New Study: Politicians Not Human

Politicians Not Human According To New Study
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s2i26155

We see corrupt politicians almost all the time on TV. This is a fictitious article about a new study confirming that politicians are an entirely new species. It is aimed at everyone who either dislikes politicians, or simply needs to read something amusing in order to leash out their anger at politicians who are corrupt.

The article directly makes a number of assumptions about all politicians, all of which are negative. The author does this by listing and exaggerating examples about behaviors people commonly believe politicians to have, such as the "complete and utter lack of ethics" and possession of "the innate ability to look and sound sincere while lying in your face". The image at the right stresses the author's negativity towards politicians by using strong words and a relatively offensive image.

The humor in this article is mainly driven by the fact that the author is able to relate to what the majority of people think about politicians, and selectively pick on negative traits to focus your thoughts on these rather than anything good the politicians could possibly have done. In a sense, it is inductive reasoning using multiple examples to show that politicians are indeed corrupt bastards.

That Little White Thing You Stand On

Lots of people are fans of Wii. But there's more coming up for this interesting piece of gaming technology. It was announced at the E3 press conference in July 2007 that Nintendo will be releasing Wii fit, a video game designed to function with the Wii balance board peripheral. Wii fit was apparently intended as a "way to help get families exercising together", and was billed as a fitness breakthrough. But is it? This clever parody of a Nintendo Wii Fit commercial attempts to show why this isn't the case.

This video is very sarcastic. It makes fun of everything the product claims it is. It begins by immediately belittling the peripheral itself, referring to it as "a little white thing you stand on". In addition, it sarcastically mentions how other video games have been limited to being "fun and entertaining". It provides many examples of Wii fit games and just how "exciting" they are.

Visuals play a huge part in portraying everything as if they were all mundane activities. The graphics shown on the TV screen really don't seem that exciting at all. It is interesting how they seem to pick games that are inherently boring. By doing so, they are trying to make a hasty generalization of all the games by picking on some of the more cheesy games. First they start off by naming very plain, dull exercises like "leaning side to side" and "sticking out your leg". Then they move on to activities that seem to be replaceable using the Wii fit, like hula-hooping or playing soccer. They bring out issues like the money spent on purchasing the peripheral and the replacement of "that annoying plastic hoop" to show how ridiculous it is that people would possibly want to use a Wii fit to replace real activities. The soccer example serves to make fun of the fact that the "family is exercising together", while at the same time criticizing the Wii fit for making families stay home in front of a TV instead of going out to exercise. Since not all families may choose to stay at home all the time just because of the Wii fit, it is apparent that they are simply using inductive reasoning to generalize that everyone would no longer leave the house to exercise.

Overall, the video uses sarcasm to try and persuade everyone that this is quite an unnecessary product to own. Unless one really likes playing with Wii, or is willing to look past the examples of boring games, it is likely that one would be convinced that outdoor activities provide far more exercise than the Wii fit.