Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
[a sequel to the parable posted earlier in this list]
Maddenville was in crisis. People with bizarre views of what constituted "football" were disrupting it. Some of the town's leaders decided that what was needed was to Get Tough on the trolls, vandals, and disrupters. A number of people were banned. Many of the banned people, along with others who were critical for some reason or other of the concept of Maddenville, the way Maddenville was being run, or the game of American football itself, started congregating on a hilltop near enough to Maddenville to get a good look at what was happening there, but across the county line so that the authorities of Maddenville had no jurisdiction over them. They named their new settlement "Maddenvile Review Village", and soon it grew into a thriving settlement, though still much smaller than Maddenville itself. From there, residents used telescopes and binoculars to monitor the goings-on at Maddenville, as well as getting reports by phone, paper mail, and in person by visitors from Maddenville, not to mention watching and listening to the TV and radio stations originating in Maddenville. Just like the obsession of Maddenville was football, the obsession of Maddenville Review Village was Maddenville. ..... [snipped] The next controversy came when a scandal broke out that some of the football players in Maddenville were using illegal performance enhancing substances, and were lying about it and cheating on their drug tests. This got extensively written up in the national press, and resulted in some players being suspended or expelled from their teams. Embarrassingly, the scandal had been uncovered and publicized by the people at Maddenville Review Village, as part of their ongoing attempt to cast disrepute on Maddenville. When the local newspaper, the Maddenville Goalpost, wrote about the scandal, they included a line mentioning the involvement of MRV in it. This upset a town leader so much that he went around town early in the morning gathering up all the papers before anybody else woke up and read them, burning those papers, and printing a new edition without the offending mention. The paper's reporter and editor didn't much care for this, just like the librarian earlier, but also didn't want to be seen as MRV sympathizers.
[To be continued]
Hehe, this is good fun. Excellent story telling once again :)
-G Donato