De Commerciele Massamedia 205

Desondanks, belastinggeld naar de commerciele massamedia?

Taking Down the Washington Post, One Marshmallow Editor at a Time
Posted by BoRev, AlterNet at 3:36 PM on April 1, 2009.

I decided my diorama would feature the Washington Post's editorial board itself, and poke fun at its increasingly deranged foreign policy positions.

Making a diorama was going to be cathartic. With a desk job and a blog on the side, the amount of time I spend in front of a computer screen is extreme—I’ll be lucky if my eyes hold out till I’m fifty -- so the prospect of spending a couple of weekends with acrylic paint and tacky glue sounded like a healthy outlet for my OCD.

For the past three years, the Washington Post has held a diorama contest made of Peeps, those hilariously inedible neon-colored marshmallow Easter candies with a post-apocalyptic shelf life. The top 30-odd semifinalists get their dioramas published on the Post’s popular website, and this year I was going to get into the game.

The inspiration was the contest host itself. The Washington Post is my hometown newspaper, and I’ve watched its editorial page take a dramatic neoconservative turn in recent years. Whether it be the Iraq War, torture policy, or intervention in Latin America, the once proudly progressive paper of Woodward and Bernstein has developed a foreign policy posture that would rattle Kissinger. It got so bad that two years ago one of the lonely progressives left on the board actually quit in protest.

So! What a great opportunity to have a little fun and have a little fun, right? I decided my diorama would feature the Post’s editorial board itself, and poke fun at its increasingly deranged foreign policy positions.

Still, this is Washington DC, a town where people approach their contests like they approach life: earnestly. My Easter peeps editorial board diorama would have to be pretty awesome just to get into the running. I got to work, cutting 100 popsicle sticks down into miniature tongue-and-groove hardwood floors, staining them (twice!) before laying down the shellac finish. My mom even pitched in from the West Coast, designing little costumes for the Ed Board Peep-le and mailing them to me. In two weeks we’d created something special, and sort of subversive:But that’s the problem. The Post isn’t about to publish a diorama that mocks its own ed board, even if the little coffee cups were hand molded out of clay and fired in the oven, no matter how many individualized hair styles were designed, styled and lovingly hot glued onto soft marshmallow skulls. Unless…

They needed to hear from the masses! Only the people could free the Peep-le. I started a little petition over at Care2, with a direct appeal to the Washington Post:
This subject is sticky, and we will not sugarcoat our request: we believe that the official Washington Peeps Ed Board Diorama must be included in your winners’ circle. Any other outcome would be a tooth-rotting travesty of justice.
Please, won’t you join us? Sign the petition today, stand up for democracy. No Justice, No Peeps!'
Zie: http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/134627/taking_down_the_washington_post%2C_one_marshmallow_editor_at_a_time_/