NYTimes Spoof Creates Laughs... and At Least One Howl

Web site joker.com - which is in the domain name registration business - recently launched a parody of a New York Times online edition (dateline "Saturday, July 4, 2009") that includes plenty of lefty new utopian "news" and "ads."

An American Apparel ad, for example, features the usual scantily clad woman (with breasts tastefully covered) in an ad that says "We've been very, very Naughty. But now we're unionizing our employees." At which point the model suddenly has a picket sign in hand that cries "I have a Voice, too!" And an ad for a Manhattan dermatologist says "for the price of the best tattoo removal in NYC, you can now rebuild a classroom in Iraq."

Well, not all of the satire is appreciated, apparently. DeBeers, those wonderful folks who bring us diamonds from (some think) African trouble spots, seems to have little sense of humor. MediaPost has the whole story on the DeBeers cease and desist order.

Meanwhile, Electronic Frontier Foundation (full disclosure, I'm a member) has it's lawyers on the job arguing against censorship and for free speech.