There are some days when I really, really, really wish I were still writing Fake Steve, and friends, this is one of them. In case you haven’t heard, Bloomberg accidentally ran Steve Jobs’s obituary today, and then retracted it. Luckily, Gawker decided to humiliate Bloomberg by publishing the entire obit, including the list of people that Bloombots should call if/when Dear Leader actually does die, which I’m still not sure he ever will, because as far as I can recall from all that Greek and Latin I took in high school a man-god born of Zeus and mortal woman should be an immortal being, and furthermore, how would Apple PR handle it? I suppose for a while they could just stonewall by saying they weren’t here today to talk about Steve, they were here to talk about how excited everyone is about [FILL IN NAME OF NEW PRODUCT HERE] and maybe they could buy themselves a year or two during which the Apple faithful would continue to believe Steve was really alive despite having seen reports to the contrary on the news. But eventually people would start to notice that they hadn’t seen Steve around for a while, and they might even start to doubt Apple’s line about Steve missing Macworld because he was stuck in traffic. And then what happens? It makes me shiver to think about it. For this reason alone, this cannot happen. Steve Jobs cannot die.
Try telling that to the filthy hacks, however. Gawker goes out of its way to point out that “news organizations routinely prepare obituaries in advance,” but I still think Bloomberg’s gaffe is significant. Clearly they were refreshing Jobs’s obituary, and from this I would infer that perhaps their editors were, um, not so utterly convinced by Steve’s recent off-the-record conversation with Joe Nocera in the Times. Or maybe it was those very strong “Steve’s health is a personal issue. Steve’s health is a personal issue. Steve’s health is a personal issue” statements from Apple PR. Yeah. Those went a long way toward putting everyone at ease.
Guess what? Bloomberg ain’t the only ones who are getting antsy. Back when Steve appeared onstage looking like crap and the whole “Is he sick?” thing began, one of my fellow filthy hacks, a guy who works at a very top-drawer news organization, got the word from his editors back in New York to start writing the Jobs obit and make sure he had it banked and ready to go. I told him it was pointless because Steve was fine and this whole “thin” thing was an optical illusion. I even showed him the hundreds of emails and blog comments I’d received from readers who don’t know Steve and don’t even know anyone who knows anyone who knows Steve but who were nonetheless absolutely sure that Steve was fine and were just furious that the press was making such a big deal of it since the whole thing was so obviously a load of crap. Didn’t work. The hack still wrote the obit. Though, to his credit, he has so far managed not to publish it.
Great work, Bloomberg. You dopes.
You should write it anyway. Publish it as Real Fake Steve… or Fake Real Dan. Or just as what you would have written if you were writing in that voice.
Oh come on Dan. Just start writing it again. Even after Steve passes (which I hope is years from now) you could still write it as if from the afterlife. It would probably be even funnier.
Pleeeeeease go back to writing it!!!
I think Apple paid Bloomberg to post it to keep interest in Apple while they line up the next wave of wonderful God-Droppings on the world.
On a side note, before you were outed as FSJ, I was hoping that whomever was writing the blog, would have passed the torch to another writer and keep that going from blogger to blogger to throw off the wolves. Anyhoos, enjoying your new site just as much
As suggested in your book, “Options” (no longer available at fine bookstores everywhere), you have to assume Jobs has more doubles than Saddam Hussein had. Besides, the Jobs design sense has been etched into a chip that can perform the same function: it just says “white,” “black,” and “shiny” at appropriate moments.
@JD – It would be funny. He can tell how he just drops in on Ballmer and Gates and haunts them.
CNN did this a few years ago and published a bunch of obits. Apparently they keep them until they need them, so that when the news breaks that somebody died, they can get the news out the fastest, and don’t have to waste time writing an obit.
I think that’s what was in the building that was on fire recently. They were working on the new version of Steve, a Cylon-type being.
- Barry
Was Fake Steve shelved for any contractual reason? If not and you just decided you wanted to put it down, there’s nothing to stop an occasional new post. That’s what I always prescribed when you felt the burn before: slow down the publishing schedule until it feels right. True blogs need no editors to whip their filthy hacks. Bloggers are the filthiest kind of hacks who just get a natural kick of out it!
And some of them are into the whip thing too. But that’s another story.
I wish Bloomberg would also run next week’s Dow winners / losers ahead of time. Adds a whole new dimension to the term “futures”…
Damnit Dan…write it already! This is one of those times, just like the ubiquitous “that’s what She said!” responses where if you DON’T write it, you’re a putz!
I, for one, honor the place where your sarcasm, mockery and respect converge. Namaste!
Now let’s go.
Just create a new category and post FSJ entries there.
BTW, whom is Jobs going to call now?
You’re right, I really, really wish you were writing as FSJ too. RDL is a bore.
Dear Editor
Some of my little friends say that Fake Steve is dead.
Please tell me the truth; is he alive?
Virginia O’Hanlon
“…a man-god born of Zeus and mortal woman should be an immortal being…”
Herakles / Hercules wasn’t immortal.
@ James
RDL + handcrafted drug references = FSJ. See it now?
RDL,
have you heard of a cool book called “Epitaph of a small winner”?
Yes, Bloombergs are dopes. Unbelivable.
I hope you have Moshe and the Legal Team on their case. Shut them down.
Can’t you write FSJ on this blog by opening the text with “We found this at the bottom of the moving boxes/archives/quetzalcoatl’s lair/lost hard drive/pierce brosnan’s wristwatch”…
On a more serious note, I truly admire Steve’s patience with the media. Lately, reporting on Apple has read like a personal insult rather than criticism of company’s profitability and vision.
Jesus – is that a real, undoctored recent photo of SJ? Wow. Talk about painfully thin. He really looks unwell. This is not a happy photo.
Most of the IT folks looks like Steve on this photo during rollouts and “all hands on deck” exercises. Only filthy hacks who make up stories think weight loss is something you sign up and pay a membership for.
I got news for you. Join IT somewhere and you will lose weight, hair and potentially your spouse.
“Herakles / Hercules wasn’t immortal.”
Well, just like FSJ, RDL knows crap too.
So I’m just sitting backstage here at Invesco Field enjoy some of the apps they have. Everytime I get offered something, I tell them to bring it in a souveneir Broncos cup. Pepsi, Coors, fried chicken, you name it. Hold on, gotta do a video since that girl is done singing.
Back. Somebody’s on stage now, I don’t care who. She’s trying to be funny. Stop trying to be funny! This is MY time, damnit! Al says hi, he’ll be going out on stage soon.
Oooo, the pizza’s here. Yes, in a Bronco cup. Well, the slices anyway.
- Barry
Dan: lots of blogs have more than one writer. I’m sure FSJ could find some time to submit the occasional post…
“I even showed him the hundreds of emails and blog comments I’d received from readers who don’t know Steve and don’t even know anyone who knows anyone who knows Steve but who were nonetheless absolutely sure that Steve was fine and were just furious that the press was making such a big deal of it since the whole thing was so obviously a load of crap.”
We readers get the oh-so-smug snarkiness lurking in that sentence, Dan. But weren’t you, someone who I bet doesn’t know Steve and who doesn’t even know anyone who knows anyone who knows Steve, freely speculating in the press that he was either dying or at least would not be CEO at the end of the year because of his health? When January 1st rolls around and Steve is still in charge, how will you feel? Cheated?
Your mischaracterization of your readers comments seems like a self-serving attempt to defend your indefensible callousness.
Few would argue that Steve is “fine.” It’s just that there is not only a difference in degree but a difference in kind between having a serious but manageable chronic illness and being terminal with cancer with months to live. Certain “journalists” including yourself have been on a perverse death watch, waiting … waiting … waiting …
I think you, in your own way, pulled the trigger a little too early as well — by prematurely ending Fake Steve Jobs. And now you’re pissed. Well, sorry, but at least now you have your pals at Bloomberg with which to grumble.
Hey, maybe you’ll get lucky and Steve will get hit by a bus.
I am NOT dead. Now can someone get me a smoothie?
I agree:
“There are some days when I really, really, really wish I were still writing Fake Steve…”
But it would be very very wrong to write as Dead Steve. Funny, though.
suppositio.us
I really, really, really wish you were still writing Fake Steve too. And not just today.
beautiful. you hit that one out of the park. btw, who’s the fatuous cunt from england (assuming because of his spelling) whose post at 11:50 disses you (unfairly, imho). he just made your case. the apple loonies are a band of totalitarian assholes who react like automatons any time someone dares to poke fun at their cult – or cult leader.
so it goes. fuck em. give em hell, dan. we love your stuff
You fucking disgusting gossip-monger (including this shitty pseudo-intellectual blogger i have found myself_ will never come back to). A bunch of nobodies. you! fucker, wasting your life in a pig-sty like cubicle, tell me, is it PC or MAC you work on(with an exception of those creative MAC) you fucking less than zero office-slave leave Steve Job and his ailments alone.
Steve Job would not piss on your mother with a stolen dick.
So, how am I doing on stage? I’m get stage fright very easily, and am very self conscious.
- Barry
Yes Dan… please write as FSJ… please.
“news of my death have been greatly, ok, slightly exaggerated”, love, el Jobso
The beauty of blogging is that you can post irregularly. I join the many in voting to hear FSJ’s reaction to Bloomberg’s mistake. As others have said, you could post it here (say FSJ forwarded it to you) or over at FSJ.
And a general wish to all bloggers and podcast makers – produce your content when you are motivated to. If it becomes a chore, take a break. I’d much rather hear from you when you are motivated and into it, then when you are posting because you have to keep a schedule.
News of my death will be ignored.
On second thoughts – exactly WHY was it you stopped writing FSJ? Never gave a proper reason (not that you have to)…but…if you’re missing him, and we’re missing him…well, what keeps you from doing it?
Steve Jobs will live forever, in some form or another, so a fake version should do too…
Still not able to post anything worth reading huh Dan?
For someone who was able to create such good sature you really do stink as a writer.
Now, go write the next Obama lovefest article for your little magazine as you are boring me silly.
bring back moderated posting…
Is it ironic that FSJ that still proudly boasts itself as “A Forbes.com Site” disappeared when RDL jumped the Forbes ship for the Newsweek ship? I think not.
I would ventrue a guess that Forbes is still clenching onto it’s FSJness because technically they still own it since RDL was writing it while in their employ and on their time. I would further venture that Forbes asked a huge amount that Newseek wasn’t willing to pay for FSJ. They figured they had RDL and could bank off of that. Problem is, RDL is so busy with Newseek stuff that he doesn’t have the ample time he had at Forbes to be RDL.
Just my theory, but RDL’s lack of speaking about the FSJ thing going away, and wishing he were “really, really, really were still writing Fake Steve”, seem to point in that direction.
ach! as al franken (as old al) would say: those bastahdz!!
sitting like vultures waiting for the other pancreas to drop. why i oughta moi-der-ize ‘em, i say! poor RSJ. he just wants to make beautiful, shiny gadgets in the jobs pod and go all gandhi-esque on us. after all, i diet of smart water, bits of watercress and the occasional indulgent slice of rare asian pear flown in from japan and only whilst in season and freshly picked can’t put much meat on yer bones. true artists just aren’t outback steakhouse kinda guys, you fat-ass americans.
why did only 84,000 people see Barry give his acceptance speech at denver’s invesco field? because if americans were the actual size of normal humans in the rest of the world, they could’ve fit 125,000 in there, easy.
put down the bag of doritos™ and step away slowly …
I was extremely saddened on Friday morning to read in Bloomberg of the death of my good friend and worthy competitor Steven Malik Jobs.
Steve was a unique person who did a half decent job of bringing Apple computer (which he started) back from obscurity to near obscurity. I always knew this moment would come, but somehow I am surprised but my reaction: depression.
It’s hard to explain, not having Jobs around. It’s like that corn I had on my pinkie toe, it hurt, it was hard, I used to soak it every evening, I’d scrape it, pick at it, yet it still hung on! One day after it healed, I realised I missed it.
I will miss picking on Jobs, he gave me something to do in the afternoon.
Seriously; I will miss Steve.
I am not evil
These guys at Bloomberg probably just wanted to publish a much-needed obituary of Fake Steve. Someone must have got confused.
Is it just me, or doesn’t the photo of Steve Jobs make him *really* look like a cult leader? Emasciated, hair shorn like a monk, wearing an ascetic black “habit”?
“Well it’s a weird situation. I can’t really get into this but people close to him have been saying for quite a while (before the appearance onstage) that he’s really sick. And someone who saw him last week says he still looks like (expletive)”.
“Anyway, I’m starting at Newsweek tomorrow and Fake Steve was supposed to be part of my job. So we’re going to discuss whether to revive the blog”.
Hey, Dan. Tell me how these two sentences go together without you coming off as some sort of pathetic weasel. You’re going around spreading how sick he is, but then you want to restart the FSJ blog? If he is that sick, as you maintain, what will the satire be based on, Dan? You making fun of someone chronically ill? There is seriously something wrong with you.
FSJ, you need to get back to writing as Fake Steve Jobs.
gay oral sex
thank you a lot