It was a shock that Sniff actually put up fresh content for the first time in months. It wasn't a shock that none of it was remotely funny. That site's been sucking on dry tit for so long it's pathetic. Matt's right; Porter could e-mail about four or five people from here to do Sniff for fun in their spare time, we'd say yes, and they'd have new content weekly that would actually be funny.
As for the piece itself, yeah, it's obvious that Top Gear would love to have fans that are totally uncritical who'd dedicate their lives to giving them e-blowjobs, and that's pretty much what they have on the official site (which is what made the India Not-So-Special such a shock to their system; Watch the teeth! Watch the teeth!). Every TV show would love to have that kind of audience. Porter is simply following the Andy/Jeremy Party Line here: the critics are irrational, and, besides, they don't pay the license fee, so they don't matter.
Except...
As Ger said, we outside UKania do pay for the show indirectly. Ger outlined how he pays for it in AUS. I pay for BBC America as part of my cable bill here in Not-Quite-Chicagoland, and I also get my Net access through my cable company. It's a sunk cost, and I'm just choosing which method I desire to get Top Gear. It's all coming down the coax anyway, and every month, I send an e-check to cover that cost, a small portion of which is earmarked to paying for Top Gear. Just because the payment isn't laid out as clearly as it is with the UK License Fee doesn't mean it's theft.
As for the "satire" itself...dear Mister Porter, let me pass on some stuff from a basic military leadership course. There are basically three types of soldiers. The ones that are sullen and apathetic, going through the motions, are the ones you've lost. There's nothing you can do to get them back. The gung-ho ones are the ones you have to worry about; they're going to get themselves killed. It's the ones who are bitchy and critical that you want. They're showing that they care. Apply the proper sort of motivation, and they're going to not only stick with you, but they're going to survive alongside you to complete the mission.
It's pretty clear that Andy and Jeremy understand this, and their remarks about fans in Minnesota and such are attempts to motivate this part of the fandom. Porter's piece, however, doesn't do that. It comes off as mean-spirited and insulting. It isn't even stereotypical. Any episode thread here puts the lie to that stereotype. If you eliminate the half of the entries from the gung-ho brainless crowd, the remaining half are well-thought-out and critical where they need to be, along with appropriate praise. I don't think there's anyone here (other than theiceisalie and his TGUSA remarks) who are consistently negative for the sake of being consistently negative. The main problem with the piece was that it wasn't funny, it was that it was completely off-target. That seems to be a habit with everything on Sniff for a long time now.
I wonder how Porter treated Kimi Raikkonen on the set, considering that, during the last burst of fresh content on Sniff, there was that picture caption piece of a vodka truck pulled up at Lotus Renault as "preparation" for Kimi's return...