The Scallion

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Tuesday, May 13, 2003

Unamerica Thriving; America Jealous

May 13, 2003. In late February of this year, the secession of Unamerica from America was reported in fine publications like The Scallion. Due to America's hostile corporate take-over of Iraq, in which that nation was annexed into the union as the fifty-first state, very little else has appeared in American or Unamerican news. Thus, an update on the situation seemed timely.

A nation now consisting of the top few percent of old-America's most wealthy plus less wealthy and middle-class neoconservatives, completely white and predominantly male, America has begun to face some significant challenges. On the surface, the America left after Unamerica's secession promised to be a formidable foe. While possessing a far smaller population, America boasted by far the greater wealth—orders of magnitude more wealth per capita than any other nation on earth. The very day of the secession, America repealed its Bill of Rights and dismantled the New Deal, creating a federal government consisting solely of a military. Without bothersome social programs like Social Security, Welfare, Medicare/Medicaid, environmental protection, or public education to waste precious tax dollars on, the new American government was free to buy as many tanks, bombs, and military airplanes as it wanted. Except for one small problem: prior to the secession, neither the wealthy corporations nor the wealthy individual citizens in America paid any taxes. So, the laws were changed to levy a modest flat tax on every business and individual: in keeping with old American practices, the tax rate was set inversely proportional to income. The wealthiest Americans threatened to raise Cain but capitulated in the end: since 100% of their tax dollars were to be used for the common good of imperialism—not a penny to the undeserving poor—they realized that to complain would not only be like cutting off their noses to spite their faces, but it would also be treasonous and would result in their executions.

So, it was beginning to look like America would quickly become the military dictatoress of the world, with a virtually unlimited supply of military materiel. Except for one problem: because the Unamerican Constitution provides for a living wage for all working citizens, Americans have been unable to find cheap labor. It is ironic that the neoconservatives—who now have the America they claim they want, free from all dissent from the Orwellian neocon party line—are having a difficult time spending any of the money they so insist on hoarding. After all, Junior can't be bothered to pluck yon silver spoon from out his nostril and toil like a common laborer—certainly not for a farthing less than the six-figure executive salary Daddy has been priming him to condescend to take—just to build tanks and planes and bombs ... or—heaven forfend!—to clean a lowly toilet. So, to fuel the American military, American businesses offered to pay workers a living wage with decent benefits. That ploy failed, however: Unamerican workers, dissatisfied with American business ethics and environmental policies, chose to keep their Unamerican jobs—and migrants and immigrants to North America followed suit. As a result, America has not yet figured out how to build the imperial bombs, tanks, and planes it so lasciviously craves. The resulting shortage in workers at all levels from middle-class professionals to janitors has left America in quite a fix. With no servants to cook or clean or garden, America's extravagant luxury homes are fast becoming the world's most spacious ghettos. The worker shortage is underscored in the American military: while many faithful of the old guard remain at their posts, the vast majority of rank and file defected to Unamerica for living wages, decent veterans' benefits, and the security of knowing that, by declaration in Unamerica's Constitution, they can only be called to fight just wars of defense and will never be called to fight unjust wars to capture money or oil for the rich without receiving their fair share of the spoils. Observers are reminded of the anti-war posters of the Viet Nam era: what if they threw a war and nobody came? The once all-powerful giant has now become a toothless midget.

Meanwhile, Unamerica is thriving and prospering under provisional Unamerican President Ralph Nader, who will be eligible for reelection in 2004. Boasting the world's healthiest organic foods, best-taught public school children, and most happy citizenry, Unamerica is well on its way toward becoming a benevolent, non-polluting citizen of the world. When asked about America, President Nader smiled and shrugged: “I think they're finally beginning to get it: they need us far more than we need them. Come to think of it, we don't need them at all!”

Pubs Give Lip Service to Blacks

May 9, 2003. Today, Republican lawmakers traveled from the Capitol into Anacostia for a ceremony marking their intention to give nearly $1M to the National Park Service to renovate the dilapidated historic Frederick Douglas house. They used the press opportunity to proffer soundbites voicing their grand intentions to empower Blacks and give them “jobs with dignity,” thus fulfilling “America's promise.”

This latest campaign push to “reelect” Mr. Bush includes some racial quota-based hiring, despite objections the administration perpetually voices when such practices are used by schools seeking to recruit campus diversity. However, the Republican party is ignoring the hypocrisy in its efforts to sell itself to Blacks: it realizes that it's a hard sell to get Blacks to buy into a party that has no Blacks in Congress and virtually no Black Congressional staffers. So, Republicans are frantically looking through minority resumes to try to make good on their grand words. But will it be too little too late? One can only hope that Blacks and Americans in general are not as dim as the Republicans seem to think they are.

Bush's Next War

May 8, 2003. The Bush administration has settled on its next victim in a long line of targets in the war to control Middle East oil, Westernize Islam, build empire, promulgate America's export version of “democracy” (translation: U.S.-friendly dictatorships), and ensure “re”-election of Mr. Bush and his insidious entourage. The target: Iran.

Like its neighbor Iraq, Iran was also targeted for hostile take-over years if not decades ago by power-and-money-hungry officials who, having faithfully served ex-Presidents Reagan and Bush, now serve in Mr. Bush's administration. Taking advantage of the American public's ignorance of this fact, Bush's handlers continue to use 9/11 as the once and ever excuse for the once and ever war. The public's ignorance of America's track record—not once in nearly one hundred years of empire has America ever installed a democratic government when overthrowing a regime—has also been used to advantage. To sugar-coat this unpalatably bitter pill, Mr. Bush called a press conference.

Sporting his characteristic, acutely vapid stare, Mr. Bush grinned and waved to an imaginary audience of admirers, throwing in random references to his military flying days and conspicuously fingering a military flying medal as he spoke: “Alls we gotta do is tell some more ball-face, neo-conservative, Christian fundamentalist, white lies to the 'Murkin people—alls we gotta say is that I-ran has violated Ewe-En revolutions and is not co-operating with U.S. and is hiding its own great big huge stockpile of duhbya-oh-em-dee weapons and is housing known Saddam Hussein terrorists and Osama's hidin' out there, too, and whatnot. Boy, I sure did enjoy my flying days, right up to landing on that carrier the other day. Yessirree, wings and cockpits and ay-ler-ons and joysticks—ain't it special how I can say 'joystick' without gettin' flayed by the press? In yer face, Bill Clinton!—and ... and ... uh, y'know, all that plane stuff there. Yep, that all sure was fun, all that flying. And that weren't even with alcohol!

“And then, once we've taken over I-ran, the first thing I'm gonna do is change their name. What blame turd blossom come up with a name like 'I-ran' anyhow? I mean, it's just plain immoral, bad English. Every schoolchildren with A-B-C's knows it ought to be 'I-gone-run.'”

Earth's Supply of Major Entertainment Natural Resource Exhausted

May 7, 2003. Entertainment industry officials announced today how Hollywood is dealing with the huge crisis within the industry that has finally reached a critical mass of epic proportions.

The crisis? The complete, total, and utter exhaustion of the earth's supply of the industry's most critically needed natural resource: new ideas for motion picture plots.

It all started with remakes. First, there were remakes of old classic movies, like Father of the Bride. More recently, Hollywood decided to hood up The Bishop's Wife and call it The Preacher's Wife. Some experts say that the decline in the reproductive rate of new ideas in Hollywood is due to wanton, mass destruction of new ideas' habitats. While wildly popular with liberals and many actors and writers, this notion is summarily dismissed by conservatives and many filmmakers in Hollywood. But, despite the slow decline of new ideas, new movies were being produced at a rate that was only imperceptibly slower than it had been for the past three to four decades. Alarmingly, however, the growing consumption of the unrenewable resource led to a shortage so severe that, by the early twenty-first century, even the most uninterested members of the American public couldn't ignore or deny it: remakes were being produced at a faster rate than “new” movies. Even more alarming was the source of the “new” remakes: seventies movies that weren't even all that popular in their heyday. Even perfectly good movies that gain nothing from so-called updates, like “The In Laws,” have become remake fodder. This alarming trend means that eighties movies will be remade next, followed by nineties movies. By 2005, Hollywood will have produced prequels and prequels of prequels, and sequels and sequels of sequels, for every movie ever made, including all the prequels, sequels, and remakes ever made to that point. By 2006, Hollywood will begin remaking all those prequels, sequels, and remakes it made prior to 2005. What will happen if America is left unchecked to consume its movie past in remakes at a rate faster than new past can be generated?

The experts are not hopeful. Professor Hall E. Wood, spokesman for a Washington, D.C.-based entertainment industry think tank, explained: “At this rate of remake consumption, the Hollywood movie ecology is going to collapse in on itself like a supernova. This will result in the American movie-going public having to nothing better to go see in the theaters than remakes of movies first made well within recent living memory—just a few years ago, in fact. Then, once the supply of new ideas has been totally and utterly exhausted, Americans will have to endure remakes of increasingly recent remakes—until all the remakes finally merge into one hideous film loop that is beginning to go into remake just as its last scenes are being shot, like some ghastly ouroboros. Oh, too horrible to contemplate!”

The mass extinction of new ideas is also spreading to the medium of television, albeit with slightly less rapidity than it struck the once-silver screen. Experts forecast that the last new idea for any form of audiovisual entertainment media will be born, live its life, and expire by 2010, condemning Americans with TVs to an eternity of nothing more than news and reruns.