What is the use of having an article on Ted Kennedy without showing him drunk, having him fall face first into Boston Harbour. And what would an article of President Bush be without having an image of him fishing for prech on his man-made Crawford Lake. This is what is has come to at The Spoof, an online parody newspaper. Writers are now forced to select from a huge collection of unrelated, laughable images that do not match their accompanying stories. Sad, to say the least.
But this is what the satire site The Spoof expects it's writers to put up with. The spoof site provides it's writers with images that barely relate to the stories at hand, images that are unaltered by Photoshop even, and terribly unamusing.
One writer was so upset that he began to draw an image on his computer screen in hopes that that would make the story funnier. But alas, it only made her depressed once she realized that she was the only person in the world who would even know how much more funny her story would have been with the correct image.
The writers hope that this madness will come to an end and writers will be free to express themselves freely without restriction. Until then, that article about President Bush and Global Warming will not include a JPEG of a frightened polar bear sitting on a melting piece of ice. And that article about Rev. Pat Robertson... will not even have an image of Rev. Pat Robertson. The writer will have to settle for an image of a cross or perhaps a nun, images that are more serious and do not give the story an appropriate visual, such as an image of Rev. Pat Robertson's legs being crushed by a bench press.
The writer's frustrations are more than justified and if they plan to create change, they must stand up and be counted.