But Clarke isn't the only one feeling sardonically meta-parodic. Charlie Brooker--whose rants on washing machines and Christmas commercials have grabbed the Wire's eye--has come out with a deadpan show-and-tell on how to produce a typical television news story:
The reference point for Booker is clearly the BBC. But if you're unfamiliar with the kind of incendiary blog post Clarke is satirizing, peruse this post on blogger Charles Johnson's flame war. This is how Clarke breaks it down:
This sentence proposes that anyone who might disagree with the wildly overgeneralized condemnation is, by so disagreeing, actually proving the author's point. This sentence explains that such people disagree primarily because of the author's courageous and iconoclastic approach. This sentence mentions the additional possibilities that readers who express disagreement with the wildly overgeneralized condemnation are merely following political fashion or trying to ingratiate themselves with interest groups. ...[This parenthetical sentence was appended some time after posting as an expression of gratitude for the post's many visitors and an apology that server overload has prompted the owner's closing of comments, at least for the time being.]
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Heather Horn
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