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A North Carolina nonprofit, Americans for Prosparody, has launched EvilPac.org, a satirical website that “celebrates” how billionaires have gamed the U.S. political system to their advantage.
The website is an online comedy site that, it says, “showcases what it would look like if the billionaires who buy access to power openly celebrated their corruption.”
It features articles and essays about people it describes as “shady judges, greedy politicians and the elites who pay to keep these bad actors in their pockets.”
Among these is a piece that says Columbia University’s archeology department “miraculously discovers superseding U.S. constitution that grants unchecked power to president.”
The headline of another is “What’s the point of great art if not great profit? That’s why I turned all of Picasso’s works into NFTs!”
Content comes from Americans for Prosparody’s creative team headed by writer and comedian Paul Soter, a founding member of the Broken Lizard comedy team, famous for creating the Super Troopers movie franchise.
Political corruption has become so commonplace and expected, much of it doesn’t get the attention it deserves,” said Americans for Prosparody founder Todd Stiefel. “Our goal is for EvilPAC’s satirical approach to help raise awareness of the actual extent of undue influence that oligarchs — both from the right and the left — are exerting on our political system, and to entertain people with hilarious content at the same time.”
Scott Dikkers, founder of The Onion, added, “I trust EvilPac.org to ensure my political contributions are doing the greatest possible harm.”
Americans for Prosparody uses humor, parody and satire to break through to reach disengaged and reflexively partisan voters. Previous campaigns helped inform voters about outrageously extreme candidates running for statewide election in North Carolina — and helped defeat those candidates. It also uses satire to take on corruption and extremism in American politics. americansforprosparody.org.
Stiefel also runs the Stiefel Freethought Foundation, whose mission is to secure humanity’s future by ensuring public policy decisions are based on love and reason rather than bias and dogma. He is also the founder and chair of the #ScienceSaves campaign. He worked for 14 years for Stiefel Laboratories, finishing his career as chief strategy officer.
In an interview with Forbes.com, Soter said, “You know, Todd and I just want people to be aware that, like, if you’re feeling disenchanted, there’s a place to go to find some light at the end of this tunnel, or to have a laugh about it or to think about it in a way that doesn’t make you want to stay in bed.”
He added that although you can use “comedy to escape and forget about what’s going in the world, there is a way to have entertainment, have diversion, but still not have to tune out what’s going on in the world around you. Don’t only think of comedy or entertainment as a way to forget about what’s messed up.”
