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ZCPortal
Publisher Interviewed in The Guardian (U.K.)
We’re very pleased to report that ZCPortal (and Broken Newz)
Publisher Bill Doty was interviewed in this past Sunday’s
Guardian (U.K.). Below is the text of the interview:
Clicking and Screaming:
If It's Intelligent War Satire You 're After, Forget Stand-Up
Comedians and Magazines, Says Bobbie Johnson - Websites Have
Taken Their Position On The Comic Front Line
Sunday April 27 2003
The Observer
War, we are always told, is not a funny thing. After a month of
current affairs dominated by war in the deserts of Iraq, legions
of parched stand-up comics and gag merchants have been left
scratching desperately for material that doesn't stray too close
to the bone. Appropriately enough for these blackest of times,
it is the dark edges of comedy that have stood up to be counted.
People are looking to satire to provide laughs when the chips
are down. But to find some of the best examples, you need not
trek down to your local comedy club - just switch on your
computer.
The grandaddy of web satire is, of course, the Onion. Started in
1988 in Wisconsin as a print newspaper, it grew steadily before
launching a companion website, theonion.com, in 1996.The site,
updated weekly, now draws more than five million readers each
month and the operation has extended to books and syndicated
daily radio slots. Along with US sites like Modern Humorist (modernhumorist.com),
the Onion dominates the market.
Bill Doty's site, Brokennewz. com, is one of many that take
their lead from the Onion in parodying news stories. It 's a
mere stripling by comparison, having run for nearly 18 months.
For Doty, like many others, satire helps to sweeten the bitter
pill of news. "I think Julie Andrews said it best, " he says.
"'A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.' Someone told
me that 70% of college students get their news from humour-related
sources. It's much easier to absorb the horrors of today if they
are laced with comedy."
Doty's is just one of a host of sites that have grown out of
recent political turmoil, but just because you're small, it
doesn't mean your voice isn't going to be heard. It is Scott Ott
who is credited with coining the phrase "axis of weasels" on his
site, ScrappleFace.com. The 41-year-old writer and editor from
Pennsylvania suddenly discovered that satire and the internet
were a powerful combination. Within hours of posting the phrase
to Scrapple-Face, the "axis of weasels " was rumoured to be
doing the rounds at the Pentagon. Within two days, it had
travelled around the world, culminating in a sensationalist
front page on the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post. Ott
believes that truth lies at the heart of what makes satire
popular. "I get thousands to laugh, and make my point, " he
says. "The king used to have court jesters who would tell them
the truth about their kingdoms while making them laugh - often
at themselves."
Web satirists, like their paper cousins, take particular delight
in ripping the media itself to pieces. This week 's Onion, for
example, features a piece in which veteran political commentator
and journalist Christopher Hitchens is arrested by police in
Tennessee after a drunken trailer-park argument with his
common-law wife. "Noreen was all worked up, accusing him of
drinking and womanising, " says a police officer in the skit.
"He was angry with her refusal to acknowledge that there is
ample evidence to make a case for prosecuting Henry Kissinger as
a war criminal. She just kept shouting, No, there ain't!'"
The cannons had hardly even begun to cool when
welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com appeared, tongue-in-cheek
tribute to bullish Iraqi spin chief Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf.
Less crude, the charmingly parochial Framleyexaminer.com
mercilessly parodies the small concerns and reporting style of
Britain's local newspapers. If the Examiner is the soft, cuddly
end of satire, then Get Your War On (mnftiu.cc) is the hard,
bloodied club of brutal humour. It looks like a simple clip-art
comic strip, but the flat and undescriptive artwork belies a
vitriol that outstrips any of its competitors. It's also one of
the few satire websites that really wears its political opinions
on its sleeve. Author David Rees says that the site's trademark
anger was not planned. "I didn 't sit down and think, 'I need to
come up with a great anti-war tool accessible to thousands of
people,'" he says. "It was really intuitive and angry and it
felt good to be able to say whatever the hell I wanted."
Charlie Brooker, whose satirical TV listings site TV Go Home (tvgohome.com)
is one of Britain's leading humour sites, thinks that the web
reflects people 's real feelings better than other media forms.
"Whether it adds anything, I don 't know - but it is an outlet
for things that you wouldn 't get in the papers or on TV. It
reflects what people are really thinking. " The war in Iraq has
proved a difficult subject for satirists to approach directly.
"A lot of the people who normally say ridiculous things grew
quiet," laments Ott.
For Brooker, too, a former writer for The 11 O 'Clock Show whose
site has spawned a book and even a TV series, the war was a
tricky topic. "I was watching a lot of coverage around the
clock, " he says. "I found it almost predictably nauseating.
Seeing Sky News was like watching 24 through a sieve. When I did
satirise the coverage, it was more like going, 'Bleugh!' than
anything else."
Brooker is not alone in his views. "I have always attempted to
stay away from tragedy," says Broken Newz 's Doty. "But if you
take one step back, you can find parody in their surroundings.
The war has so many tangents."
Getting a message across through the Babel of voices is
difficult at the best of times - and the greatly varying quality
of the satire doesn't help matters. There are thousands of
sites, with new ones springing up daily. It's like an online
open-mike night; they 're certainly not all funny, but every so
often a gem will be uncovered. "Some of it can be very crude,"
says Brooker. "You have to remember that your audience are
likely to be sitting in an uncomfortable chair, playing with a
mouse, their eyes hurt and they've got five minutes while there
's nothing to do. Sometimes you have to just accept that
sledgehammer tactics come into play. "
ScrappleFace 's Scott Ott is similarly bemused by the science of
popularity: often it seems to be nothing more than a case of
writing something and crossing your fingers. "If I have learned
anything, it 's that you never know what will appeal. But as
long as humans are fallible, they will be funny."
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
What’s New in ZCPortal
Please check out my interview with the fantastic British jazz
singer Anita Wardell. And by all means purchase one of her
albums. Ms. Wardell will be performing a weeklong gig next month
at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London (along with Dave Weckl)
which I will be fortunate enough to attend. So keep tuned to
these pages for an upcoming concert review of this exciting
performer.
I’m also going to catch the new hit play Hitchcock Blonde while
I’m in London and I’ll be reviewing that as well.
Also this week, please check out political commentary by Paul
Walfield, a translation of a Rilke poem by Bruce Gatenby and all
of those features that you’ve come to love and expect.
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