How to $tick it to Tampa News Force
In an obvious effort to curry favor with poor, put-upon, tough-as-nails-yet-apparently-thin-skinned Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida Senator Jason Brodeur (R-Lake Mary) has introduced “Senate Bill 1316: Information Dissemination“, which would require any blogger writing about government officials to register with the Florida Office of Legislative Services or the Commission on Ethics.
Brodeur, who you may know as “He was a goalie for the New Jersey Devils, right? No? Then I have no clue” is seeking to assess fees to anybody who writes “an article, a story, or a series of stories,” about “the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, a Cabinet officer, or any member of the Legislature,” and receives or will receive payment for doing so.
Is this a blog? I guess there are some blog-gy elements to be found here. No matter.
The point, in short, is that he’s trying to charge people for exercising their First Amendment rights to free expression, which kind of runs counter to the basic concept behind the “free” part of that principle.
As you can imagine, this measure is of serious concern to those of us here at Tampa News Force, since we write about Governor DeSantis all the time. We published an article about him this morning. We write about him all the time! (By the way, this is the first time we, or anybody else, have ever cared about Mr. Brodeur enough to write about him or otherwise acknowledge his existence. Welcome to the family, Jason!)
These satirical articles often (and by “often” I mean “always”) depict Governor DeSantis engaged in outlandish and horrifying acts of depraved buffoonery. We know that bothers some of you and that’s okay. Meaning, we’re okay with the fact that it bothers some of you. It would be inaccurate to say we don’t care; we like it. We’re glad it bothers some of you. It makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside, and, if I’m being completely honest, is somewhat sexually arousing.
That said, we understand that you may see this proposed legislation from the honorable Mr. Brodeur as an opportunity to strike back against Tampa News Force for our relentless lampooning of the despotic overlord from whom he desperately craves a loving pat on the head, either figuratively or literally or both. And you’re right.
All you have to do is pay us.
You see, Tampa News Force is woefully under-monetized. To date, our primary (only) business plan of getting Derek Jeter to notice us and buy the company has yet to yield optimal results. In the meantime, we do this for free. Like a public service. As such, we wouldn’t be subject to the fee structure listed in SB 1316.
That could change; all you would have to do is send us money. Compensate us financially with hard-earned money out of your own pocket for making fun of the man who’s keeping you safe from such imminent threats as men in dresses, books, anthropomorphic cartoon animals and the ethnic types. We’ll make it easy for you. Here’s a link to a brand-new GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/tick-it-to-tampa-news-force?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cf+share-flow-1
Gosh, we sure hope it’s not a success. It would be a real shame if we got a $1,000,000 for something we’re doing for free so that we would have to pay this senator nobody’s ever heard of $5 or $10 every couple of weeks. That would really teach us a lesson.
