[214] in Humor
HUMOR: Dave - Solid progress by the Clinton administration
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Mon Apr 18 10:09:35 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 94 10:07:55 -0400
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Cc:
Solid progress by the Clinton administration
by Dave Barry
> I see by the newspapers that solid progress is being made
>by the failed Clinton administration, which has finally moved
>beyond the Bumbling Around Cluelessly Phase and is now deep into
>the Big Incomprehensible Scandal Phase.
> This is good. Under our system of government (called,
>technically, "The Goober System"), the primary function of the
>executive branch, aside from frowning sincerely down from
>helicopters at natural disasters, is to get involved in vast,
>festering legal messes that affect the legislative process in a
>manner very similar to what happens when you attempt to flush a
>dead moose down a commode: Everything gets stopped up. Which is
>exactly what we want. As the great statesperson John or Samuel
>Adams once said, "A government engaged in the legislative process
>is a government that can, at any moment, without warning, decide
>that it needs to spend $14.3 million on a Bureau of Catfish
>Safety."
> So we need big executive-branch scandals. That's why
>there's a top-secret, high-tech, self-activating device in the
>White House attic called the Stupid Ray. I'm sure you have long
>suspected that there was such a device. You have noticed that we
>keep sending all these brilliant people to the White House --
>dynamic leaders with their 14-point programs and their Bold
>Visions for America and their dozens of whip-smart National-Honor-
>Society Phi-Beta-Kappa Rhodes-Scholar aides and lawyers, and the
>instant they grab hold of the controls of the Ship of State, they
>become Jerry Lewis starring in "The Nutty Administration."
> Take Richard M. "Dick" Nixon. Here is a man with an IQ
>of 384, a man who every six weeks produces a hard-cover book
>explaining how we can solve every single problem in the entire
>world, and look what happened when he got into the White House:
> NIXON (to his aides): ... and our first priority must be
>the implementation of the New Federalism, with the concomitant
>amalgamation of the structural parameters of the ...
> STUPID RAY: Hummmmmmm
> NIXON: ... I know! Let's install a tape recorder in here,
>then discuss a criminal conspiracy!
> AIDES: Great idea, sir!
> HENRY KISSINGER: Then let's screw in a light bulb!
> And it wasn't just Nixon. Jimmy Carter was a nuclear
>engineer. Do you think a nuclear engineer with an unimpaired brain
>is going to tell reporters that he was chased by a GIANT SWIMMING
>RABBIT? No, that was the Stupid Ray, which also caused the massive
>incomprehensible Iran-Contra scandal that paralyzed both the Bush
>and Reagan administrations (although for some reason the ray
>appeared to have no effect whatsoever on President Reagan
>himself).
> And now we have the Clinton administration, loaded with
>brains, flailing around like a blindfolded mud wrestler, getting
>itself deeper and deeper into this Whitewater Development scandal,
>the scope of which has now been expanded to the point where, any
>day now, there is going to be a Texas School Book Depository
>angle.
> We here in the print medium are working overtime to keep
>you abreast of this scandal by cranking out long, fact-filled
>stories. Each of these is carefully reviewed prior to publication
>by a team of brilliant theoretical physicists headed by Stephen
>Hawking; if these people have even the faintest clue as to what
>the story says, we rewrite it to make it more incomprehensible for
>you, the average citizen.
> This is easy for us, because even WE don't understand this
>scandal. Some days, when we're running a little short, we stick
>chunks of old Watergate articles in our Whitewater stories to bulk
>them out. All we know for sure about Whitewater is, it has
>something to do with -- surprise! -- a failed savings-and-loan.
>EVERYTHING has to do with a failed savings-and-loan. Hundreds of
>years from now, historians will look back on the ravaged remains
>of our society and wonder how come we never used nuclear weapons
>on the savings-and-loan industry when we had the chance.
> Here's what I want to know: Did YOU, personally, ever have
>any money in a failed savings-and-loan? No, right? Neither did I.
>Neither did anybody I know. I bet neither did anybody you know. So
>where the hell are all these failed savings-and-loans coming from?
>Who put all these billions of dollars into them that we taxpayers
>are always paying back? Space aliens? Are we bailing out Martians
>here?
> This is only one of the many Whitewater questions now
>under investigation. And although of course it would be wrong to
>pass any judgment before all the facts are known, we can safely
>assume that everybody involved is guilty. The Republicans cannot
>BELIEVE their good luck, but they are trying to be cool about it.
>As Senate Minority Leader "Bob" Dole (R-Mister MeanyPants) put
>it in a recent speech, "We cannot allow work on critical national
>issues to be halted by a shortsighted partisan obsession with
>Whitewater Whitewater Whitewater Whitewater Whitewater neener
>neener neener ha ha ha."
> Speaking of issues: There are some other ones, such as the
>budget deficit, and the fact that you apparently can write
>"RUSSIAN AGENT" on your Central Intelligence Agency employment
>application and still get a high-level job, and as concerned
>citizens we SHOULD be thinking about these things, and demanding
>better from our leaders, but every time we try to
> Hummmmmmmm
>
>(C) 1994 THE MIAMI HERALD
>DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
