Political Reality Shows

Survivor: United Nations


After many seasons, the reality show “Survivor” has itself survived. What say we form next season’s cast from some of the world’s current leaders?

Vladimir Putin is a hard-nosed, bare-knuckled no-nonsense ex-KGB operative. He is Russia’s de facto leader, not above poisoning his political enemies, or invading a neighboring nation to satisfy a grudge. For relaxation, he moves his eyeballs.

Kim Jong-Il has his father’s hand-me-down trousers (and genes), plus all of North Korea’s military as his personal bodyguard. A stadium filled with twenty thousand children moving in synchrony is his idea of a widescreen TV. He enjoys playing Frisbee with medium-range missiles.

Hu Jintao’s pockets contain one trillion dollars in U.S. IOU’s. In his lunch bag are Nigeria’s oil, Brazil’s timber, Australia’s copper, and America’s middle class.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust ever happened; denies Iran is building a nuclear bomb; denies Israel’s right to exist; and denies that he stole the last election. He is without shame, or sartorial refinement. “Facebook” friends include Hugo Chavez and Hamas. (Obama wants to be a friend.)

Barack Obama is a wunderkind, parlaying an Ivy-League degree into a community-organizing job in Chicago. In the Illinois Assembly, he votes 117 times not to commit himself regarding the issue at hand. When the Democratic frontrunner drops out of the primary, and the Republican candidate quits the race altogether, Obama finds himself in the U.S. Senate, where he cools his liberal heels before winning the White House. He is awarded a Nobel Peace Prize on the strength of his business card, which reads “HELLO! I AM NOT GEORGE BUSH.”

Who will survive? Tune in next season—assuming civilization itself isn’t cancelled.




The Agonizing Race: Mt. Deficit


Three teams are left to vie for the prize at the end of the race.

An odd couple, racially and temperamentally, Harry Reid and Barack Obama are currently in the lead. One is a Mormon; the other is a Messiah. Both are united in their spiritual quest to “grow” the federal government until it submerges the entire American population “as the waters cover the sea.”

In second place are John and Eric, former servants in what used to be the Pelosi mansion, which was run with an iron fist made doubly deadly by the witch’s fingernails extending from it. John and Eric, like Huck and Jim, have seen adversity. Can they marshal their energies to overtake the socialist juggernaut? (Shouldn’t be too hard, since the juggernaut is heading for them.)

Bringing up the rear (and what rears!) are Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, eye candies for the politically incorrect. Before them, the Constitution beckons like a lighthouse; behind them, surging like the tide, is the Tea Party movement, agitated ever onward by the behemoth Limbaugh, roaring, cigar in mouth, with the voice of a semi-deaf Triton.

These three teams, in the next two years, must negotiate parliamentary barriers, dodge the media’s bullets (even as the media demonizes the word “bullet”), appease their respective bases (while courting the independent vote), raise tons of money (while decrying the need for money), and never lose sight of the goal—that goal being the fairly conspicuous mountain of debt in the middle of Washington, DC, rising like Kilimanjaro over the plain.

The winning team shall be given exclusive rights to this man-made monstrosity, and awarded its choice of implements as it works its will upon the mountain. Obama and Reid have announced that, should they win, they will elect to have union-made picks and shovels put in their hands, with which they can continue to dig up American soil, and add to Mt. Deficit’s mass, turning the home of the brave even more into the land of freeloaders.

John and Eric have said that they too would opt for picks and shovels, should they finish first. But with theirs, they would dig into Mt. Deficit, terracing its lower sides, and putting up condos on them, perhaps even constructing a scenic by-pass round the mountain. Their plan would “shrink” the deficit, and make it more presentable and palatable to the public.

Michele and Sarah, for their part, have their eyes (and what beautiful eyes!) on a bulldozer they saw at a Caterpillar lot, and on some dynamite left over from Gingrich’s revolution. No one has any doubt what they have in mind for Mt. Deficit. The two women did not become trim and buff and shapely by being sedentary. You go, girls!

Who will win? The more pertinent question is: Can we, the people, afford to lose?




America’s Got Talent,
But No Clue


Week 87. The top contenders:

Rahm Emanuel, former Congressman and White House chief-of-staff. As a youth, he lost a finger in a meat-slicer accident; subsequently he played a ballerina in a school production. The Conservative Magazine asks, What other body parts are you missing, Rahmbo? Lacking one finger, he now aspires to be the biggest of the Big Shoulders.

Joe Biden, Vice President of the United States; master of the ricocheting ad lib. He will attempt to break the world record for humanity’s widest, silliest grin, currently held by Jimmy Carter.

Michael Madigan, Speaker of the Illinois House. Impersonating a shadow, he will mimic its sinister aspect and penumbra of anonymity, showing to one and all that his presence, like Lucifer’s, is insubstantial and much too ballyhooed.

Vote, America, for your Idol.

Laugh about it, shout about it, when you’ve got to choose…

Remember what Paul Simon (the songwriter, not the senator) wrote.

Ev’ry way you look at it, you lose!