Just the Alternative Facts 

Spread Your Right Wings (SYRW) is a satirical website. We do not report actual events. We do, however, often name real people who do exist and mention real events that did happen, though others are characters we make up. When we name real people, what we say about them we do not intend to be taken as an account of something that actually happened or that they actually said. This website is meant to make you laugh only, and think a little, if we’re good enough at what we do to achieve that, not to provide a reportorial description of real-life events. As people who’ve been trained in and worked in journalism for a while, we believe in the concept of a truth that the vast majority of reporters and publications in the mainstream media (MSM) are trying to get at. The much-maligned and mistrusted media, writ large, is actually, generally populated by competent, ethical reporters trying to report REAL news as part of the vital, free press in a democracy. We rue the day the term “fake news” was leveled at any reported information that the political leaders in power at the advent of this website and the time of this writing don’t like and that government’s attempts at encouraging people not to believe anything at all that they read. They have and do encourage people to believe only what they say. No! Always question what you hear from those in power, we say. But the free press, which the United States press is, despite the lamentable involvement in it by corporations, is a free press, independent of the official, governmental/political leaders. We’re going to do our part to make sure it stays that way—by mocking those who would like you to disbelieve everything you hear, while believing only what they say. All that being said, we’re just trying to make you laugh and have fun!

We don’t chronicle real life, as traditional reporters do. We lampoon the right wing of United States politics, the intellectually spurious and morally bankrupt ideas that often motivate the frequently misled, misguided, and uninformed people who inhabit that cultural space, as they attempt to make habitually wrongheaded, closed-minded changes to U.S social policy and political life. Our goal is to make a point/points while making you laugh. We are members of the progressive left, we know it, too, has issues (though we believe it is founded on principles based in morally, ethically-sound thinking and largely—though, yes, not always—inhabited by people who want to do good in the world). We’ll leave a good-natured send-up oft the left to others. We’ll take the right.

When we name an actual, real-life person, we mean that person no harm. We believe all people are inherently good. There is no evil baby born to the world, but something happens along the life path of some as they grow up in this mad, mad, mad, mad world, as the movie by that name penned by William and Tania Rose pointed out, to damage people and make them turn toward darkness, hate, cruelty, and all the other bad stuff. We know that all the people we’re poking fun at…well, their attacks on others and on society as a whole are, at their deepest level, “a cry for help,” as Helen Schucman, Bill Thetford, Ken Wapnick said in A Course In Miracles. That in NO WAY excuses their actions, but it is a valid point. These people need to read a self-help book, go to a 12-step meeting, find a spiritual path to healing, see a psychiatrist, study with a guru, or do whatever works for them to become better people. Until they do, and as long they insert themselves into the public eye, they are fair game for GOOD-NATURED, OBVIOUSLY FUN-BASED, GOOD-INTENTIONED mockery. Then there are those people who are not bad, they’re just misled. We often gently mock these people, too, but we NEVER mean harm to them, either.

In all cases, we love, period. We just love to tease sometimes, too! Imagine us laughing warmly and gently elbowing you as you read our articles.

Our goal is also to make a humble contribution to the long, valuable, storied, witty, sharply intelligent, and complex tradition of political satire, a literary and journalistic genre that has great potential to entertain, and also change minds and hearts. It’s also a personal favorite of all of us here at SYRW.

To complicate things a little, though, there are times, very occasionally, when we report on a person or event and mean for that report to be taken as the truth and not a comic send-up, although that reporting will be delivered with humor even then. We note these non-alternative-fact-based articles as such in the body of the article, usually right at the top.

Thank you for visiting SYRW. We appreciate your readership. However, we don’t allow comments on our articles. This is only because we don’t see the comments sections of websites like ours as a place for productive or valuable discussion to take place. This view is based on our staff’s experiences working on websites, moderating comments in online discussion boards, and running our own websites. Talk to people face-to-face, please, about this and other things you read online! If you must contact us, please do so via a direct message on our Facebook page, tagging us in a Tweet, or tagging us in an Instagram post.

This site is dedicated to my Achi, for teaching me to keep laughter in my life always.

Big thanks: Apa, for one simple sentence that changed the entire trajectory of the site.

And my twin nieces for teaching me “about the kind of person I want to be,” as Johnny said to Baby in Dirty Dancing–except they’re two people.