Dependable Erection

Thursday, December 06, 2007

On a related note, in yesterday's New York Times, Thomas Friedman did a "speculative" version of the "Iranian National Intelligence Estimate of America" - in other words, what Iranian intelligence services might think of us. It's satire of the first order. Among other gems, it contains this line:

For instance, CNN’s nightly business report is hosted by a man named “Dobbs.” Real journalists come on his show and present transparently propagandistic stories about immigration and trade and then he fulminates about them, much the way our ayatollahs used to do about “Satanic Americans” on late-night Iranian TV. So viewers have no real idea what’s happening in the U.S. economy.

Meanwhile, at 11 p.m., something called “The Daily Show,” which appears on Comedy Central, has fake journalists presenting what turns out to be the real news.

It's a sign of trouble when satire becomes reality. My greatest fear is that The Onion will soon become irrelevant, because they won't be able to come up with anything more bizarre than the real news.

By Anonymous, at 6:27 PM
Friedman is such a moron that even when he gets it right i can't give him any credit.

By Barry, at 6:50 PM
CNN could do what Chloe Sevigny's character in Last Days of Disco did; quickly repackage the project as pure fiction and just market it differently. Then again, I'm not sure what makes this so different than their other reporting.

By Phillip Barron, at 9:34 PM