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YesMen still on the rampage

By Bruce Sterling EmailNovember 12, 2008 | 12:52:43 PM

(((Oh gosh golly gee.)))

http://www.nytimes-se.com/

(((I've met the YesMen, and I wouldn't call 'em "liberals," unless you think that wild-eyed yippie Abbie Hoffman was some kinda running buddy of liberal Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller.)))

(((Remember "liberal Republicans"? Wow, a few of them would be really handy right now, wouldn't they? There's not a "gypsy moth" left alive and in office in the entire American Northeast.)))

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/pranksters-spoof-the-times Link: Liberal Pranksters Hand Out Times Spoof - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com.

Updated, 11:20 a.m. | Sorry, folks, the paper isn’t free. And the Iraq war isn’t over, at least not yet.

In an elaborate hoax, pranksters distributed thousands of free copies of a spoof edition of The New York Times on Wednesday morning at busy subway stations around the city, including Grand Central Terminal, Washington and Union Squares, the 14th and 23rd Street stations along Eighth Avenue, and Pacific Street in Brooklyn, among others.

The spurious 14-page papers — with a headline “IRAQ WAR ENDS” — surprised commuters, many of whom took the free copies thinking they were legitimate.

The paper is dated July 4, 2009, and imagines a liberal utopia of national health care, a rebuilt economy, progressive taxation, a national oil fund to study climate change, and other goals of progressive politics.

The hoax was accompanied by a Web site that mimics the look of The Times’s real Web site. A page of the spoof site contained links to dozens of progressive organizations, which were also listed in the print edition.

(A headline in the fake business section declares: “Public Relations Industry Forecasts a Series of Massive Layoffs.” Uh, sure.)

Gawker is reporting that the prank looks like the work of the liberal pranksters known as the Yes Men, who were the subject of a 2004 documentary film.

Later on Wednesday morning, the Yes Men issued a statement claiming credit for the prank. The statement said, in part:

In an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million papers were printed at six different presses and driven to prearranged pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers stood ready to pass them out on the street.

Catherine J. Mathis, a Times spokeswoman, said: “This is obviously a fake issue of The Times. We are in the process of finding out more about it.”

Alex S. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a co-author of “The Trust,” a history of the family that controls The Times, said in a telephone interview that the paper should be flattered by the spoof.

“I would say if you’ve got one, hold on to it,” Mr. Jones, a former Times reporter, said of the fake issue. “It will probably be a collector’s item. I’m just glad someone thinks The New York Times print edition is worthy of an elaborate hoax. A Web spoof would have been infinitely easier. But creating a print newspaper and handing it out at subway stations? That takes a lot of effort.”...


EDITOR: Bruce Sterling
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