Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/UnNews:Debt Ceiling Crisis turns out to be "big hilarious prank"

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UnNews:Debt Ceiling Crisis turns out to be "big hilarious prank"[edit source]

Just a quick review needed. Want to nom on VFH. -- smug Ape (bamboozle) (Riot Porn) 10:56, July 29, 2011 (UTC)

Masaru.jpg

PEE REVIEW IN PROGRESS

Hyperbole is engaged in the dual processes
of giving you his opinion and pretending you care.
Humour: 6 So, this took 46 days for someone to get around to reviewing. And I think I know why. I'm betting that 5 Uncyclopedians thought "Okay, I'll review something," and they read this article and they thought "Huh.. it's good.. but why aren't I laughing? Shit, I guess I'll review something easier."

It took me a minute to figure out why I wasn't laughing, and then I got it: the joke is being told backwards.

In general, an article is a string of jokes, whereas an UnNews is one joke. And a joke is pretty much always structured like this: setup, escalation, punchline.

But here, the punchline is the title of the article. No setup, no escalation - just *bam*, punchline. And everything else seems like an attempt to write amusing prose just to fill up the article with words. It sort of seems like the equivalent of blowing your load in a girl two pumps in and then continuing to fuck her for 15 minutes with a limp dick in the hopes that she can get some kind of pleasure out of it.

It might be better if the title of the article was something like "Debt Ceiling Crisis resolved at eleventh hour," and then you don't hit us with the revelation that it was a carefully orchestrated inside joke until the middle.

That said, there are some real gems in here, too:

  • Obama's frat-boy-ish "It was pretty hard to keep a straight face."
  • Glenn Beck's pointless partisanship
  • The British having no sense of humor about the whole thing
  • Kennedy's trolling
  • The fact that Palin wasn't let in on the joke because no one would let her play.

You'll notice, though, that all that stuff is at the end. The beginning of the article has major problems.

The first paragraph just tells us exactly what we just read in the title: that the debt ceiling crisis was a joke.

The second paragraph is by far the longest in the article. What it does, is it recaps everything I already know about the debt ceiling crisis because I read the news, and then it switches over to the punchline - that it was all a joke - but I already read that punchline. Twice, in fact. And now I've read it three times. It isn't funnier the third time.

And the third and fourth paragraphs basically merely reiterate and repeat the punchline.

It's really not until the fifth paragraph that things get funny. So, yeah, the rhythm of this joke is just... off.

Concept: 9 Very funny concept. Just not executed correctly.
Prose and formatting: 10 Shit, everyone knows you can turn a phrase like few others.
Images: 9 Yeah, Obama does look like quite the childish prankster there.
Miscellaneous: 3 Three, just because despite being a really good article in so many ways, the joke doesn't work. And isn't that the bottom line?
Final Score: 37 I think this one could be saved, and indeed brought to feature, with some re-organization and a little bit of tightening of the comedic rhythm.

It's sort of like that episode of The West Wing where they fire off a test of the missile defense system, and the Chief of Staff explains to the President, "This was a successful test. Sixteen things had to go right. Fifteen of them went exactly right." The President asks "Which one didn't go right?" and the Chief of Staff says "We missed the target."

I think you can hit the target.

Reviewer: Tinymasaru.gifpillow talk 06:01, September 15, 2011 (UTC)