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The Onion Has Landed
"In a complex world, you need TV news that's faster... harder... scarier... all-knowing."
With those bold words, satirical website The Onion launched its latest campaign to put only the finest fake news into the hands of web users everywhere: the streaming vidcast-based Onion News Network.
According to their website, "The Onion News Network has set the standard for globe-encompassing 24-hour television news since it was founded in December, 1892. The network boasts channels in 171 languages and can be viewed in 4.2 billion households in 811 countries." With a strictly fact-based approach like that, they're bound to be at least as fair and balanced as Faux News already is.
The ONN service was officially launched only this morning, so there are just a few of their tongue-in-cheek parodies of the typical 24-hour cable news show segments on their website so far. The Onion plans to add more video clips to the site at the rate of two per week, and they encourage viewers to embed the growing list of feeds in their own web pages much the same way that YouTube does.
The production quality of the ONN videos available so far is quite high across the board. The writing is somewhat less consistent, but at its best it is wickedly funny stuff. Hard-core MSM critics like the people who read and post here at the Democracy Cell Project ought to have a field day with The Onion News Network's satiric fake-news videos. After all, with timely stories like this to choose from, what's not to like?
It's not all fun and games at the ONN, though. The people behind The Onion take their silliness seriously, and they are putting a solid business model in place as part of this new parody-video service. As this AP story explains,
The Onion's network will start out with two new video clips per week, supported by ads. An in-house staff of eight people will work on the videos, which have a professional look to them despite the buffoonery being discussed, such as a top-level technology executive who is forced to sell his estate and take a job managing a TGI Friday's after his job goes to an illegal immigrant.
[...]
While the subject matter of the videos is sure to be funny, based on samples reviewed ahead of the launch, it's also a real business that a number of advertisers have already signed up for, including Dewar's Scotch, Hyundai and Red Stripe Beer. Mills said he expects the online video operation to become profitable by the end of the year.
All this comes as The Onion's print publications continue to expand. In early April it will launch an edition in Washington, its 11th, bringing its total weekly circulation to just over 700,000. The Washington Post Co. (WPO) is providing printing, distribution and help with advertising sales in the Washington edition in exchange for a share of revenue.
Its print publications remain profitable, but The Onion is moving more and more toward the Web, where it now draws about 60 percent of its advertising revenue versus 40 percent from print, about the reverse of where it was four years ago, Mills said.
Will The Onion News Network take off and turn into the satiric equivalent of YouTube? Time will tell. But if the early segments are any indication, they ought to be very popular among the politically-oriented viral-video cognoscenti with a sense of humor -- like us here at the DCP, for example. Take a look at the following piece of ONN fake-news video and you can decide for yourselves:
Rick,
Thanks for writing about this. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known.
This ONN thing is awesome!
It's ironic having the Bush administration in office for 2 terms be the equivalent to the parody world of hitting oil... and gold...
I'll be a mothershucker.
Ok, this is breaking news, and not funny, no matter what...
The growth removed from presidential spokesman Tony Snow’s abdomen is cancerous and has spread to his liver, according to the White House.
Posted by: monkey at March 27, 2007 10:01 AM
It's very sad. And I hope people give him the space and respect (time) whatever he needs to do to deal with this.
I wish they'd have the same generousity towards E.E. and others too.
Of course, I wish that all of us had the same access to health care that Mr. Snow enjoys.
Tillman's family wants a Congressional investigation. They don't trust the Pentagon's version.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17810007/?GT1=9145
While surfing, I discovered this rant:
http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/pol/301247921.html
And on another note: Ordinary customers flagged as terrorists
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17804809/
Of course, I wish that all of us had the same access to health care that Mr. Snow enjoys.
Posted by: sparrow at March 27, 2007 10:39 AM
Thank you!
Posted by: sparrow at March 27, 2007 10:53 AM
Not surprising, given that the definition of "terrorist" is so broad as to include anyone who even remotely opposes W's own terrorist plans.
So much for the greater efficiencies of the private sector:
March 26, 2007
Aged, Frail and Denied Care by Their Insurers
By CHARLES DUHIGG
CONRAD, Mont. — Mary Rose Derks was a 65-year-old widow in 1990, when she began preparing for the day she could no longer care for herself. Every month, out of her grocery fund, she scrimped together about $100 for an insurance policy that promised to pay eventually for a room in an assisted living home.
On a May afternoon in 2002, after bouts of hypertension and diabetes had hospitalized her dozens of times, Mrs. Derks reluctantly agreed that it was time. She shed a few tears, watched her family pack her favorite blankets and rode to Beehive Homes, five blocks from her daughter’s farm equipment dealership.
At least, Mrs. Derks said at the time, she would not be a financial burden on her family.
But when she filed a claim with her insurer, Conseco, it said she had waited too long. Then it said Beehive Homes was not an approved facility, despite its state license. Eventually, Conseco argued that Mrs. Derks was not sufficiently infirm, despite her early-stage dementia and the 37 pills she takes each day.
After more than four years, Mrs. Derks, now 81, has yet to receive a penny from Conseco, while her family has paid about $70,000. Her daughter has sent Conseco dozens of bulky envelopes and spent hours on the phone. Each time the answer is the same: Denied.
Tens of thousands of elderly Americans have received life-prolonging care as a result of their long-term-care policies. With more than eight million customers, such insurance is one of the many products that companies are pitching to older Americans reaching retirement.
Yet thousands of policyholders say they have received only excuses about why insurers will not pay. Interviews by The New York Times and confidential depositions indicate that some long-term-care insurers have developed procedures that make it difficult — if not impossible — for policyholders to get paid. A review of more than 400 of the thousands of grievances and lawsuits filed in recent years shows elderly policyholders confronting unnecessary delays and overwhelming bureaucracies. In California alone, nearly one in every four long-term-care claims was denied in 2005, according to the state.
- more -
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/business/26care.html
Posted by: Cyrano at March 27, 2007 12:01 PM
Capitalism is all about ideology over people.
Just like communism.
Posted by: Ally McRepuke at March 27, 2007 12:06 PM
Capitalism has it's time and it's place.
Healthcare is the wrong time and wrong place!
Op-Ed Contributor
Pakistan’s Silent Majority Is Not to Be Feared
By MOHSIN HAMID
London
I WAS one of the few Pakistanis who actually voted for Gen. Pervez Musharraf in the rigged referendum of 2002. I recall walking into a polling station in Islamabad and not seeing any other voter. When I took the time required to read the convoluted ballot, I was accosted by a man who had the overbearing attitude of a soldier although he was in civilian clothes. He insisted that I hurry, which I refused to do. He then hovered close by, watching my every action, in complete defiance of electoral rules.
Despite this intimidation, I still voted in favor of the proposition that General Musharraf, who had seized power in a coup in 1999, should continue as Pakistan’s president for five more years. I believed his rule had brought us much-needed stability, respite from the venal and self-serving elected politicians who had misgoverned Pakistan in the 1990s, and a more free and vibrant press than at any time in the country’s history.
The outcome of the referendum — 98 percent support for General Musharraf from an astonishing 50 percent turnout — was so obviously false that even he felt compelled to disown the exercise.
Rigged elections rankle, of course. But since then, secular, liberal Pakistanis like myself have seen many benefits from General Musharraf’s rule. My wife was an actress in “Jutt and Bond,” a popular Pakistani sitcom about a Punjabi folk hero and a debonair British agent. Her show was on one of the many private television channels that have been permitted to operate in the country, featuring everything from local rock music to a talk show whose host is a transvestite.
My sister, a journalism lecturer in Lahore, loves to tell me about the enormous growth in recent years in university financing, academic salaries and undergraduate enrollment. And my father, now retired but for much of his career a professor of economics, says he has never seen such a dynamic and exciting time in Pakistani higher education.
But there have been significant problems under General Musharraf, too. Pakistan has grown increasingly divided between the relatively urban and prosperous regions that border India and the relatively rural, conservative and violent regions that border Afghanistan. The two mainstream political parties have historically bridged that divide and vastly outperformed religious extremists in free elections, but under General Musharraf they have been marginalized in a system that looks to one man for leadership.
What many of us hoped was that General Musharraf would build up the country’s neglected institutions before eventually handing over power to a democratically elected successor. Those hopes were dealt a serious blow two weeks ago, when he suspended the chief justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.
- more -
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/opinion/27mohsin.html
FIRING OF U.S. ATTORNEY IN MICHIGAN:
Replaced by Bushie flunkies?:
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The U.S. Department of Justice has announced two interim replacements for Margaret M. Chiara. The former U.S. attorney served a district that encompasses the western half of the Lower Peninsula and all the Upper Peninsula.
Brian K. Delaney will serve as interim U.S. attorney until mid-April, when Charles R. Gross will succeed him, the department said Monday. Gross will remain in the post until Chiara’s permanent replacement is nominated by President Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Delaney has served as the district’s criminal chief since January 2006 and has been an assistant attorney for the district since 1989. Before joining the prosecutor’s office, he was a special agent with the FBI from 1983-89.
Gross is on active duty in the Marine Corps, where he holds the rank of colonel. He was recalled to active duty last June for service in Operation Iraqi Freedom and from August through February served as the principal U.S. military liaison between the coalition forces and the governor of the Anbar Province in Iraq.
He served as the district’s first assistant U.S. attorney from January 2005 until last June.
Chiara was one of eight U.S. attorneys forced out of office since December. Her last day on the job was Friday.
In the dispute over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, the Justice Department on Monday released 3,000 pages of e-mails.
Among the e-mails was one Chiara wrote on Feb. 1 to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty. McNulty. “Why have I been asked to resign?” she asked.
cont.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070320/NEWS06/70320006
Cancer is in the news lately - as high profile people come down with it. A co-worker (who had cancer scare last year) just told me that our old boss has a lymphoma, metastasized to the brain - just our age. Another ex co-worker has a husband with cancer in the roof of the mouth, very bad.
Enjoy every day! We should be so grateful for our health. Every one should have medical care and a decent basic standard of living. Even money and celebrity cannot insulate people from medical conditions that are not well understood and we are humbled sometimes when we witness this. It also reinforces the need for early intervention.
Posted by: not my president at March 27, 2007 12:59 PM
My wife and I have been surrounded by it lately, so many friends, contemporaries... scares the hell out of me.
This is the time on Shprockets when we dance...
The Katie Couric interview of Elizabeth Edwards has apparently become a hot topic on the blogs - with Couric mostly being taken to task for her questions. One poster over the Times "The Caucus" blog brought up an interesting comparison - Dick Cheney's heart.
If we're supposed to be skeptical of John and Elizabeth Edwards' decision to continue their camapign, what are we to think of a Vice-President with, medically speaking, perhaps the worst heart in Presidential history spending his remaining days on earth seeking to subvert the United States Constitution, restore the Imperial Presidency, and rehabilitate the reputation of torture as a tool of statecraft? What kind of dark ambition is driving him???????
What kind of dark ambition is driving him???????
Posted by: Matthew Carnicelli at March 27, 2007 01:29 PM
That is a HELL of a good question.
Then again, the same could be asked of Katie Couric.
Someone told me troll-rated comments at Kos were wishing Tony Snow ill, talking about being Raptured up, etc. Don't those people know it's just as petty as what Katie Couric did? I keep thinking of Jim Morrison screaming "You can not petition the Lord with prayer." Cancer is an interaction of stress, genetics & environment and there are many types and no one is immune. Bush said to pray. That may or may not help. With cancer, we are all equal, and with war too.
Death is the great equalizer and we can run, we can hide, we may outsmart it for a while but the Grim Reaper will get us. We need more Mexican "Day of the Dead" humor about it. We need more Buddhistic perceptions about the transitoriness of it all, or Hindu ideas about the Great Wheel of Life and cycles to put it all in perspective, not just the actually quite similar perspectives of Christian Judao Islamic religion (all fairly recent offshoots of a single line of thought).
Wishing illness on others is about as low as you can go, so let's not dwell on that scuzz.
Wishing justice on others is another story.
Here's to another story.
Wishing illness on others is about as low as you can go, so let's not dwell on that scuzz.
Posted by: monkey at March 27, 2007 02:45 PM
Unless we are talking about the likes of Reverend Moon, out to turn America into a primitive third-world country just like his Korean homeland.
I want him DEAD. NOW.
Posted by: Cyrano at March 27, 2007 12:01 PM
This confirms my opinion of insurance companies. They are a legal scam operation, especially in circumstances like that one.
I gladly yield the balance of my time to Rep. McRepuke.
Reason #4012 why I want to get the hell out of this state...
McCain draws praise from Florida's Crist
Cites candidates bipartisanship, straight talk and independent thinking
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17817662/from/RS.3/
Hey Zeus Crist!
Posted by: monkey at March 27, 2007 03:52 PM
Christ needs a history lesson and a grammer lesson.
In a historical sense, McCain HAD a history of bipartisonship. BUT in RECENT history, he has a RECORD of self-servingship.
Posted by: sparrow at March 27, 2007 04:01 PM
See how it easy it is to elevate him to Christ!?!?
Sheeps don't flail me now!
Posted by: monkey at March 27, 2007 03:52 PM
I understand Florida is looking really horrible, but I am sorry to inform you that even "blue states" like California aren't all that much better.
I live in a blue state, but between reactionary third-world immigrants and tons of W ovals and religious fundamentalism, it surely doesn't feel like it.
monkey:
All we need is a tall sheep, and a star to shear her by.
Posted by: monkey at March 27, 2007 04:07 PM
Ha ha ha!
Posted by: monkey at March 27, 2007 04:07 PM
Maybe that's why so many people voted for him...they thought he was Christ on their ballot. And God only knows but it takes a miracle to save us from what these people have done!
Sparrow... There was never a doubt in my mind that those "Crist" stickers & billboards worked wonders on the skullery of many who shall remain lameness.
Impeachment on Fox News:
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Oped_Impeachment_threat_real_0327.html
President Bush isolated:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/25/AR2007032500912.html
Attorney's firings links to Bush
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/3/19/12148/2763
And this great picture of Fitz and Gonzo
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x516271
Lawmakers fault veterans’ care under Bush
Acting Army surgeon general airs concerns about morale, funding
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Army’s new acting surgeon general said Tuesday she is concerned about long-term morale because the military lacks money to hire enough nurses and mental health specialists to treat thousands of troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
“When the original plans were made, we did not take into consideration we could be in a long war,” said Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock. She became surgeon general earlier this month after Kevin Kiley was forced to resign in a scandal over poor treatment of war-wounded at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
“We have not been able to do the hiring,” Pollock told a House Armed Services subcommittee.
She testified at the first of two congressional hearings Tuesday on veterans care during which lawmakers expressed impatience with the Bush administration’s efforts. They said years of communication gaps between the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments have yet to be fixed.
Testimony from officials from the two departments highlighted the difficulties that lie ahead for the Bush administration in fixing problems following reports of shoddy outpatient treatment and bureaucratic delays at Walter Reed, one of the Army’s premier facilities for treating the injured.
Since the disclosures last month, three high-level Pentagon officials have been forced to step down. Some Democrats also have questioned whether VA Secretary Jim Nicholson, a former Republican National Committee chairman, is up to the job of revitalizing the veterans care system.
more...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17818750/
Posted by: not my president at March 27, 2007 12:59 PM
Actually, some primitive immigrants are telling me that mandatory healthcare is NOT necessary, for the precise same reasons - some people will get ill no matter what.
I told them to go pack their bags, go back to their primitive homelands, and never mess with America again.
Breaking: Senate votes to keep a non-binding call for a troop withdrawal deadline in an Iraq war spending bill, despite GOP efforts to kill it and a White House promise to veto it.
Posted by: monkey at March 27, 2007 05:45 PM
From FDL:
Chuck Hagel and Gordon Smith: "No" (voted with the Democrats)
Mark Pryor: "Yes" (voted with CFL)
Harry Reid: "In this chamber is Joe Lieberman and there isn't a senator I have more respect for than Joe Lieberman."
Yeas 48, Nays 50. The amendment is not agreed to.
Somebody explain this to me in plain English, please!
http://mike.newsvine.com/_news/2007/03/26/633799-hacking-john-mccain
Oh..now this is MUST SEE tv!
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002889.php
Gonzales running from questions.
** new thread **
(And a very timely one it is, too...)
Why isn't Monica Gootling being ofered Transactional Immunity in exchange for his Senate Testimony? It seems tom , that if a crime has been committed, and she has key knowledge how that crime has been committed, her testimony before Congress is vital enough to offer her immunity in return for her full and complete testimony. As a defense lawyer I am sure that is exactly what her lawyers are attempting to extract and since she is apparently was at a low level employee in comparison to higher up potential targets that Lehey is looking at, that an offer of transactional Immunity, by Senator Lehey may result in obtaining exactly the testimony we are all hoping for.