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On Wednesday, 1000 volunteers in USA handed out 1.2 million copies of a spoof of The New York Times, dated July 4, 2009. It was simply an attempt to get people to think and demand more from their government and legislators.

Here’s a short list of ideas:

• wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ended
• global warming, health care spending and the economy’s problems are on their way of being solved
• abolition of corporate lobbying
• maximum wage for CEOs
• recall for all gasoline-fuelled cars

And there’s more:

Sassoon said the project started about six months ago, when "a little group of journalists were sitting around having a beer."

The group posted a small notice on Craigslist soliciting volunteer writers and others to help. The fake paper was printed at presses around the country and The Yes Men, a New York-based prankster group, provided software and Internet support.

The group said it spent less than $100,000 US on the effort.

The lead story appears beneath the headlines "Iraq War Ends" and "Troops to Return Immediately." Another story declares, "Nation Sets Its Sights on Building Sane Economy."

The writers' political perspective is clear, from their twist on the Times' own motto "All the news that's fit to print" — "All the news we hope to print" — to a story that has "former" Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitting the Bush administration knew well before the 2003 Iraq invasion that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.

There are even fake ads, including one for a South African diamond company promising that a purchase of a diamond "will help fund the creation, fitting and maintenance of a prosthetic for an African whose hand was lost in one of the continent's brutal conflicts over diamonds."

It's not the first time the venerable newspaper has been parodied.

One spoof came out during the 1978 newspaper strike and another on April Fools' Day in 1999. The second was printed by British business tycoon Sir Richard Branson and titled "I Can't Believe It's Not The New York Times."

Wouldn’t it be nice?

Source: CBC

Overheard,prank, spoof, new york times, journalists, wishlist, obama

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