Unless you’re Andrew Marlatt, who has made a living out of poking fun at everything from the stock market to the Supreme Court. What’s so funny about corporate corruption, bankruptcies and bearish markets? NEWSWEEK’s Jennifer Barrett spoke with Marlatt, the founder of SatireWire.com and author of the new book, “Economy of Errors: SatireWire Gives Business the Business.”
Andrew Marlatt: I’d love to say I predicted the dollar was going to fall out. But actually, I was going to call it “Mad Cows Use Cell Phones.” My wife, my editor, my agent and Random House didn’t really like that title, though. At first, I tried to come up with other ideas. Then my editor told me, “Here’s an idea-we can not publish the book.” So I said, how about “Economy of Errors”? I’m kidding about my editor, but it did take me a week to come up with this title.
Of course, I did. I made a killing shorting everything. Perhaps, you’ve heard.
No, actually, I stopped working at Internet World in January 2000, and it was just a few months later when things really started falling. I remember interviewing these CEOs and, eventually I realized that these people didn’t have a grip on reality, or I didn’t. I mean there was no underpinning for most of these people. They were just running on dreams and how long can you go on dreams alone? In a way, this book is penance for me because … when I was writing at Internet World, I was doing my best to pump up this bubble that’s popped all over us now. But then I switched sides. I went to the light side, so to speak.
That was in early 1999. I don’t have that sort of vindictive “Ha-ha, look at me now” thing going now, though. If you back up far enough, it’s really funny that it happened to everybody. But if you are really close to it, it’s kind of sad. Look, I actually did exactly what I made fun of. I left a perfectly good career writing, making good money, to start an Internet company with no business model that was making no revenue that I didn’t even tell my wife about until months later when she asked “What are you doing every day?” I can’t make fun of those people when I did the same thing myself.
Yeah, and I also didn’t get any venture funding, so I didn’t have to prostitute myself. Not that I wouldn’t have, but no one asked.
I think in the book I call it Doug. That’s my brother’s name. He’s a nice guy. He needs some recognition.
Well, I’m not going to include his last name or anything. It could represent all Dougs.
No, that’d be my brother David. He is much better at business-way better. More savvy. But when it really tanks, I’ll call it Ellen. That’s my sister-she’s really bad in business … Wait, are you printing this?
There is a saying that the truth eventually catches up to satire. One time, I wrote a story about the five-day forecast for terror just like you’d see on the news [for weather] and then they came out a few days later with that five-color terror coding system. It was a little scary. Then I had a story about AT&T laying off 120 percent of its workforce, and some people actually believed it. I actually had e-mail from people at AT&T who wanted to know why they didn’t know about it sooner.
I don’t think there’s anything I ever regretted. But when the dot-coms really started crashing, a lot of people I knew were out of work and that was pretty sad. It was difficult for a little while trying to figure out how to play this. I was making fun of people who were out of work and they were having a really hard time getting new jobs. Finally, I gave in, and I just started making fun of them, too-and I found out that they liked it. People were saying: “Hey, that was pretty funny, thanks for making me laugh at my otherwise horrible life. I’m going to go kill myself now. But at least I can hang myself with a smile on my face.” Some of these companies I made fun of are gone now. There are still a few out there-I’m waiting to see what happens.
Honestly, there are a lot of people that don’t like her. There have been e-mails coming in every day asking what I am going to say about Martha today. It’s like there are 100,000 people holding her down, saying “Hit her!” I say, “Let her go.”
OK, that was a cheap shot. I’m not saying I’m not above that, I’m just saying I held off. I really did. At least a couple days–and that’s a lot for me.
Terrorism is not funny but how we’ve dealt with it in terms of things like airport screening issues is funny. The way we are trying to defend ourselves is great fodder. And accounting! I mean who thought accounting could be funny?
That’s the biggest challenge every day: to be funnier than what it really going on. It’s gotten to the point clearly where big business and accounting have been the biggest source of material. But now, every day, it is a new company executive confessing. It was kind of angering at first, then it got silly and then it got to be like a Monty Python skit that we’ve all seen 100 times. It’s like “Groundhog Day” where they just change the names. At some point, it’s got to run its course, and then we’ll get back to making fun of the president again.
No. That’s the great thing about the Internet. I can be edgier. But I don’t think we have a choice anymore with the Internet and all these channels. There are too many ways to be exposed to that stuff now.
I don’t know-who’s left really? Who hasn’t gotten in trouble yet? I imagine eventually we’ll see people taking their business from the Cayman Islands and moving it here because clearly this is the most corrupt place.
Like we’re not going to change that rule!
I really just want it to be something people can laugh about.
