Fun_People Archive
31 Oct
Tasty Bits from TBTF for 10/30/95 - Satire Online

Date: Tue, 31 Oct 95 12:32:42 -0800
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Tasty Bits from TBTF for 10/30/95 - Satire Online


Excerpted-from: TBTF for 10/30/95
	(TBTF = "Tasty Bits from the Technology Front")
By: dawson@world.std.com (Keith Dawson)


An update from Brooks Talley's "Satire Online" project. For those of you
who weren't tuned in to TBTF for 9/3/95, Brooks is the perpetrator of a
number of bogus and highly amusing political Web pages. For the full story
see <http://www.atria.com/~dawson/tbtf/archive/0037.html>. Here is Brooks
recounting how his spoof has recently, inadvertently, ensnared America
Online:

> Since September 25th, AOL has had a link somewhere encouraging members to
> send suggestions about the federal budget crisis to Bill Clinton, Newt
> Gingrich, and Bob Dole. AOL even provided a convenient form for members
> to do so. Clinton's mail went to Bill's real email address, as did Newt's.
> Dole's, however, went to aiken@dole96.org, our spoof address.

> When we started getting 4 or 5 "Federal Budget Suggestions" a day, we
> set up an auto-reply, which sent back a brief but twisted response
> (appended below).

> This went on until October 25th, when AOL moved this "Federal Budget
> Suggestion" link to their news "Top Story". Since Wednesday we've
> received over 1000 of these suggestions, and mailed back over a 1000 of
> these responses.

The auto reply follows.

> Thank you for your suggestions regarding the Federal Budget. As an
> important senator, and a candidate for President, it is important that I
> appear to care about your opinion.

> Unfortunately, there are a lot of suggestions coming in every day. It
> is not possible to review each one personally, but a select few are
> brought to my attention.

> The main problem that I have with most people's suggestions are that
> they involve cutting expenditures. Let's face it: if we cut the
> Democrats' pet projects, then they'll go after ours. If not today, then
> sometime soon.

> The only way the Federal Budget process can work is if both sides
> support each other and avoid partisan bickering over what projects to
> cut, by mutually agreeing not to cut anything substantive.

> Again, thank you for your input.

© 1995 Peter Langston