Satire of Pope's upcoming death cost editor job

Satire of Pope's upcoming death cost editor job

By STEVEN McCAFFREY
Humanist Network News
March 23, 3005

Jeff Koyen, editor of the alternative newsweekly New York Press, resigned in wake of the recent outrage of the paper's controversial “52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope.”
http://nypress.com/18/9/news&columns/taibbi.cfm


The list begins with "Pope pisses himself just before the end; gets all over nurse," ends with "Throw a marble at the dead Pope's head. Bonk!" and is filled with statements like, "After beating for the last time, Pope's heart sits there like a piece of hamburger."

Koyen was given a two-week unpaid leave but opted to quit instead.

In an exit statement posted on gawker.com, Koyen called his former publisher "a spineless alt-weekly weenie" for not standing up to the harsh criticisms the article received. Criticisms came from a variety of people such as U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, a spokesman for New York City Mayor Bloomberg and former Mayor Rudolph Guliani.

More:
http://www.humaniststudies.org/enews/index.html?id=183#n6

but you've got to make sure that the material is at least remotely funny. of these "52 Funniest Things", there's not one that's even remotely funny.

I don't mean that in the sense of something that's shockingly outrageous to the point where people will self-righteously say "that's not funny, dude", but rather it's not funny in the sense of jokes made up by blindingly drunk people who think that renaming their dog "purple hamburger dishrag" is the funniest thing on the planet, and they can't wait to tell you about it for the eighth time.

Here is the worst one on the list:
17.In his last days, the Pope was in tremendous pain.


OK, here are the only funny ones from that list:

38.Somebody taking my job. My job!

30.Michael Jackson too broke to buy Pope's bones.

25.LexisNexis search on phrase "the inner workings of the Vatican are shrouded in mystery" temporarily crashes system; Eric Alterman unable to search for press references to "What Liberal Media?" for 37 consecutive hours.

22.Mankind scrambles to choose new leader of inflexible, sexually morbid institutional anachronism; heretofore anonymous bureaucrat will instantly be celebrated as world's holiest man as he travels to AIDS-stricken Africa to denounce the use of condoms.

More:
http://nypress.com/18/9/news&columns/taibbi.cfm

The Onion had a good blurb. Pope's last words, "Pope-Sled."
(Citizen Kane reference).