You Must Visit theDiscust.com

My very first thought when I read the headline Jenny Sanford: “Gay marriage wrecked my family” was “Great, our state’s news has finally become as absurd as The Onion‘s content.” Of course the gays would get blamed by the right-wingers, somehow. I’d just woken up, and the coffee hadn’t hit yet, so it took me literally four or five seconds of mental processing to say, “No. Wait. That has to be a joke.”

And it was. But it was a joke that was eerily mirrored the kinds of absurd things that really do pass for news coverage in this state sometimes. And if someone relatively savvy like me (well, I think I am at least) can fall for this for a few seconds and be greeted by a parody of mainstream S.C. news coverage, the writers must be onto something.

I mean, how can anyone who follows the state’s news resist headlines like Sanford won’t resign, suggests in-school suspension or Payday lenders hire homeless?

So allow me to introduce theDiscust.com, a South Carolina-based online political parody magazine. Their motto? “Because in South Carolina, we expect more than just the truth.”

As you’ve probably gathered, it’s basically along the same lines as something like The Onion, although focused on South Carolina news and politics.

Here’s how the site’s creators explain the project …

There’s no doubt that South Carolina is not like other states. Everyone involved in this project calls South Carolina home, warts and all, and we (to varying degrees) are proud to be counted among her citizens. That being said, there’s a lot going on that is just not ridiculed to the degree we feel it should be. There was a vacuum of mockery, and we set about to fill it.

It should come as no surprise to residents, but after just a little bit of research and some fairly intense arguments with physicists, we have concluded that South Carolina has more fodder for mockery than the entire United States as a whole, including South Carolina. You may agree with the science crowd that such a thing is not possible, but you’ll have to trust us — we’ve done the math and unless the fine public school system here has let us down, it all adds up.

Even though I’d be exaggerating if I said every story I saw was riotously funny, I do think this is a cool project. Regional and local news parodies can actually be great fun, and can do a lot to keep both journalists and politicians humble. It can even work in the city level, as a publication like the Asheville Disclaimer proves.

So, here’s a shout out for theDiscust.com, and a sincere hope that they are able to grow the project — which appears to have started in May — into something we can make into a daily stop on our internet rounds.