Thursday, June 21, 2007

"Hello, Oxymoron Central? I’d like to enroll The Epoch Times."


On the same gritty Garment District block where a spelling-challenged fortune teller advertises a “$5 speical” and promises to “put your mine at ease”…in the same rundown office building where The New York Crank plies his trade… you’ll find the New York office of The Epoch Times.

The Epoch whut?

It’s a giveaway newspaper that seems dedicated to headlining anything bad they can find about China (not a difficult task) and criticizing immigration laws that would limit the flow of Chinese immigrants – legal or otherwise – into the United States.

I suspect the paper is the propaganda arm of Falun Gong, an outfit that would easily qualify as a creepy religious cult if only Peking’s political bosses would stop arresting and brutalizing them, thus turning them from a nutcake movement into martyrs.

The Epoch Times is also the worst-written paper on the planet. It reads like a high school newspaper edited by B-minus students. It has the news and language sense of a stale piece of tofu.

They can barely give the paper away. It sits in hundreds of freebie newspaper boxes that litter the streets of New York – side by side with real estate magazine giveaways, neighborhood newsrags financed by classified sex ads, and offerings of one-night courses during which Donald Trump will explain to you the simple ABCs of making a billion dollars in real estate. (I wonder if he tells his audiences, “Start with a multi-million dollar real estate fortune you inherited from your father.”)

Usually, The Epoch Times’ headlines about scandalous happenings in China are written in such a perversely bland tone that they’re almost as funny as headlines in The Onion, a spoof newspaper that often goes like hotcakes in adjacent pieces of street furniture while The Epoch Times just sits there.

But the other day, I simply had to pick up an Epochal copy. The lead headline, top right, front page, read: “Man Caught Stealing Epoch Times.”

Hey dudes, it’s a FREE newspaper. How can you steal something the owners are begging you to take?

Well, if you read far enough into the story – seven paragraphs into it to be exact – you’ll discover that the unnamed man was taking these papers that The Epoch Times is trying to give away and then destroying them – same as what The Epoch Times people undoubtedly do themselves with all their uncirculated issues.

If you keep forcing yourself to read the article, there’s a not-so-subtle implication that "stealing" free newspapers is one of the highest priority missions of China's secret intelligence operations here in the United States.

Look, I don’t much like China. I think the people running and regulating the country are a bunch of mean bastards who’d poison your dog with tainted wheat gluten and your kid with lead-painted toys and then shrug it off as business-as-usual.

But with enemies like The Epoch Times, they really don’t have much to fear.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

Really if you can see that the Chinese communist regime is evil why would you think evil persecutes evil?

Thats not what happens. Evil sticks together . Goodness stick together.

Make a choice -what are you for in this life?

The New York Crank said...

Evil persecutes evil, my dear, because neither evil nor good is monolithic. Often evil and evil compete with each other (as do good and good) and the competition can get pretty cuthroat.

I was wondering who would post such a harebrained comment – the notion that anybody persecuted by an evil force is a priori good – so I clicked on your name, which led me to your bio where I read:

"I am dedicated to exposing the atrocities committed by the Chinese communist regime on Falun Gong practitioners and to help awaken the worlds conscience to say NO to the Chinese communism regime."

Ah hah! I might have guessed.

'Nuff said. Go back to your idiotic cult, child.

Yours very crankily,
The New York Crank

Unknown said...

This is why I never take more than one of anything from the LaRouchies here in Washington.

Unknown said...

You live in the free world? Are you Chinese descent or born? If not you have no excuse to not being able to understand this universal battle between Good and evil.

Where do you get your information from to form such ignorant views of good people?? Had first hand experience's or simply choose to listen to a vile propaganda campaign set ruthlessly launched on an innocent group of people just trying to be good??

Do you think hitlers genocide was good too?

There are truly demons who walk the earth today in the skins of humans.

Ever ask yourself why you are so cranky? its not natural for humans to be so cranky and so ignorant.

The New York Crank said...

Universal battle between good and evil my behind, Jana.

Everybody says they're on the side of good. Al Qaida says it as they bomb innocent human beings. I'm sure Falun Gong sees themselves as all good, as did Torquemada, the followers of Hitler, the followers of Stalin, the followers of Mao and the followers of...

Well, nobody ever followed the leader saying,"I want to do evil to the world."

My complaint with Falun Gong is that they turn out little automatons like you who have lost (or never had) any power of critical thinking.

That's called a cult, kid. Get used to it.

The New York Crank said...
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The New York Crank said...
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Unknown said...

How has critical thinking solved any of our problems we have today? Have you noticed that human kind cannot solve any problems to day. They are unsolvable and our problems keep on getting bigger and wider spread -in fact Global right?

Humans do not have any power to do anything but destroy themselves. Morality is the key to prosperity.

The New York Crank said...

>>How has critical thinking solved any of our problems we have today?<<

Oh, oh, I love it! A plea for ignorance and irrational behavior!

Thank you, Jana, for making my point. Falun Gong is a cult. And if your comment is any indication, it's a cult espousing ignorance and idiocy.

Good job, Jana!