Response: A piece I did for 'The Situation Room' -- a piece I thought an obvious, patently absurd parody of muddled political thinking -- engendered howls of outrage from elements of the blogosphere, where it was assumed I actually meant to tie Sen. Barack Obama with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And therein lies a tale.

so when's the last time cnn ran a joke? intentionally, i mean.

obviously, it's absurd. the fact that he's in an industry that does absurd shit like this all the time makes it look like he's serious. he's not doing it in response to anything recent i can think of...

i dunno. i think i would've at least made pains to include something that obviously flagged it as satire.

satire or not, the piece was clearly designed to do damage

which is fine. just have the nuts to own up to it. this 'who, me?' bullshit is just lame.

As he launches into the spiel, he says, 'In the spirit of wretched excess...' which tipped me off that he was being facetious. 'Forget what he believes -- LET'S SEE THE ABS!' The end of it had me cringing though; if they had stuck with the clothes stuff it could have worked, but doing that same old 'his name is almost OSAMA!' bit just made it unfunny enough to seem serious.

'hanging by a thread, or is that threads.'

i shot some bean salad out my nose.

In his response, he gets all bent out of shape because people failed to recognise the satire of this piece. What does he expect with the current standard of partisan journalism? The fact that no-one saw the 'humour' of the video is not the fault of the audience, but a scathing indicment of the standards of mainstream news reporting, and he should be both ashamed of his supposed profesion, and fearfull for its future.

Its just Jeff Greenfield trying to be funny. Of course its not going to work.

the man be spittin the digital schizophrenic shit, the mad ill notes, the deranged beats from the corporate beatbox; since when the fuck did skull and bones have to do with a man's socks?

humorous or not, we'll all laugh until our brains rot, as the man spits memes to keep us in lock step routine, and when our dopamine dreams are gone, our minds are digital spawn

corporate media can eat a fat dick

Your meter is off

e-meter overload

Hmph. I'd like to meet his taylor!

Jeff Greenfield:
''You know,' my wife said when she saw the piece, 'I wonder if there are people who might think you were serious.'

'Not a chance,' I replied from my decades of experience. 'How could anyone possibly take such analysis seriously? Or consider it a ham-handed effort at character assassination?'

Wife 1, Husband 0.'

Socialists take making fun of their politicains as well as Theocrats take making fun of God.

I could tell it was a joke.

This is a hoot.
Even IF satirizing FOX style 'news' is a new tack for CNN
Seems to me that Turner is FINALLY getting a clue how to do battle with the neocon networks: by making fun of their 'fact finding' abilities.
...even if they DO have to take a few more lessons from The Daily Show.
Other than that , it's the funniest stuff CNN's put out since Blitzer was reporting in Gulf War I