FC: More on The Onion deletes parody article about Chechen rebels

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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

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Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 23:31:34 -0500
To: declan () well com
From: Peter Wayner <pcw2 () flyzone com>
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

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From: "Geoff Gariepy" <geoff_gariepy () hotmail com>
To: <declan () well com>
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

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Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 20:27:14 -0800
From: Brandon Long <blong () fiction net>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
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

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Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 16:13:15 -0800
From: Joshua Tinnin <jtinnin () pacbell net>
Subject: Re: The Onion deletes parody article about Chechen rebels
To: declan () well com

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

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