The New York Times as of July 4, 2009

As the real New York Times reported

In an elaborate hoax, pranksters distributed thousands of free copies of a spoof edition of The New York Times on Wednesday morning at busy subway stations around the city...

The paper is dated July 4, 2009, and imagines a liberal utopia of national health care, a rebuilt economy, progressive taxation, a national oil fund to study climate change, and other goals of progressive politics.

The hoax was accompanied by a Web site that mimics the look of The Times's real Web site. A page of the spoof site contained links to dozens of progressive organizations, which were also listed in the print edition.

The Associated Press reported that copies of the spoof paper were also handed out in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, and that the pranksters ... financed the paper with small online contributions and created the paper to urge President-elect Barack Obama to keep his campaign promises.

The spoof website looks amazingly like the real one and it has a pdf of the print edition that was handed out. It was a lot of work and coordination to get the million copies printed and distributed.

Makes you wonder about what the creators were doing when they came up with this idea. What made them decide that it was doable and worth the effort and money to do it?