A Better World Ahead?
If you would have an hour or two to imagine the kind of world you’d like to live in half a year from now, how would that world look like? No war? Leading a life as an employed person? Knowing that the government cares about environmental issues?
A group of people has not just thought about this for a couple of hours, but for over 6 months and the result was a fake edition of the ‘New York Times’ which was distributed Nov 12 in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and other major cities across the US. The paper is dated July 4, 2009.
Just imagine the effort these people spent at recreating the ‘Times’ look and feel and writing those articles which speak of the end of the bloodshed in Iraq, President Bush being tried for treason, a national health care system being established in the US and many other issues which have been high on the agenda of the President-elect Barack Obama. According to a statement of the Yes Men, a group which supported the prank, this was no coincidence:
“It’s all about how at this point, we need to push harder than ever,” said Bertha Suttner, one of the newspaper’s writers. “We’ve got to make sure Obama and all the other Democrats do what we elected them to do. After eight, or maybe twenty-eight years of hell, we need to start imagining heaven.”
As if the job of printing 1.2 million (!!!) papers in secret and distributing them across the country wasn’t enough, the writers also created a replica of the NY Times website where everyone can read their articles. Honestly, reading through this was amazing – even if it’s all made up, it shows what (I think) many Americans and – in case of foreign policy – people all over the world would love to read in the future.
The real ‘NY Times’ has reacted with good humor so far. After all, as one commenter put it, imitation can be the sincerest form of flattery.
A hint: if you would like to save this very special edition of the ‘Times’, just follow this link and download it as a PDF file. It will be interesting to pull it out in July next year and see how well we are on the way of achieving what is wished for there.
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Nice Idea, but I think I’m too much of a pessimist to really believe most of this will ever happen. But it really shows very nicely the enormous amount of hopes peoples have just because of the fact that Bush is gone.
But the comparing promises and reality in half a year or so will be VERY interesting, after all we are still talking about politicians here. Yeah, I’m no fan of the way politics work today. :-|
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Starstuff Reply:
November 15th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
I know, I too don’t believe we’ll be able to place checkmarks to many issues – especially given the fact that Obama is handed a country which is leaking from so many places all he can do is ensure the ship doesn’t sink. Most likely, there won’t be time for new paint jobs or improvements.
But still – there’s hope again and optimism. It’s actually surprising to me how much the attitude of people has changed already after the election. I think Bush jr. will be one of the least liked presidents in history when he leaves office.
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