Yossarian Universal News Service
In response to former California governor Ronald Reagan's election to the Presidency in 1980 and the growing conservative movement, Fericano co-founded (with Elio Ligi) the first parody news and disinformation syndicate, Yossarian Universal News Service (YU), which the Los Angeles Times dubbed, "unbelievable news for unbelievable times." The service was named after the protagonist of Joseph Heller's satirical anti-war novel Catch-22.
As a media content provider with subscribers as diverse as Saturday Night Live, Punch (London), Mother Jones, La Prensa (Managua), and Paul Krassner's The Realist, YU News Service quickly became the ideal counterpoint to Reagan's "Great Communicator."
During George W. Bush's first year in office in 2001, Fericano chronicled the president's lies and blunders in weekly YU News Service dispatches emailed to thousands of subscribers all over the world. Three days after 9/11 he identified Bush's crusade against terrorism as his "re-election campaign war." In 2002-2003, at the height of the president's popularity, a collection of these stories, I, Terrorist: Dispatches from the Front, was rejected by more than 20 U.S. book agents and publishers.
Fericano continues to use YU News Service as a vehicle for his social and political satires, and since June 2004 he's been writing and performing for radio (The One Minute News Hour) with fellow satirist and broadcaster Mike Amatori.
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