Ramblings' Journal

On the rare occasion when I'm wrong, I DO own up to it...

After several e-mails (and a phone call or three) from folks telling me how stupid and gullible I am, I've gotta come clean.

The London News Review (originator of the "Zell Miller's gonna burn in Hell" piece Thursday) is a satirical newspaper not unlike The Onion.

The LNR is a collective of writers, artists, hacks, satirists, critics, comedians and commentators. We have all sorts of complimentary skills, a bit like the X-Men, but only one of us is a mutant. We are a generally happy bunch, except when paralysed by anxiety and depression, and often socialize together, occasionally out of choice.

So what do we actually do? Well, as the name London News Review suggests, we do quite a lot of news reviewing, and we like talking about music and books and basketball and the other day we sent a letter to Ofcom, complaining about the Gillette advertisements where the men shave at super-speed, pointing out that if people shaved at that velocity they would cause themselves serious injury, and possibly death.

So yes, we are politically active; but to be honest, we have such a radical spread of political beliefs that we pretty much cancel each out.

So, yes. I was wrong about the article being serious. It was clearly a satire from a batch of clearly talented satirists.

That being said, what's scary is that there are many on the left (see Democratic Underground, Indymedia and other sites) who do have beliefs that fall in that line. Not only that, but I've been told by more than one Briton in more than one forum, about President Bush's brand of "evil," and by extension, the "evil" of the United States.

So you can see how easy it was for me to take this article as "truth."

Ultimately, if I ticked anyone off, I'm sorry.