Man in lesbian mix-up wants satire clearly labeled | The Register — Absolutely hilarious story!
The two fathers of ‘podcasting’ have called for jokes and satirical broadcasts to be clearly labelled as such, after they were bamboozled by a comic female impersonator.
Former MTV video jockey Adam Curry and former software developer Dave Winer cooked up the idea of enclosing audio files in some XML code so they could be pulled off the web onto a portable device – a nifty, if not terrible original idea. With real, grassroots webcasting itself in mortal danger, its seems an odd distraction. But people took it and ran with it, making home broadcasts and shoving them onto the web. For a week on their own ‘show’, Curry and Winer rebroadcast the adventures of a podcaster they admired, Yeast Radio’s Madge Weinstein.
Madge Weinstein is really a database programmer called Richard Bluestein, who performs the part of “a domineering Jewish lesbian” – firmly in the tradition of John Waters’ diva Divine, and a long-line of female impersonators including Dame Edna Everage. He’s been recording his own scatalogical skits for a while.
But Curry and Winer didn’t realize that Madge wasn’t a woman. An easy mistake to make, looking at the pictures of Madge in action (below), hearing her show, or if you don’t have an internet connection, for Madge features prominently as a Bluestein creation on a number of web sites.
I think there are some subtleties in the story that are completely missed in this report. I’ve listened to all of these podcasts, and it seems like the reporter is desperately grasping at straws here.
The problem Adam and Dave had was that they didn’t know what they were listening to anymore. There’s an issue of honesty. How much of the podcast was a hoax, and how much of it was honest opinion chanelled through a character this person was playing? They wanted a little honesty and a little disclaimer up front. There was never any attempt to enforce some mandatory labelling procedure, and those who believe that are just looking for fights.
But can you imagine that? On the net? Someone picking fights for their own jollies? Shocking, isn’t it?
Now, granted, their initial podcast response sounded a little sad for them, but they bounced back all right after that.
For what it’s worth, I find “Madge” to be basically unlistenable. It’s too much of an act for me to bother with, plus I disagree with her/him on most things.
Oh, jeez. In other words all jokes should be explained in advance for people too dumb to get them?
This says it all about the blogosphere.