April 02, 2004

PREMIUM SALON

Joe Conason, Yanni Yesterday, Joan St. Boehlert-Goldberg de la Sealey ... all your favourite writers are here at the new, improved, now actually readable Salon!

Posted by Tim Blair at April 2, 2004 02:09 PM
Comments

If I may borrow an Aussie phrase, the Conason "photograph" is spot-on.

Sneering Sidney Blumenthal has nothing on tailgunner Joe.

SMG

Posted by: SteveMG at April 2, 2004 at 02:43 PM

"If there are two things that Salon readers love to do above all else, they are 1) exercising their formidable progressive convictions and 2) being told what to do."

You gotta admit, they've done their homework. Maybe they don't quite capture the wild-eyed, deadly-earnest nature of Salon's Evil = Bush mentality, but that's hard to parody without looking like the real thing. Bravo anyway.

Posted by: Andrew D. at April 2, 2004 at 03:35 PM

YES! YES! Finally! Someone spoofed Zzzzalon!

For a history of Salon nuttiness, click here, here, here or here.

My white whale has been harpooned. I feel strangely joyous ... yet empty.
http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/000097.html

Posted by: Bill at April 2, 2004 at 03:41 PM

Oh man I love it, it's brilliant!

Posted by: Bill at April 2, 2004 at 03:45 PM

I can only ascribe the nearness to which this had me to the copious alcohol flowing through my veins (arteries too - this being a Thursday and thus a training session for Friday's bacchanalia, all elements of my circulatory system are expected to participate in the workout. Step it up there, Islets of Langerhans! Woohoo!)

Posted by: David Gillies at April 2, 2004 at 04:07 PM

It's a spoof?!

Posted by: fidens at April 2, 2004 at 04:45 PM

Hilarious. This part is the best:

http://www.teevee.org/archive/2004/04/01/class-writing.html

Posted by: Johnny at April 2, 2004 at 05:48 PM

I actually read that site for about five minutes before realizing it was a spoof. I was thinking it was an above-average issue. The "midlist fanfic" article was very nearly as unreadable and pretentious as the article it was based on.

Posted by: Ernst Blofeld at April 2, 2004 at 06:28 PM

Even the search page is great, parodying Salon's ultra-crappy internal search engine. The parody of a Salon message board in the "talk" section is good too.

Teevee.org has had a huge and hilarious April Fool's parody page each year since 1997, but this is undoubtedly the best one yet. In 1997, they did an amateur fan page for Warren Littlefield, in 1998 they did a parody of Jeff Jarvis's Entertainment Weekly, in 1999 they did a site announcing that Sony was creating its own crappy new TV network, in 2000 they did a parody of a personalized AOL web portal, in 2001 they did a parody of a do-gooder organization agitating for better television programming, in 2002 they did a newspaper (based on the NY Times site design) in which TV characters are real people, and in 2003 they did a parody of ABC (the American one, not the Australian one) announcing a move to an all-reality-show lineup.

For comparison, this is the sort of look Teevee.org has on normal days.

Posted by: Combustible Boy at April 2, 2004 at 10:36 PM

Thanks for those links, Combustible Boy - I love the "Better TV" one, especially the "Paper Menace" section. To my chagrin, though, I actually agree with them on one thing, and that's favouring "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" over "Forever." I hated "Forever"; complete glurge. (Though if you're going to be watching Buffy for advice on first sexual encounters, you'll probably wait awhile; at least in the early seasons, the watchword seems to be "Go ahead and do it, but a season's worth of trauma, stalking, wild regrets and attempted murder will result.")

Posted by: Sonetka at April 3, 2004 at 07:38 AM

The Conason parody reads like a not-very-well-written ASP program that strings together random clichés and invectives. I had to refresh the screen just to make sure.

Conason should rehire one of the hundreds of programmers that Salon had to lay off, and get him to write one of those ASP programs. Then every week he could feed in a few headlines, hit the "rant" button, and spend the rest of the week sipping mochas.

(Another point: back in the late '90's, I *loved* Salon. I'd read it every day. Sometime around 2000, they went Loonie Left and then demanded a fee for access. No more Salon for me. Good riddance.)

Posted by: David Ross at April 5, 2004 at 05:15 PM