Satirical Submissions

After reading about Microsoft Corp.’s secret plans to manipulate the press, the editors of several online magazines decided last week to lend the software giant a hand--albeit one with a joy buzzer attached.

Summoning satirists across the Net, Salon, an online literary magazine, invited readers to compose phony letters to the editor supporting Microsoft. The best entries are to be posted in a couple of weeks.

Feed, another online publication, published its own tongue-in-cheek collection of letters from what it described as Microsoft’s failed Astroturf--as opposed to grass- roots--campaign.

Both sites were inspired by Microsoft’s own stealth media campaign, which was first reported in The Times on April 10, and was designed to influence antitrust investigators by planting, among other things, pro-Microsoft letters to the editor in papers around the country.

The editors at Salon (https://www.salonmagazine.com) offered a few examples of the satirical submissions they were looking for.

“Since I upgraded to Windows 95,” reads one testimonial, “my pancreatic cancer has gone into remission, my daughter was accepted to law school and I won $50 in the Lotto Quick Pick.”

The wags at https://www.feedmag.com decided celebrity endorsers might be most effective.

“When Thai and Kampuchean security forces are hounding you 24 hours a day, you haven’t got time to pick and choose your software,” reads one. “This bundling of Internet Explorer and Windows 98 . . . is for me an essential time-saving device.”

That was signed by Pol Pot, who, the editors point out, “is a freelance political consultant in Cambodia, and is perhaps dead.”