The Clinic

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The Clinic, a Chilean satirical/investigative newspaper, was founded by Patricio Fernández Chadwick in November 1998. The name was inspired by the fact that Pinochet was first incarcerated in Britain inside a private clinic called The Clinic. In its first incarnation, it was a rag a few pages long distributed only within Santiago costing 100 pesos (22 U.S. cents at the time); over the course of its short lifetime, it has changed drastically, and now costs 700 pesos (U$1.30 as of June 2006) and averages forty pages. Today, it's a fortnightly published every second Thursday during normal operation times (it usually takes February off) which will be publishing its 150th edition on 14 April 2005.

One of its humor features is done in a style reminiscent of Sergio Aragones' marginal cartoons in Mad Magazine: at the bottom of each page except the covers the statement Sabía usted que...(Did you know that...?) is printed and followed by a remark which can be obscene, witty, snarky, or impenetrable, but is always very short.

Examples:
- It's true: marijuana leads to coke, fries, two burgers, three ice creams...
- Ghosts don't believe in people.
- If everybody who says they were there, really was there, the GAP (Group of Friends of the President, an organization established to serve as a paramilitary presidential bodyguard for Allende) had about 70,000 members.
- To be on the front page of Las Últimas Noticias, all you have to do is bare your butt in a disco.
- Barney is Godzilla's gay son.

The Clinic has nothing but utter contempt for almost all other media outlets in the country, and mocks politicians of all stripes from Pinochet to the late Gladys Marín. On separate occasions, it has said that "La Segunda comes out in the afternoon because it takes a while to make up the news," "Reading Punto Final (Period, end of sentence) leaves you in a comma," "After you read El Mercurio you know two things: that the joke is lame," and "After you read La Tercera, you know two things: that the joke is lame and so is the front page."
Its main criticism of mainstream newspapers is their track record of 3 years of staunch opposition to Allende; 16 years and 6 months of craven submission to and acceptance of Pinochet, no friend of the free press; and 15 years of lazy reporting and opposition to the centrist and center-left governments that have ruled Chile in that span.