[WikiEN-l] No joy in Maddenville, part 2

[G Donato]

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