Paradigm shift: The editorial staff of Pensito Review was shocked, simply shocked at the New York Times headline, “U.S. Is Said to Pay to Plant Articles in Iraq Papers.” It got our hack hackles up and our journalistic integrities all in a twist to think that the Department of Defense was paying to plant “news” stories in Iraqi papers in order to win the hearts and minds of those Iraqi citizens we haven’t bombed or shot yet.
We agreed with the notion that psychlogical operations, or PSYOPS, is way too important to leave to the Pentagon, whose approach to winning hearts and minds is to attach electrical wires to the genitals directly below the hearts and minds. But employing a public relations firm to serve up storyboards along with fistfuls of cash to harried editors on the Baghdad city desk was just plain wrong.
Or so we thought — until the paradigm shift. In a Rumsfeld-like epiphany, we saw the light. Instead of posting snarky, slanted screeds of suspect accuracy about the right-wing crooks running the country and the neocon nutjobs who support them, we thought, why not take cash to place nice articles about Repugs and thereby allow the conservatives to sway the hearts and minds of Pensito Review’s gullible librul readers?
So, we eliminated the middle man — the PR guy — and henceforth will take submissions and money orders directly from any right-wingers who want to preach their atavistic drivel to an enlightened and intelligent readership.
As part of our, let’s call it a “media kit,” we’ve even come up with a few sample story ideas that we think will appeal to our new customers out there:
“One State, Two State, Red State, Blue State,” by George Bush
“How to Care for a New Kitten,” by Dick Cheney
“Media Relations 101: A Primer,” by Scooter Libby
“I Meant WD-40, not WMD,” by Judith Miller
“When an Insurgent Is Not an Insurgent: Applied Military Lexicography,” by Donald Rumsfeld
If you can think of others, please post them as Comments, since we need all the sales tools we can get to achieve our profit … I mean PSYOPS goals.
Bwhahahah!!!!
Thank you, I needed that today, best snark I read all day.
Come on, fellas. What did you expect? Jeez, Bush and company have been telling US reporters what to write, how to write it, when to write it for six years now and almost the entire US press has bent over and asked Bush only–IS that far enough? So, now that they do this in Iraq, in occupied, unfree, forced to be democratic Iraq you all get hot and bothered. Jeez. Cut us a break, stop this corny moaning and groaning.