Today's Onion Test - 7.29.03
A bizarre bazaar
Here at the international HQ for Becknell and Lucas Media we have a little thing we call "the Onion test" - it's a tribute to the often hard-to-see line between parody and reality in today's news world. We started using this term when Chinese newspapers picked up a story on the news-satire site the Onion about a proposal to move the US capitol to 'Memphis or Charlotte'. The Chinese thought the story was real; they failed 'the Onion test'. So now anytime we see a really bizarre news story, particularly one with a government policy twist, we say it's an Onion test.
The latest Onion test situation goes like this: 'the Pentagon is setting up a commodity-market style trading system in which investors would be able to bet on political and economic events in the Middle East' [see Mideast 'Futures' System Set, WaPost]. Now this sounds like an Onion story (or perhaps the premise for a P.K. Dick novel) but it's not. If I heard this story on a Wednesday, I'd think it probably came from the Onion - failing the Onion test. It's a pretty funny idea, actually.
It would be funny if it were a joke. But this bizarre bazaar is quite real, a product of the admittedly brilliant minds at DARPA. In a world gone mad for market driven economics this is a really far-out manifestation. In this case the idea would be better left to Sci-Fi, don't you think?
Okay, did they ever think that maybe people who bet on a terrorist attack might be, shall we say, insider traders? Arguably, this might offer an opportunity to catch them, but is it worth it?
