Las Vegas NowI-Team: Online Fakes Cause Comedy, Controversy

I-Team: Online Fakes Cause Comedy, Controversy

LAS VEGAS -- Would you vote for a man who said this? “There's really no dignified way to say this, so I won't even try. Anyway: I'm now taking campaign donations through PayPal.” Or maybe: “We would all do well to remember that the dinosaurs had a public option. Case closed.”

Perhaps “[j]ust when I thought I couldn't look any sexier, I got a Bluetooth.”

All of these missives were posted on microblogging site Twitter from the account “SenEnsign.” It is not Senator John Ensign. He never said those words. Those were the clean ones we could actually print.

The real senator already has a Twitter account. Though, it has not been updated since just before John Ensign admitted to an affair.

All the more fuel to the fire to the man behind the tweets -- Andrew Kiraly.

“Any reasonably intelligent person with any modicum of a sense of humor would have realized this is a parody,” the CityLife managing editor said. Kiraly has made a habit of blasting local politicians online. He pecks out the short blurbs as a twisted, cartoonish inner monologue. No one is safe.

Kiraly portrayed Governor Jim Gibbons as a Baby Huey-esque bumbler. “This sort of insensate, overgrown child that he could sometimes come across as,” he said.

The most attention came from the Ensign account. “The thing that's so ripe for parody is his apparently insatiable sexual appetite,” he said.

Kiraly compares the Twitter feeds to editorial cartoons. Features become exaggerated, beliefs are skewed to extreme and sacred cows are lead to slaughter.“What better way to nail these guys than through 140 character parody soundbites,” Kiraly said.

“Wynncore” Questioned

Another web parody making the rounds is Wynncore.com. The most inside of inside jokes, local bloggers from Vegastripping.com spun a love of Wynn Las Vegas into a cease and desist order. 

“The Wynn Las Vegas website loads really slowly. It always has,” says “Chuck Monster” over the phone. The blogger decided he wanted to poke fun at the powerful, but slow website. The Wynncore site looks almost exactly like WynnLasVegas.com. It also never loads.

Wynn Resorts lawyer Kevin Tourek said in the order the company was concerned about “the unauthorized infringing and bad faith registration and use of our famous Wynn name…”

Mr. Monster shrugs off the order, comparing Wynncore to an homage to his favorite hotel. To him, it’s an “Andy Warhol, Campbell’s soup can sort of thing.”

Monster continues the online war of words, only jokingly, offering to sell the domain to the billionaire for registration fees totaling $22.95. “We're not sore at all. We still love them. We still love their hotel. We're still gonna stay there unless they kick us out,” he said.

(Full disclosure: the wife of the author of this story is an employee of Wynn Resorts.)

On the Internet, no one knows you’re Senator Ensign

Mary Hausch laughs like most in the journalism field, but the former Review-Journal staffer dons the cap of UNLV professor when talking about online parodies. Perched in front of the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics on her desk, she says clarity is key.

“A lot of people don't get it and they think it's real and they think it's John Ensign speaking,” Hausch said.

In a postmodern, 24/7 world of web that is filled with napkin-wearing governors and philandering C Streeters, anyone can be comedian, even if the targets never change. “They have made themselves public figures and their lives have to be more open,” she said.

Return of Ensign

Kiraly’s exploits with “senensign” finally attracted attention in Washington in early November. Staffer Rebecca Fisher tells the I-Team the posts are “vulgar,” “offensive” and “deceptive.”

When informed of the review, Kiraly paused, nodded, grunted an affirmation and said, “[s]he's absolutely right.” Kiraly then countered he was not meaning to deceive, just critique a very real situation.

“I couldn't resist. I like to make fun of people,” he said. Twitter eventually shut the account down, including archived copies.

Kiraly did not hesitate, though, creating a new account in just seconds: “SenatorEnsign2” (content warning).

This time, the account it labeled a parody. No worries about being shut down. People know what they are getting. 140 characters of comedy, racy and all. Just not Senator Ensign’s words.

“Whatever, Twitter,” Kiraly mocked. “Lesson learned.”