We at The Chimes take our journalistic reputations seriously. And that’s why, when I receive letters from fictitious readers, like this one, I take the time to address them.

“Dear James, so what’s the deal with The Chimes? Are you for real or what? Sincerely, A Reader That I Just Made Up.”

Well, Mr. Up, to explain The Chimes you have to start with the members of its staff. I think I can speak for the whole staff when I say that I signed up for two reasons: the money and to pick up girls at parties. Working for The Chimes, however, is a tougher job than you might think, especially because of our mostly conservative demographic. Writing for our particular newspaper can be a difficult balancing act because we must remain both the “Liberal Mass Media” as well as the “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.” As difficult as it can be to maintain such a pristine reputation, I’ve found that it helps to have a role model — that is why I turn to the New York Times, a newspaper that is so concerned about Senator John McCain’s integrity that they are willing to sacrifice their own.

For those of you who only use The Chimes as your source of news, you might not have heard, so let me bring you up to speed. The New York Times, one of our nation’s most prominent newspapers, has publically endorsed John McCain as their GOP candidate. You’re probably thinking, “But James that seems really biased to me. How can they just pick one candidate over another and not seem somewhat opinionated?” I believe that The Times has deftly sidestepped any such accusations by printing an article publically criticizing Senator McCain that contained few, if any, “facts” or “evidence” just to show how unbiased they are.

Now in order to tell you what exactly The Times said I’m going to have to ask all of the freshmen in the room to cover their eyes due to the graphic and explicit language. Ready? Good. They described the relationship between McCain and a certain lobbyist as being “cozy.” Unlike many lesser news agencies, The Times doesn’t need things like “sources” to run a smear campaign against a presidential candidate. At the top of the article they included a picture of Senator McCain standing next to … his wife. And then somewhere farther on down, they ran a picture of the lobbyist in question. Apparently they don’t actually have a picture of the alleged couple together. If TMZ had written an article like this, they would have had all kinds of pictures and hotel receipts before they accused the 71-year-old war veteran and former POW of being a dirty, old man. Not only that but when The Times was criticized for its article, the editors stood by it saying, “The story speaks for itself.” In other words “We’re the New York Times; we didn’t need facts for the article, and we don’t need facts now.”

What a role model! Talk about unbiased — they don’t even let the facts get in the way, even now as researches are uncovering documents and evidence that seems to show that McCain did not give special treatment to the lobbyist and her clients. The Times is so balanced that they can endorse and smear the same candidate just because they feel like it. With that kind of journalistic integrity in mind, I am personally endorsing Ralph Nader because I believe that anybody who has run as many times as he has and lost deserves a shot at the job … although somebody told me that he kicks puppies and swears in church.