Fun_People Archive
20 Jul
A chance to make a difference. [?]

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 99 13:02:00 -0700
To: Fun_People
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Subject: A chance to make a difference. [?]

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From: "Brooks Talley" <Brooks_Talley@infoworld.com>

A friend and I have the whitehouse.org domain name, and it's getting to be
that time again. Last election cycle we ran a series of parody sites
(buchanan96.org, dole96.org, wilson96.org, whitehouse.org/clinton96.org,
and several others). We worked hard and (I think) did a good job; we got
press coverage everywhere from the NYTimes to CNN to a newspaper from Asia
(whose name I don't recall, though they were kind enough to send us
clippings which we have no hope of ever reading). We even received a cease
and desist letter from the Dole Fruit Company, and many pleading/threatening
phone calls from the campaigns themselves.

This year, we've got several small businesses in addition to day jobs, a
band (in theory), and numerous other little projects. Sometimes we even eat.
We want to concentrate on whitehouse.org, and make it the central site for
campaign parody in this election cycle. It will be a nonpartisan (or,
rather, antipartisan) site, skewering all those who so richly deserve it,
be they Republicrat, Demoblican, Perot Loony Party, or even the Dogmatic
Libertarians. Like last time, the flavor will be absurd while still trying
to achieve actual social commentary ("Pete Wilson proposes combining
schools, jails")

We've got unlimited server space and bandwidth (well, as near as can be).
We've got 24 hour monitoring, maintenance, and all sorts of good
infrastructure. We've got a database backend, Front Page/Interdev
extensions, etc. We can provide secure remote access. I imagine we'll even
find the time to write, some. What we need is volunteer project managers/
webmasters/writers/artists/etc to help bring it together and keep it rolling
through the next 18 months or so.

Any volunteers?

-b

© 1999 Peter Langston