Thanks to the collective wisdom of list members, here's the summary: * Michael Bay is the real name of a well-known movie director (that I didn't recognize this is due to my sad lack of pop culture knowledge) * The deleted Onion article has now disappeared from Google's cache * The deleted article is still available from the Onion's mobile site: http://mobile.theonion.com/m_onion3842/m_those_chechen_rebels.html * The Onion staff has ignored my request to comment Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/p-04178.html -Declan --- Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 23:31:34 -0500 To: declanat_private From: Peter Wayner <pcw2at_private> Subject: Re: FC: The Onion deletes parody article about Chechen rebels >The Onion has deleted a parody article about the Chechen rebels and the >Moscow theater siege. It was pretty tame by Onion standards. Last week, it >appeared here: >http://www.theonion.com/onion3842/those_chechen_rebels.html > >Now it's quietly disappeared. The URL no longer works, and the article >does not show up on a search of the site. Google has archived it here: >http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:aTDv7HqpUIsJ:www.theonion.com/oni >on3842/those_chechen_rebels.html+onion+chechen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 > >I've mirrored an excerpt here: >http://www.politechbot.com/docs/onion.deleted.112002.txt > >I don't know the reason for the deletion. I invite The Onion to reply. I would guess it's because they used a real name, Michael Bay (the director of "Pearl Harbor". They rarely do that, if ever. So they're not ready for the legal and emotional pressure. While it was pretty tame, it was very personal. -Peter --- From: "Geoff Gariepy" <geoff_gariepyat_private> To: <declanat_private> Subject: Re: The Onion deletes parody article about Chechen rebels Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 09:23:18 -0500 Just a guess: maybe they pissed Michael Bay off? I can see how he might have been upset about the notion that that incident was essentially a theft of his idea. A lot of people died. --Geoff --- Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 20:27:14 -0800 From: Brandon Long <blongat_private> To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private> Subject: Re: FC: The Onion deletes parody article about Chechen rebels Organization: Fiction L Networks X-Pgp-Public-Key: <http://www.fiction.net/blong/pgpkey.html> X-Uri: <http://www.fiction.net/blong/> The Onion doesn't actually archive all of their content, but they do usually have the entire last issue on-line, so this does look like an edit. Maybe this was due to the fact that Michael Bay is a real director, and the photo even looks like him: http://us.imdb.com/Name?Bay,+Michael Brandon --- Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 16:13:15 -0800 From: Joshua Tinnin <jtinninat_private> Subject: Re: The Onion deletes parody article about Chechen rebels To: declanat_private Just thought you should know ... it has now also disappeared from Google's cache. It was definitely there earlier - I tried out the link, and even did my own search. Now the article doesn't show up on a search, except referenced from other sites. It does show up on last week's copy of their mobile homepage, which is available from Google's cache, and I noticed that The Onion hasn't deleted the article from there: http://mobile.theonion.com/m_onion3842/m_those_chechen_rebels.html - jt --- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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