don Magic Juan, is an O.G. Chicago pimp, several news services picked up and ran the story as if it were real. Soon after, the Catholic League began pushing these theories, public support in churches increased, and at the behest of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Vatican made these two tenets into church doctrine, placing orders for thousands of catapults and thousands of gallons of rendered hog fat.

“C’mon,” Warren shouted. “Wasn’t the joke massively obvious?”

While to most outside observers that answer would be an emphatic yes, the question still remains how such a ludicrous attempt at satire was able to make it into the laws of the Catholic Church.

“Oooh…..I don’t know if I want to say this out loud, it could get me in a lot of trouble,” said a nervous Oliver Palmer, a news editor for Reuters, one of the news services that originally picked up the Warren piece. “How about…religious fundamentalists in this country are so batshit insane nowadays that there is no ceiling to the kind of incomprehensibly deranged activity, belief, or political cause they will engage in. Anything is plausible. Anything!”

Palmer sighed a bit and winced, “I bet I’m going to get such a nasty letters from Bill Donohue and the Catholic League for saying that.”

But far from castigating Palmer and others who share his similar outlook on the state of religion inside America and around the world, the Vatican was sympathetic.

“It’s a fair cop,” observed Bishop Gianluco Scherzo, the head of the Vatican’s Department for Mitigating the Damage Catholicism Does to Itself. “I mean for years we covered up child molestations, we’re in Africa contributing to the spread of AIDS by opposing the use of condoms or making official statements that they don’t work, and in DC we’re about to shut homeless shelters and adoption centers just because we might have to hire a gay, or at least not fire a gay because he is a gay. And that’s just the official actions of the Catholic Church! We’re not even talking about what all the Christian offshoots and fundamentalists think.”

Scherzo shuddered as he thought of it, “American fundamentalists…woof. Give me the creeps. No, this was all too plausible. Though I still think we’re going to keep both changes. Eh, it’s not like they’re all that much crazier than what we actually believe and most of the catapults are already built and paid for.”

For his part, Mr. Warren has seemed to have learned his lesson.

“Not only do I reiterate my pledge to never dip my toes in the fevered swamps of religion so naively again. But if I do make any future attempts at parody or news satire, I assure you I will do so in only the most hamhanded and obvious way possible, replete with loose ciphers for myself speaking overt statements about their views on current religious trends,” Warren said, his hand placed firmly over his heart.

“You know,” he paused. “Like a hack would.”

Adult correspondence

via Letters of Note comes a sarcastic 2003 letter from Al Franken to then Attorney General John Ashcroft asking for abstinence stories for a fake book he's writing. He wrote the letter while he was a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government. Now he's a Senator. Isn't life great? Maybe I need to reconsider my Bachmann based hatred of Minnesota and move to a Franken based like.

Wish we thought of it

glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com

It's not like we haven't tried to spread our own satire based slander about Glenn Beck's...shall we say...personal peccadilloes, but while we merely wonder if he's getting a little too close to Orycteropus afer, the purveyors of this new site are just looking to confirm a rumour. I mean they aren't actually accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990, they're just asking him to deny the allegations that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. They're just trying to get to the bottom of an important manner (Glenn possibly raping and murdering a young girl in 1990) in much the same way Glenn and his ilk do. But apparently he feels the need to squash this journalistic endeavor.

The site went up on September 1 and had a huge spike of initial interest—it served more than 120,000 page loads in the first 24 hours. By September 3, lawyers for Beck's media company, Mercury Radio Arts, had contacted the domain registrar demanding that the "highly defamatory domain name" glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com be deleted, that the WhoisGuard privacy protection service be revoked, and that the owner's contact information be turned over to the lawyers.

Registrar NameCheap didn't do this, of course, and Beck's lawyers sent another letter the next day, making the same demands. They also showed that they were reading the website: "We also note that it appears you contacted the individual, as he states on his website hosted on the Defamatory Domain that 'my webhost is taking some flak over this website, so if he gets shuts me down, it may take a bit to get rehosted.'"
...
Beck's lawyers also filed a case with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Switzerland, the group which handles the worldwide domain dispute resolution process, on the grounds that the new website was improperly using Glenn Beck's trademarked name.

Yes, he trademarked his name. And his thuggish tactics to shut down this simple inquiry into whether or not he actually did rape and murder a young girl in 1990 seemed to have worked, with the site down as we speak. It's as if Glenn's lawyers raped and murdered this site, much like a young girl that may or may not have been raped and murdered in 1990.

The site clearly states they didn't think Glenn raped and murdered a young girl in 1990 and that they thought he was innocent of the charges that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990, they just wanted him to respond to the allegations that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. We here a These Bastards agree. While we certainly don't believe Mr. Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990 (a young aardvark? maybe) we think it's important that he address and disprove these rumors that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. I'm sure it's as simple as getting a copy of a birth certificate.

This changes nothing

Remember last month when we formally issued articles outlining a Declaration of Hate on the Dating A Banker Anonymous (DABA) support group? While the entire sordid enterprise absolutely reeked of scam, we dove headfirst into the hatefest because, well, this is New York and the notion was not the least bit far-fetched. Turns out the Times done been had.

Editors' Note: February 25, 2009
An article on Jan. 28 about women who commiserated over dating Wall Street bankers caught in the financial crisis described a group they had formed, Dating a Banker Anonymous, as a support group. That is the name of their blog. Its creators originally told The Times that about 30 women had participated, but since publication, they have said that all involved were friends. Laney Crowell, one of the women who started the blog, said in the article that it was “very tongue in cheek;” she has since described it as a satire that embellishes true experiences for effect. Had the nature of the blog been made clear at the outset, the article would have described it accordingly, not as a support group.

So it's not a "support group," per se, but rather a blog that "embellishes true experiences." Fuck that. The hate remains. This city becomes more tolerable every time one of these people loses his or her job and has to move the hell out. TB will run no correction, no retraction. Only more hate. Hate hate hate.

Hudson Crash audio

CBS has got a hold of the black box audio recording of the pilots who safely landed the plane in the Hudson. Right now so many people are trying to listen to it that it kind of crashed the audio player they have, so I've decided to provide a partial transcript.

Pilot 1: Alright tower, we're in the air.
Pilot 2: You're going to want to look out for that huge flock of geese over there, maybe pull up a little.
Pilot 1: Shut the fuck up Johnson, shit like that is why you're a co-pilot and not a pilot.
Pilot 2: But sir, the engines...
Pilot 1: 'But sir'. You sound like a fucking woman. These are jet engines. JET ROCKET FUCKING ENGINES! I'll tear these birds up. Who can fly now, animal kingdom? FUCK THESE GEESE! FUCK THESE GEESE! FUCK THESE GEESE!
Pilot 2: Engine 2 is out and it's also on fire.

Now from right before the water landing.

Pilot 2: Don't you think we should get this plane over to LaGuardia for an emergency landing? It's very close, I think we can make it.
Pilot 1: Johnson, I swear to God if you don't give me all the money in your wallet I will smash this plane into a building!
Pilot 2: What the hell is wrong with you?
Pilot 1: Your mother is half Pakistani, they'll just assume you overpowered me on orders from bin Laden. They'll never suspect me, I'm a white man! Your money! NOW!
Pilot 2: Here you fucking lunatic, now try and make it over to LaGuardia.
Pilot 1: Fuck that shit, it's hero time! WAAAAAAAAAATER LAAAAAAANDING! Put on your hip waders Johnson and call my press agent, it's time for a dip.

The audio cuts out after that. Truly a heroic moment.

Deconstructing Dumbo

From artists Thomas Fuchs and Felix Sockwell comes GOP100 - Deconstructing Dumbo a self-published book of 100 variations, deconstructions, attacks, and observations on the Republican logo and the state of the Republican party.

Satire 101 for the New Yorker

Just a tip, New Yorker. If you're going to run a satirical cover stereotyping the nation's first black candidate for President and his wife as every nasty right wing slander that's been thrown at them, replete with Osama bin Laden picture on the wall, with an article entitled 'The Politics of Fear', you might want to put the tagline 'The Politics of Fear' somewhere in giant letters on the cover. So people can overtly tell it's satire about how he's been attacked, not another one worrying if he's some muslim sleeper agent or crazy black separatist (articles which have actually appeared in major newspapers.) Some people were going to be offended no matter what. I think some of the reaction is majorly overblown. But it's best in these situations to make your intent as explicit as possible so no one can easily mistake it.

Another tip, for satire to be effective you need to be showing exactly who the satire is specifically being pointed at. No such thing is being done here. There is no joke on the people who spread such lies, just a drawing depicting everything they say. In a way you've just created the most easily spreadable version of those right wing memes.

Third, you had to explain it. It's defacto bad satire then.

Try harder next time. Just trying to help.