The Washington Independent - U.S. news and politics - washingtonindependent.com: Stories by Bruce McCall

Nomenclatural Floodgates

Bruce McCall — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:51:54 GMT

Stephen A. Schwarzman, chairman and co-founder of the powerful hedge fund, the Blackstone Group, recently donated $100 million to the New York Public Library. In a complicated arrangement, the library's main building will be known as the Stephan A. Schwarzman Building and the financier's name will be placed on the structure, though in proportionally smaller type than Lenox, Astor or Tilden, the men who created the world-famous library system.

As The New York Times described:

The name will appear five times on the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue: at the base of each of the two center columns leading to the century-old building’s main entrance; on a gold plaque on the marble floor just outside the front door; and in the marble of the pedestals beneath the lamps at the library’s 42nd Street entrance. The letters will range from 1 to 2 ½ inches in height, those cut into stone etched in a new font that gives the patina of age.

The name will not be as big as some others high atop the facade on Fifth Avenue — like Astor and Tilden — but it will be visible to all who pass by or ascend the steps.

Wealthy donors might well begin vying to underwrite the care and upkeep of other important landmarks:

Oprah’s Purple House

Formerly the White House

Insiders are throwing around an estimated price tag of a billion dollars to connect Oprah Winfrey’s name with the official residence of the president of the United States. The addition of TV’s “hostess with the mostest’s” private “Top Wing,” a complete floor added above the existing structure, would be barely visible -- except at night and during daylight hours. Sparking the idea for a repaint in purple is the Oprah-produced smash Broadway revival of “The Color Purple,” which Oprah’s Purple House visitors will be offered at a steep discount. Renaming the Oval Office as the Oprah Office is the final condition of the Winfrey windfall.

Lincoln-Mercury Memorial

Formerly the Lincoln Memorial

The multimillion-dollar change to the Lincoln-Mercury Memorial will see the two brands’ logos proudly mounted on the portico entrance. A permanent rotating display of new Lincoln and Mercury models inside the rotunda is regarded as easily accommodated within the space. But the requirement that a steering wheel be placed in the martyred president’s hands is still being spiritedly debated.

Ronald S. Perelman Cigar Tomb Bar

Formerly Grant’s Tomb

Donor and Consolidated Cigar Corp. owner Perelman has attached to his $9-million check a personal guarantee that the exterior of the former Grant’s Tomb will never be altered once the giant smoke-puffing Cohiba Maduro is mounted atop the dome. What will be the world’s largest circular cigar bar is designed to be tastefully decorated in appropriate Early Gilded Age, down to the authentic late-19th- century spittoons and Civil War uniforms for the waitstaff. It will be screened off from the sacred tomb itself by wall-size HDTV screens for sports events.

Parc Trump Mount Vernon

Formerly Mount Vernon

In return for his $900 million donation, The Donald has imposed few conditions beyond that subtle name change; a repaint of the house in Aztec Gold; conversion of the slave quarters to time-share condominiums, and a blinking neon sign atop a 600-foot tower visible from Washington, D.C., designed to blend in with the environment. Trump is mum about adding a Jack Nicklaus-designed championship 18-hole golf course to the grounds until plans are finalized for the digging of the canal from the Potomac River right up to the mansion’s front veranda, to accommodate the Trump Presidential Yacht Club marina.

Rupert Murdoch Bridge

Formerly Golden Gate Bridge

His half-billion-dollar gift check was reportedly written “due to a clerical mistake” in invisible ink, forcing even some San Franciscans of goodwill to question Murdoch’s sincerity. Meanwhile, rumors are already spreading that the foxy media baron intends to change the name to Fox Fair & Balanced Bridge to Australia as soon as he can get the ad hoc Save Our Bridge Committee dissolved. This may require purchase of the San Francisco Chronicle to provide a local forum for the necessary character assassinations. Immediate doubling of bridge tolls, a spokesperson says, is only a temporary measure

Gettysburger

Formerly Gettysburg

Benefactor Burger King has paid more than $100 million for rights to re-name the sacred Pennsylvania Civil War battleground “GETTYSBURGer” – a change so slight that Burger King demographers predict that fewer than 99 percent of park visitors will even notice. Use of the company’s logo will be limited to balloons hovering over every important Gettysburg site, and to the authentic l863 Burger King walk-thru kiosk in the middle of the famed battle diorama, open 24 hrs. Whether Burger King will go

through with a plan to sub-license American Express to rename the Pickett's Charge site to “Pickett’s Charge-It” is, as yet, undecided.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

Ayn Rand 101

Bruce McCall — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:13:00 GMT

John Allison, CEO of the banking giant BB&T, calls Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged," "the best defense of capitalism ever written." He says that Rand changed his life, and he's working to ensure that the deceased author isn't left out of the nation's college curricula.

Since 2005, the BB&T Charitable Foundation has given 25 colleges and universities several million dollars to start programs devoted to the study of Rand's books and economic philosophy. In January, the company announced it was donating $1 million to Marshall University in West Virginia. The money would establish a course dedicated to Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" and Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and help create the BB&T Center for the Advancement of American Capitalism on campus.

--Clark Davis, NPR "Morning Edition"

AYN RAND SYLLABUS

I: Course overview: Introduction to reality in metaphysics, reason in epistemology, rational egoism in ethics.

Assignment: If professor cannot satisfactorily explain this to your liking, punch him/her in the face. If he/she appeals to reason, punch him/her again.

II: “Jail the Tax Man”:

Assignment: Describe the triumph of free enterprise and laissez-faire capitalism in America’s 19th-century “Golden Age” of child labor, union-busting, monopolies, debtors’ prisons. Tell why Upton Sinclair was a quiche head.

-- Pretending you are the attorney general of the United States in 1885, write a 50-page attack on coal miners that blames Black Lung on their sniveling and moral slackness.

-- Show in a separate paper why Howard Roark would never contract Black Lung.

III: “Throw the Bawling Baby Off the Cliff”:

Joys of viewing man as a heroic being with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, where reason alone dictates values and actions and rational self-interest and happiness of the individual always comes first. Discuss.

-- Assignment: Dramatize in a one-act play involving a dying mother and her only son’s need to sell her apartment for money to finance his vacation in Cancun.

IV: “Forget It -- There’s Just Food Enough For Me.”

The stupidity of sacrifice.

V: “Jackbooted Gov’t Goons Be Gone!”

Specify why postal service, public sanitation and environmental controls weaken the moral fabric of a nation.

-- Assignment: Write an essay depicting a social paradise where the government consists only of cops and an army.

VI: “Shut Down the Orphanage”:

Explain in 5,000 words why charity sucks. Give examples.

-- Field assignment: Hand out exploding cigars to the homeless in your neighborhood.

VII: “Why Ayn Rand Would Come Back as a Cat”:

Review the virtues of selfishness, willfully ignoring needs of others,

it's-about-me attitude.

Be sure to belittle craven, dependent, altruistic behavior of dogs.

VIII: "The Fountainhead"

How many pages can you read at one sitting and still stay awake?

-- Write 50 adjectives that describe Howard Roark. Include sexual prowess.

-- Write a l0,000 word novel featuring Howard Roark as not an architect

but a) South American dictator, b) Head of Homeland Security, c) Mafia don.

X: "Atlas Shrugged"

Industrialists are America’s heroes. List 100 ways that industrialists

beat Mother Theresa, Madame Curie and Helen Keller in every major economic sector.

-- Compose a Nobel Prize speech for a strip-mining corporation that

caused a giant mudslide fatal to three West Virginia towns. Mention the

presidential pardon.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

When It Hurts to Laugh

Bruce McCall — Tue, 20 May 2008 16:10:30 GMT

Claiming that the 2008 Presidential primary candidates’ cavalcade of pratfalls, tantrums, distortions, stumbles, gaffes, nonsense, screw-ups and bald-faced lies is spiraling out of control and leaving the working funnyman ever further behind in manufacturing up-to-the-minute mockery, American political humorists are quitting their keyboards and refusing to satirize again unless the heedless overflow of absurdity is dialed way back.

The crisis seems all too real. In Baltimore, forensic jokesters reported that the late god of political ridicule H.L. Mencken was rotating in his grave for the first time since former Vice President Dan Quayle last spoke.

Rumors are rife in New York broadcasting circles that Comedy Central’s popular "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" will switch to a poker-game format now that its writing staff has fallen victim, en masse, to severe depression from sustained overwork.

“Back in ’04,” grumped one exhausted political rib-tickler, “we had decent breaks between knuckle-headed faux-paux. You could spend days on Kerry’s wife’s ketchup fortune or W.’s fractured syntax. Today it’s non-stop: no sooner has Clinton told a whopper than Obama puts his foot in it and then McCain mumbles something colossally stupid. And that’s just Monday morning!”

Observers point to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s recent record-setting spate. Over one dizzying weekend she generated so much chuckle-fare about guzzling beer, shooting off guns, pining away for her cabin in rural western Pennsylvania and loving hubby Bill to death that one humor maven went back to writing Dennis Kucinich jokes rather than even try catching up with this mother lode of political mirth. Another begged for reassignment to the Vice President Dick Cheney beat -- where nothing funny has ever been known to happen.

Meanwhile, presumptive Republican candidate Sen, John McCain (R-Ariz.) must be shadowed virtually minute by minute so that jokesmiths can stay abreast of every freshly minted howler. In Florida last week one frazzled humor pro took a swan-dive off a 42rd-floor balcony after failing to keep up with the hail of hilarious McCain misstatements, simply from overhearing the Arizona senator order hotel room-service while Sen. Joe Lieberman whispered corrections.

For his part, Sen. Barack Obama (D- Ill.) has denied deliberately cranking up the drollery factor – in itself the inspiration for more than 300 humor columns – while openly praising Hillary Clinton’s “infinitely richer” gift for providing the pundits with high-octane fun fuel.

The New York senator quickly responded by reminiscing about her career as a stand-up comic ducking bullets during Las Vegas mob turf wars.

Several satirists were felled by the anecdote. Their recovery is uncertain.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

Notes in the Aftermath

Bruce McCall — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:27:34 GMT

Former President Bill Clinton, denied his request for supervision of the White House secretarial pool and the Democratic National Committee party-planning portfolio, is reportedly still angling for a post in the Obama administration that in no way conflicts with wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s, possible role. The ex-president has, in fact, specified that he be at least two floors away from her at all times, and that she would not have access to his daily schedule or travel plans. Sen Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, is rumored to be favoring an ambassadorship for the former president. North Korea, Myanmar and Zimbabwe are being floated as possibilities. These Fox News reports that Clinton recently called Michelle Obama asking for a date remain unconfirmed.

***

Defeated Democratic presidential rival Sen. Hillary Rodman Clinton is sequestering herself in the green room of a major TV network while she mulls her future. She is alone except for a makeup person, three speechwriters, a pollster, two top political strategists and a fund-raising committee. Allegations that she has taken to making anonymous crank 3 a.m. phone calls to Obama have been strongly refuted by the Clinton camp;. She was only calling, aides say, because she wished to apologize for not offering him a slug of Crown Royal in their recent private meeting and was so exhausted that she failed to notice the time.

***

Close Clinton adviser Harold Ickes was arrested early Saturday in Washington for pulling the wings off flies. The testy activist had previously been pinched for taking candy from a baby and tripping old ladies.

***

Unconfirmed reports out of Italy claim that Sen. Barack Obama’s face has appeared on the Shroud of Turin.

***

Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, secretly entered a clinic deep in the Balkans early Sunday for treatment of a rare condition that broke out last Wednesday night during a speech in Kenner, La. McCain’s jaw muscles pulled his mouth into repeated violent spasms lasting several seconds, baring his teeth and scaring small children. Insiders are neither confirming nor denying the rampant speculation that McCain is a vampire.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

The Perfect Ticket

Bruce McCall — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:21:59 GMT

Arizona Sen. John McCain’s decision to name himself as his Republican vice presidential running mate in the November elections
is no longer being dismissed as just another senior moment.

“A McCain-McCain ticket would be a perfect fit,” McCain,71, explained during a breakdown of his Straight Talk Express bus near Tucumcari, N.M., “The veep and myself would be in absolute accord on any issue I can think of right now, just off the top of my head. As president, I could count on absolute loyalty from my No. 2. And our nation will have a president and vice president who literally speak with one voice.

The presumed GOP nominee elaborated on this need for party unity -- not only with the base but in leadership positions. “That is vital,” he continued, “because the choice of me would virtually eliminate the sort of frictions that so complicated Lyndon Johnson’s relations with John F. Kennedy, for example. And Al Gore’s with Bill Clinton. Unlike those individuals, me and me -- or I and me, or is it me and I -- would make a smooth-running team.”

The senator shrugged off concerns about an extra burden being imposed on an already overburdened president by assuming the vice president's duties as well. While doing so, he seemed to signal that his vice president would not wield the powerful influence of a Dick Cheney, the current vice president. "What’s a vice president do besides chair commissions that never meet and go to the funerals of minor despots?” McCain asked, rhetorically.

Meanwhile, we could slash federal expenditures by renting out the vice president’s mansion.”

----

On the Democratic side, Sen Barack Obama, the presumptive presidential nominee, is known to be dodging all efforts directed at persuading him to name his former primary rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as his running mate. But he has acknowledged to associates that he is “frankly intrigued” by the notion of choosing her daughter Chelsea.

“Even setting aside how it strengthens our appeal to women, it’s an inspired choice,” one Obama insider gloated, “a win-win situation. We get all the clout and popularity of both Hillary and Bill, without any of the baggage. And there’s nothing the Republicans can slime her with: Chelsea has absolutely no political record. In fact she’s barely ever opened her mouth.”

-----

President George W. Bush seemed caught up in Veep Fever himself today when he surprised Washington political circles by nominating the "American Idol" judge Simon Cowell as his vice presidential choice for 2008. This was a vote-getting masterstroke -- mitigated only by the facts that the British Cowell would be ineligible for that office, and that Bush is legally barred from seeking a third term.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

McCain Announces Run for Presidency

Bruce McCall — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:49:30 GMT

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain threw his hat into the

ring today when he told a cheering audience of amnesiacs that he will be a candidate for president in the November elections.

Reminded afterward by his valet, Sen. Joe I. Lieberman, that he had already secured the delegates needed for the Republican presidential nomination earlier this year, McCain responded, “Yes, but when it comes to seeking the highest office in the land, it’s as important as ensuring hot water for babies to be crystal clear about your intentions. Otherwise, you’re just giving aid and comfort to the terrorists.”

McCain’s speech was notable for other controversial remarks.

Touching on the war in Iraq, he retracted his notorious claim

that he’d be willing to keep American troops there for a hundred years. New actuarial information, he said, predicts that given normal life expectancies, they won’t live that long. "So they won't be able to deliver the long-lasting peace and stability in the region,” he declared.

Speaking of dead, McCain vowed to establish an Iraq branch of the National Rifle Assn. as soon as he is elected, taking a load off the U.S. military by ensuring that all Iraqi civilians have guns. This will dramatically up the number of shots fired by the good guys -- some of which would be bound to hit terrorists.

The Vietnam War hero and veteran senator then proposed a bold new economic-assistance measure: boarding rich people with poor people for an entire fiscal year, so these under-achievers can learn first-hand how to become wealthy and stop fighting tax breaks for the affluent.

Poor folks today have no idea how to collect fat fees for sitting on corporate boards, making a private jet a tax deduction, hiding funds offshore,” McCain lamented. “My friends, imagine the benefits for these -- what I call ‘the dumb Americans’ -- sitting around the shack chewing the fat with a fat cat every night. And as long as they’re doing that, they won’t be out committing crimes.”

Lastly, in an effort to separate his candidacy from the unpopular Bush administration, the senator promised not to wear cowboy boots to bed or play Grand Theft Auto video games between courses at state dinners. He also promised to declare a moratorium on malapropisms, “as soon as Joe Lieberman can find out for me what a malapropism is.”

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

McCain: I'm No Bush Echo

Bruce McCall — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:32:47 GMT

An angry Sen. John McCain masterfully detached himself from the deeply unpopular President George W. Bush and his policies today during a press conference. It was packed with solid proof that McCain is his own man, with his own agenda, going into the November general election.

“I wear an entirely different brand of cowboy boot,” McCain revealed. “I wear a different size, with totally different leather carving motifs. My S.U.V. burns 12 percent more fuel than the president’s. We have never ordered the same movie from Netflix. I was a Navy man and he was in the Air Force Reserve. I don’t know how I can make it any clearer that John McCain blazes his own trail -- in life and in politics.”

Nudged by constant companion and adviser Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, McCain quickly added, “And I’m reminded that I live in Arizona, which is nowhere near – well, pretty far away as the crow flies from – Texas.”

Reporters had barely scribbled down these facts before the senator launched a further storm of evidence of his independence from Bush and the current administration.

“Our president has delivered eight State of the Union messages and I have delivered none," McCain asserted. "Unlike myself, he has met the premier of Iceland and owns three chain saws. He cannot pronounce ‘Myanmar,’ and I can. 'Myanmar.'

"Perhaps most telling of all in the sharp differences between us," McCain continued, "President Bush is an abstainer, while I’ll take the occasional drink or two on purely social occasions -- like when I’m holed up in a hotel room on the campaign trail sleepless at 3 a.m.”

A White House aide to the president quickly confirmed the gist of McCain’s contention, while adding a further example of their fundamental differences. “President Bush sends his wife to hot spots like Afghanistan,” he noted, “and Sen. McCain only sends his wife to the bank.”

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

Yoo, Addington Handle 'Torture Meddlers'

Bruce McCall — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:25:03 GMT

David Addington and John Yoo, two key architects of the U.S. interrogation policies for suspected Al Queda terrorist detainees in Iraq and at the Guantanamo Bay indoor reception and sports facility, waterboarded their Congressional critics Thursday with testimony that hung them by the thumbs with hoods pulled over their heads.

For example, Addington, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney and his former legal counsel, explained that the "beatings" denounced by snoopy outsiders were actually massage therapy by Central Intelligence Agency chiropractors, rushed in to relieve detainees' charley horses after too much square-dancing.

Then, demonstrating before the committee by using his own wingtip, Yoo, who served in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Dept. and is now a law professor at Berkeley Law (formerly Boalt Hall) at UC-Berkeley, showed that the old schoolboy prank of giving a "hotfoot" by administering fire to the toe of a shoe is a joshing way to encourage full and frank conversation between detainee and interviewer. He explained that there is the trivial difference, in that the detainee often forgets to wear shoes.

It is a fact conveniently overlooked by the anti-persuasion lobby, Yoo continued, that with no medical insurance coverage, most of the detainees at the Abu Ghraib hospitality center near Baghdad simply failed to qualify for treatment after developing fractured skulls, broken bones and other complaints in the waiting room. "Our hands are tied," he said. "Just not as tightly as theirs."

Such injuries in any case were no worse, Yoo noted, than the bodily impact from a head-on car crash, which thousands of upright American citizens experience every year -- "without running to the United Nations or the A.C.L.U. about it."

Addington revealed that many U.S. interrogation techniques were modeled on those used during the Spanish Inquisition, sanctioned by none other than the king of Spain and also the Bishop of Rome and Vicar of Christ, the pope. "In short," Addington pronounced, "God is on our side."

Picking up the testimony at that point, Yoo observed that any detainee is free, at any point in his "bull sessions" with interrogators, to simply cry, whisper or groan "uncle," the internationally recognized signal of final agreement in verbal disputes, whereupon the tickling and hotfeet immediately cease.

The soft-on-terrorism left-wingers at the hearing were shocked to learn that pounding on the top of the head with a ballpeen hammer, for example, is allowed under Article 7, Subsection 276, of the 1950 U.N. manual (Nails, Hammering, Disaster-Relief Shelter Construction.)

Detainee treatment is indeed so caring, Addison summarized, that as a special treat they were played the complete score of "The Sound of Music," one of the great feel-good movies of the late-20th century. Not even their blindfolds detracted from the good cheer -- since the soundtrack was piped into every cell at full volume for the next 48 hours.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

Bush to Kick Off Tyrant Tour

Bruce McCall — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:18:42 GMT

"I'll bring wine for the Myanmar junta, roses for Kim Jong Il -- maybe a nice necktie for that little Iran guy, who doesn't seem to own one."

So spoke President George W. Bush in disclosing his plans for a flurry of casual drop-ins on Asian and Mideast strongmen. He described this as the appropriate follow-up to his current effort to remove North Korea from the list of state-sponsors of terrorism. Bush is planning these house calls right after he gives Chinese leaders a friendly pat on the back at the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics in August.

"How are the kids doin'? Little lady finally lose those pounds? What kind of mileage you getting with that armored Hummer? That kind of light chitchat, just keep things nice and loose," Bush explained. "Those Iraqaranians and Mylars, they're sensitive folks -- just like us. So if I'm in the neighborhood and don't stop by for a visit, I can understand how their feelings would be hurt."

Bush denied that chummy drop-ins on sworn enemies signaled any change in U.S. foreign policy. "Threatening nuclear war, invasion and government overthrows is just business," he said. "None of that means underneath we're not caring people -- who wouldn't stop to help fix a flat on an armored car or send a get-well card to a tyrant recovering from a car bomb."

The U.S. president said he would refrain from publicly raising controversial issues like Tibetan independence and human-rights violations with his Chinese hosts while in Beijing. "That would be rude," Bush said. "But if they offer a snack, I might have to say something about all that M.S.G. in their food. Some issues are just too important to be ignored."

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

Beijing Preps for Olympics

Bruce McCall — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:40:50 GMT

In an unprecedented loosening of the rules, in preparation for the XXIX Olympiad, Beijing has announced that Scrabble tiles that can be combined to form "T-I-B-E-T," that had been confiscated last spring by roving patriotic gangs, will be returned to licensed owners of the spelling board game for the duration of the coming Olympic games.

Consumer goods made by forced prison labor will not be formally so identified, but will be sold at steep discounts if buyers keep their mouths shut.

"No Arrests For Sleeping In" signs are being posted at the entrances to apartment blocks all over this ancient capital -– one of myriad ways that the ubiquitous Bureau of Nocturnal Safety and Order intends to show a kinder, gentler fist. Bureau insiders have all but confirmed that mandatory reporting of anti-government dreams will be suspended from the start of the games until the official closing ceremonies two weeks later.

No more – at least temporarily -- of those familiar sidewalk police pop quizzes, where answers to question of whether communism or capitalism is best are both wrong. Similarly, it won't be illegal if you're found in possession of a Japanese schoolbook on World War II.

The terms "smog," "infanticide," "M.S.G.," and "senile old Central Committee fools" can be spoken aloud within earshot of foreign outsiders without official retribution at the time.

The hosts of the 2008 Olympic Games have seemingly thought of everything. For example, to keep the anticipated heavy traffic moving and avoid tie-ups, Tiananmen Square has already been removed from all city maps, and will be off-limits to anyone without a tank.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

Iraq, Latest Bailout Beneficiary

Bruce McCall — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:29:11 GMT

Hard on the heels of its rescue of the major financial institutions, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the U.S. Treasury is now going to pay itself $3.5 trillion "to cover expenses related to the progress made since 2003 by the neighborhood outreach cleanup mission in Iraq," a Bush administration spokesperson explained.

Economists immediately differed as to whether the move doubles, halves or eliminates the national debt. But all seemed to agree that "we don't know what we're talking about."

Going forward, the newly defined Iraq Internal Conflict-Clarification Program is no longer to be funded by the U.S. Treasury. Instead, American Express platinum cards will be issued to all U.S. and Coalition-of-the-Still-Willing military personnel and used to charge all Iraq-related expenses. This will entitle all cardholders to enjoy airline VIP lounges, concierge services for tickets to theater, concert and sporting events -- and discounted emergency return air fares.

By dividing monthly AmEx card charges among the several hundred thousand members of the armed forces, Bush administration officials expect individual payments to remain "well below $5 million per month per dogface."

Meanwhile, with defaulters due to be sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for "advanced credit counseling," the monthly AmEx charges are expected to be paid promptly.

Exempted from AmEx card obligations will be Halliburton Inc., the international carnage-cleanup service cartel. Halliburton's bills will be sent directly to Vice President Dick Cheney and then forwarded to Fort Knox, Ky., for payment in gold ingots – to be stored in its facility near Houston, Tex., by Notrubillah, Inc.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

When Antics on Trail Turn Ugly

Bruce McCall — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:26:07 GMT

Sen. Barack Obama's recent stopover in Kuwait where he "shoot a few hoops with the boys" is a rare instance of a presidential candidate engaging in harmless athletic fun on the campaign trail. Obama, the likely Democratic nominee, is lucky here; he can usually play pick-up basketball at any stop on the hustings. History is rife, however, with zany antics thought up by would-be commanders-in-chief to buck the boredom of a campaign's rigid schedules and formal duties – which all too often sadly backfired.

Still a Midwest legend is 1936 Republican candidate Alf Landon's penchant for galloping along atop the cars of his campaign train as it chuffed across the broiling Kansas plains. Landon would play Jesse James in a self-invented game of "Rob the Mail Car." A harmless diversion? Perhaps not: Landon's exhaustion from these exertions was widely blamed for a lackluster campaign wind-up and his ultimate landslide loss to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in November.

Candidate Obama's basketball jones ranks below the near obsession with tap-dancing secretively pursued by Richard M. Nixon in his l960 White House run. The hypertense Nixon dedicated every spare minute to ducking solo into handy closets or bathrooms to let off steam in furious buck-and-wing bouts. Emerging sweat-drenched from one such workout and rushed to a TV debate with John F. Kennedy, he may have lost the election then and there. Experts recently identified the rat-tat-tat of Nixon tap-dancing on his Oval Office desk as the "weird noises" heard on portions of the notorious secret White House tapes.

On the other hand, Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic presidential nominee, was not the least bit physical. The Happy Warrior's idea of relaxing amid the pressures of campaigning involved dropping water bombs from hotel windows. A harmless little prank, it might appear. But had Smith not always pointed to a hapless nearby aide or campaign donor when the police came knocking, he might have had a more loyal and hard-working staff. And a less humiliatingly lopsided loss to President Herbert Hoover.ll

Not all such didoes ended badly. For example, rolly-poly GOP presidential hopeful William Howard Taft used his own elephantine weight to break the tension on the campaign trail back in 1908. In any debate with a Democratic opponent, Taft would cross the platform after he had finished speaking and sit on him. The feeble cries for mercy coming from somewhere underneath convulsed his audiences, creating a wave of popularity that carried Taft and his 300-plus pounds straight into the White House.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

McCain Announces Olympic Plans

Bruce McCall — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:44:42 GMT

Sen. John McCain has announced his intention to play on the U.S. women's field hockey team in the coming Olympic Games in Beijing, China.

The presumed GOP presidential nominee dismissed opponent Sen. Barack Obama's immediate charge that the startling move is "a cheap publicity stunt transparently meant to defuse McCain's age issue while also currying favor with the women's vote." McCain, 71, countered that he has actually been honing his field-hockey skills for weeks in the aisles of his Straight Talk Express bus and on roadside rest stops nationwide.

Asked to confirm or deny the claim, Mccain's close adviser, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) would only expressively wiggle his eyebrows as he affixed the the Arizona senator's bib for lunch.

Republican insiders evinced no ambiguity. "Nothing will show the senator's youthfulness, prime physical condition and virility better than wading in there among a bunch of chicks," said one senior G.O.P. official. "And yet he's got his feminine side. After all, he's married to a woman! And he has daughters!"

The Obama camp is denying sudden wildfire rumors that the athletic Chicagoan has been drafted by the U.S. men's Olympic basketball team after a recent secret tryout in Kuwait. His appearance in Beijing would cause a worldwide sensation, even if – as Obama has allegedly said – he would maintain the dignity expected of a Democratic presidential candidate by wearing his usual blue suit.

McCain, after his lunch, expressed confidence that he could "skate with the best of them" and seems to remember having seen a hockey game, though he asked that reporters check with Sen. Lieberman about the details. Reminded that field hockey is actually played on grass, he observed, "There is a lot of grass in Afghanistan, while my military friends there tell me that Iraq is mostly sand. So I wish the Iraq women's Olympic sand hockey team all the best."

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

McCain Mistakes Arizona for Iraq

Bruce McCall — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:02:33 GMT

Sen. John McCain, who has locked up the GOP nomination, was chased down in the parking lot of a Phoenix shopping mall today and persuaded to remove his Kevlar helmet and body armor. He had been driving his SUV around this sprawling desert city all afternoon on a fact-finding tour in the belief that he was in Baghdad.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

"The hot sun, the flat desert terrain, those Latinos the spitting image of Sunnis and Shiites -- I naturally thought I was in Iraq," the Arizona senator explained. "Besides, Lieberman [campaign adviser Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.)] wasn't around today. Lieberman always knows where I am."

The war-hero-turned-lawmaker told reporters that his inspection tour was nonetheless highly useful. "I found Phoenix has many of the same problems as Baghdad," McCain said, "the terrorist hideouts are so well hidden you couldn't find a single one, for example. And the Al Qaeda operatives in our midst are as invisible here as they are over there. And the gas shortage is so acute that a gallon costs four dollars.

"But, all in all, I was greatly encouraged by the progress. I'd estimate Phoenix to be 99 percent pacified today. The city is so safe I could have shot a few baskets with the troops, if I'd found any. Must have all been shipped home. The car washes are up and running, I saw long lines at the Cineplex, and when I put my finger in a socket there was lots of electricity."

"I'd asked my wife Cindy to join me on the tour this morning," the jubilant senator added. "But she said she had a golf date. Maybe that should have tipped me off."

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

Fans Realize Obama Is Not Divine

Bruce McCall — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:45:56 GMT

Disturbing new evidence indicates that Americans by the millions are failing to deify Sen. Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, reflecting mounting fears among rabid early supporters that their charismatic Boy Messiah may not even be divine.

"It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way,” wept an Obama apostle. “Even in his native Chicago, you can’t find anybody building shrines or Baby Obama creches.”

Meanwhile, at the junior Illinois senator's recent campaign stops, stampeding throngs of Obama fanatics have not been observed attempting to touch the hem of his garment. In Cleveland, church ceremonies to commemorate the anniversary of the child Obama’s descent to America from Hawaii appear not to be scheduled – hard on the heels of the disclosure that biblical scholars’ painstaking searches of both the Old and New Testaments reveal not a single reference linking Obama with any aspect of the Second Coming.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Campaign insiders close to Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, while careful not to be seen as sacrilegious, nonetheless expressed obvious relief. “The guy may be no mere mortal,” granted one top McCain aide, “but all this shows he’s still not on a par with Our Lady of Fatima or Joan of Arc. In other words, his victory ain’t preordained.”

Obama’s cause is not being helped by his campaign managers’ refusal to disclose exactly when their candidate intends to perform his next miracle. For example, no confirmation or denial has been forthcoming of a rumored Obama-led “Walk On Water” fund-raising marathon from the Chicago lakeshore to Benton Harbor, across the lake in Michigan.

“I’d say we’ve been had,” groused a longtime Obama acolyte. “It’s becoming ominously clear that Barack Obama never had any intention of using the White House as a stepping stone.”

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

Candidates Maneuver for Edge in Debates

Bruce McCall — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:55:17 GMT

Candidates on both sides agree that it’s high time for that old tradition of conniving to rig presidential debates to favor one side or the other. The two major parties are again maneuvering for even petty advantages to undercut the fair and equal exchange that might help voters make intelligent choices.

Sen. Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic nominee, has gone on record to state that he will debate Sen. John McCain, who has clinched the GOP nomination, "one-on-one anytime anywhere -- as long as it’s on a basketball court.”

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

For his part, the Arizona senator declared, “I ask only that any debate be conducted on a 100 percent equal playing field. For example, fair play calls for the taller person -- in this case, Sen. Obama -- to stand on his knees at the lectern to negate the blatant stature gap.”

Democratic operatives are said to be pushing a rule that both debating candidates be made up to look like Frankenstein's monster, firmly squelching any potential appeals to racism created by one looking white and the other black. The Republicans, meanwhile, are pressing for a counter-initiative requiring both debaters to wear novelty-store Groucho glasses-and moustache disguises, canceling out Obama’s unearned edge of a more youthful appearance.

Still under discussion is whether the candidates’ wives should be hooded whenever on-camera, so as not to skew voter judgment based on irrelevant opinions of potential first ladies’ relative charm and attractiveness.

McCain’s handlers will almost certainly fail, however, in requesting that their candidate be allowed to debate while lying trussed on a cot in a simulated Vietnamese prison cell. It was they, after all, who earlier nixed the Obama side's plan to dress up their man to look like his fellow lanky Illinoisian, Abe Lincoln.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

Obama Invites McCain to Celebfest

Bruce McCall — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:54:50 GMT

Shaken by celebrity-wannabe Sen. John McCain’s paranoid jealousy of his A-list address book, and the TV attack ad it recently generated, Sen. Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic nominee, has invited the Arizona Republican to “get down” with a gaggle of luminaries who gather to goof around at his basketball/backgammon/pilates weekends at Oprah Winfrey’s place and other retreats.

“It might cheer the senator up to rub shoulders with Oscar winners and Nobel Prize laureates and some of my pals from the N.F.L.,” Obama speculated. “I think he’d get a special kick out of the Sarkozys. They rock!”

Obama aides have also sent out VIP passes for the likely Republican nominee and his posse to attend Mick Jagger’s baby shower for Angelina Jolie in Monte Carlo next week. Perhaps out of embarrassment, the McCain camp countered by inviting Obama to a round of golf with their candidate plus former Vice President Dan Quayle, the 1998 Miss Teenage Mormon and “a top pro bowler,” in a country club near Phoenix.

The Obama campaign is rumored to be pulling out all the celebrity hospitality stops, not only out of pity, but also in hopes that McCain will respond by canceling a second celebrity TV attack ad. This one alleged features Roman Polanski, Fatty Arbuckle and Pee Wee Herman.

A reflective Obama told the reporters traveling on his private Falcon Jet, loaned by best-bud Tiger Woods, “I guess I’d be jealous too if my posse was Dom DeLuise, Florence Henderson and Jim Belushi.” He put his Blackberry on hold – family-friend Jack Nicholson was checking in on crony Warren Beatty’s impromptu Vegas lounge act with the Dalai Lama and Cher the previous night – to express his sympathy for the elderly Republican.

“I’m sure all good Democrats feel for the old gentleman,” he added. “But I’m a man of hope. So I’d say to the senator, it’s never too late to get a life.”

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

Bush Takes Hard Line on China's Culinary Abuses

Bruce McCall — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:58:42 GMT

Meeting with high-level Beijing officials on his visit to attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games, President George W. Bush wasted no time in acting on his recent vow not to let the Chinese government off the hook.

Bush immediately came down hard on China’s “scandalous, appalling and maybe even bad” handling of the global monosodium glutamate, or MSG, threat. Waving a sheaf of Chinese restaurant menus listing literally hundreds of MSG-laced items, Bush charged that despite widespread protests and warnings from eminent medical authorities, Chinese restaurants and MSG continue to conspire in a deadly “Axis of Eatin’" that is raising sodium levels to the danger point around the world.

Until Chinese kitchens show a genuine intent to destroy or sharply reduce their wanton MSG use, said the president, “Americans may be forced not to leave tips in Chinese restaurants or for their take-out delivery men – tips that simply mean more money for China to invest in MSG production, further accelerating the deadly sodium spiral.”

Bush had been widely expected to focus this meeting on other issues, like China’s controversial record on human rights. But the president said his attack on MSG was in no way evading that hot-button issue. “What’s a more human right,” he asked, “than to chow down on moo-goo pork and hot shrimp and all that good stuff?”

The president later attended a prison-yard crafts show; a 503-point explanation of the Dalai Lama’s Nazi connections, and an exercise program that teaches pollution-sensitive Chinese schoolchildren how to hold their breath until adulthood.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

Swift Boat Author Smears Self

Bruce McCall — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:45:44 GMT

Right-wing attack-dog journalist Jerome Corsi, whose controversial book, "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry," helped sink Sen. John Kerry's presidential hopes in 2004 and whose similarly incendiary attack on Sen. Barack Obama, "The Obama Nation," is now on sale, reveals in his new unauthorized autobiography that he liked pulling wings off flies as a boy, stole his grandmother's dentures on her deathbed and almost never changes his underwear

Corsi portrays himself as a secretive, dishonest, calculating physical coward who pretended to be the Count of Monte Cristo to avoid military service and once robbed a nun.

In the book's most sensational admission, the author claims that he has uncovered documents showing that he may have sold a used car to Osama bin Laden in 1986 -- a lemon, he admits, that might well have been what turned bin Laden so viciously anti-capitalist and anti-Western.

In another astonishing revelation, Corsi tells how he sold his baby sister to the gypsies to get money to finance a plot to sabotage his hometown 4-H Club. "I'm not proud of that," he says. "I way undercharged."

"My slime-ball, truth-twisting antics," Corsi writes in his epilogue, "disqualify me even as a shameless hack writer peddling dollar-a-page drivel. But the thing about me is, I'm an oily creep and I don't give a -----."

His next written effort, Corsi notes, involves hatchet jobs on all six of the most prominent Democratic vice presidential candidates, "just to be ready."

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

McCain's Answer to Nation's Economic Woes

Bruce McCall — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:08:35 GMT

Sen. John McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, spoke from the heart today in setting forth his economic views and policies for a financially troubled America.

"I know what it's like to have to take a loan from your wife's trust fund, just to pay the surcharge on aviation fuel to fly the family Gulfstream IV to your weekend cabin," McCain said, voice trembling. "I'm as concerned as all my fellow Americans about making sure all my horses have enough to eat. I personally know the humiliation of having to ask the wife not once, not twice, but three times this year for a raise in my allowance."

Moving on to economic specifics, the Arizona senator announced a Housing Crisis Rescue Package, a broadly based program that would reduce the number of houses in America while, at the same time, deporting millions more people to Mexico. "With both fewer houses and fewer people," he explained, "the surpluses would dry up, demand would revive, prices would soar again. Problem solved.

"As for the menace of inflation," he continued, "I learned a long time ago at Annapolis that the opposite of inflation is deflation. So to prevent runaway inflation we must immediately begin deflating everything possible, and right now: tires, basketballs, party balloons, blimps. Enough stuff deflated and inflation won't have a chance."

McCain returned to the personal in his closing remarks. "My heart," he said, "goes out to all those Americans who have maxed out their American Express platinum cards trying to keep their favorite five-star restaurants from going under."

The senator also demonstrated his ability to stay on point. "You know," he said, "just this morning, a man I think is one of my gardeners said to me, 'Excellency, why do so many people in this wonderful land of plenty feel so sad, when anybody can win the Powerball Lottery and be rich like you?'

"What I told that man was, as usual, straight talk: 'Unless we keep drilling for oil, exploring for oil, importing oil, strengthening the Oil Depletion Allowance while gutting environmental laws, I won't be rich like me for long.' Or I think I said something like that. You get the general idea."

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."