This Is the End of the E-Innocence

We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” write a marginally popular “weblog” here on Al Gore’s World-Wide Web. As you assuredly know, dear reader, we’re no Internet bigwigs. But we pride ourselves on reaching more than a handful of readers each day.

If “weblogs” were states, we suppose that ours would be Idaho. Not too miniscule, but not California either. Oh, and no potatoes. (Man, we just depressed ourselves.)

Recently, in fact, we actually noticed a slight up-tick in the number of “hits” our humble “weblog” receives. Although no avalanche (or Instalanche), it amounted to a noticeable increase in e-traffic.

Finally, we thought to ourselves, our efforts are paying off. Finally our savory brand of “Family Circus”-esque e-humor is attracting gaggles of devotees. Finally we, like Peter Gabriel, are on our way, we’re making it Big Time.

Oh, how silly we collectively were. How shockingly silly. To be downright honest, our e-naïvete is simply breathtaking.

You see, upon closer inspection, we discovered that our sudden burst of e-popularity had more sordid roots than we had imagined. It’s a mite embarrassing to tell you this, but we guess we ought to own up.

As it turns out, one particular “post” remains responsible for our comparatively impressive e-traffic. Some short time ago, we offered a rib-tickling “post” entitled “Lindsey Lohan-Bush.” Its premise was pure genius: It argued that the shenanigans of Lindsey Lohan, Nichole Richie, and Paris Hilton demonstrated that the three ladies are actually shills for the Bush administration. Every time President Bush finds himself in hot water, one of these three skanks it up and/or lands in jail, thus taking the heat off of the Commander-in-Chief.

If you ask us, this was pure comic gold—the very sort of thing that should win us loads and loads of fans. It just doesn’t get more inspired than this.

But it seems as if our brilliant “post” proved popular for an entirely different reason. It appears as if sundry e-strollers, when on Al Gore’s Internet, search for “Lindsey Lohan bush.” And, given the title of our humble “post,” oodles of them headed straight for “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly.” Hence the up-tick.

Ah, they must have been delighted by what they saw. Who needs scandalous pictures of some actress/whore when you can enjoy a few knee-slapping gags?