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The Other Other White House Website

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, November 8 2010

WhiteHouse.org is back. And some people still aren't getting the joke.

The satirical site has relaunched to commemorate the 2010 mid-term election, setting up a place on the web for the "White House in Exile." The White House logo is awash in Republican red, and the site serves up a note from "Presumptuous Speaker" John Boehner. "It's time to take back our country," writes Boehner, "and I am confident that the Government in Exile will be a key step towards restoring democracy, re-establishing a free and unregulated financial market, and restoring pre-existing conditions for children."

Also on the site is a copy of the incoming Republican leadership's supposed House Resolution 1, a measure that would "establish an alternate executive branch while the illegal conspiracy organized by Barack Hussein Obama controls the White House."

WhiteHouse.org, linked in the past to the humor outfit Chickenhead Productions, drew the attention of the White House back in 2002, when David Addington, then-counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, went after the site for posting a fake bio for Lynne Cheney and a mock White House seal, creating a "a false impression of sponsorship or approval by the Government of the United States."

One counter argument -- that this is obvious satire -- might be somewhat undercut with this iteration by the fact that people are sending emails to the site, thinking, it seems, that they're writing to either some sort of shadow White House or the real one. The WhiteHouse.org team is posting to Facebook a selection of the sort of things that people write when they think they're writing to the White House. "I very much like out first lady," reads one such email, "but I think someone should take her in hand about her attire... Please change her way of dressing because she could look beautiful in the right clothes."

As for the infamous, WhiteHouse.com, it's no longer a porn site. Instead, it's now a directory for trial attorneys.

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