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Fake New York Times

By Andrew Raff, Esq.

In a large scale operation, a 14 page "July 4, 2009" edition of "The New York Times" was distributed around New York this morning. Is this parodic?

There's also an Online version (which is not loading for me).

The Times reports on the spoof, Liberal Pranksters Hand Out Times Spoof: "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.

Romanesko posted a press release from the people behind the distribution, "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."

Gawker links this to the Yes Men, "The email address that sent out this message was linked to the site of The Yes Men, longtime liberal prank group that has been doing things just as complex and finely tuned as this for years. The Yes Men run the Because We Want It site, through which they set up this prank. They wanted to be anonymous for a while allegedly, but too late." (The Yes Men site is not loading now.)

In addition to articles like "Bush Resumes Golf Game" and "High Speed Internet Hits Fast Track to Appalachia," this edition of "All the News We Hope to Print" includes "ads" for Monsanto, KBR, ExxonMobil, DeBeers, GM, McDonalds, and New York subway advertising icon Dr. Zizmor.

Daniel Radosh, Obama's first unforgivable act, "After eight years of the Onion and the Daily Show and Colbert and too many books and blogs to name, the old saw that liberals had no sense of humor had finally been banished. And then today, in the first big humor statement of the Obama era, the Yes Men produce a New York Times parody that actually parodies nothing but — quite unintentionally — dreary socialist agitprop."

Full post as published by IPTAblog on November 12, 2008 (boomark / email).