Who is Leo Ebersole?

Leo Ebersole is a columnist for a local paper in Chicago.  He writes about relationships, and occasionally sports, but his bread and butter is Nine Lines.

Nine lines?

It's his daily column containing nine witless comments about easy targets in pop culture.  Leo swipes at the low-hanging fruit with material that a 3rd rate cruise-ship stand-up comic would reject as "Too Easy." 

So what's to be done.

This is where you come in.  I plan on taking out an ad in Leo's paper, directly facing his column that says simply this: LEO EBERSOLE IS A TALENTLESS HACK

That's pretty funny. How can I help?

I want to make this a group effort.  It’s so much more satisfying to have a community involved in making the world a better place.  It takes a village, blah blah blah.  So click here, or down on the link below, and donate some cash.  The ad will cost 1200 dollars.  I’ve gotten some of the money together already, but am hoping to have it done

What did Leo ever do to you?

Nothing personal.  He's just supremely unfunny.  So unfunny it's offensive.  Made more unfunny by the fact that he's trying to be funny.  I blame him for Paris Hilton and Celebreality programming.  Leo exists to make undeservedly-famous people more famous by commenting on how undeserved their fame is.  I hate him.

I thought Leo Ebersole was a computer program?

You must be referring to this, which was an early, unsuccessful attempt to prove he didn't exist.

How much money do you have so far?  Isn’t this a lost cause?

Not at all, thus far we’ve gathered about 300 dollars.  I’ll put some sort of cool looking countdown graphic up as soon as...well...as soon as I get the time.

Do you have some artsy-fartsy way I can use to justify tossing money down, what is essentially a really expensive zinger?

Yes indeed!  The overall point is this:  Why should advertisers have all the fun?  Ads always show fun things going on and if only you drink Diet Coke, or use Maybelline, you too could be involved in shooting silly string in a department store, or dancing in your cubicle.  Wouldn't it be nice to re-take some of that precious media landscape and use it to express something besides "buy our product"?  Wouldn't you like to open up the paper one day and see personal messages to people in the community mingled in with the ads for low-low interest rates, and double bacon hamburgers?  The Leo-Ebersole-Is-A-Talentless-Hack project is about reclaiming some of the mass media space that rightfully belongs to the people.