Florida: “Don’t look at me!”

The Sunshine State gets self-conscious as the eyes of the nation scrutinize its counting skills.

By Chris Colin

Topics:Satire

Florida, the shy, skinny state that has become the focal point for the country over the past 15 hours, reports that it does not like all the attention, and is feeling both embarrassed and defensive.

The state is rushing to provide a definitive ballot count — the number will determine the next U.S. president — and return to its comfortable obscurity.

“Please stop looking at me,” Florida said this morning. “I’m counting as fast as I can. How can I count accurately when you’re watching?”

Dark bags were visible under the state’s eyes as it recounted the 5 million-plus ballots, and its hair was frizzy and unattended, like Spanish moss. It hadn’t even changed out of the clothes it wore Tuesday, according to one witness. The former home of “Miami Vice” spent the morning hunched over tiny pieces of paper, punching frantically at a calculator.

“Why is the ‘equals’ button so small on this thing?” the normally sunny state was heard muttering.

Anxious citizens milled around outside, kicking at gravel and talking among themselves. Speculation as to the outcome of the recount was briefly interrupted by a Jeep full of college students, who thought it was spring break. Older residents, who have grown accustomed and even vaguely fond of the perennial partyers in recent years, only rolled their eyes this time. The Jeep drove on, turning its music up in humiliation.

“When, um, do you think you’ll be done?” one observer asked Florida, cocking her head to the side casually, in an attempt to not appear impatient.

The state sighed and pretended to look out the window, even though nothing was out there.

Then it turned, abruptly: “Why not stare at Texas? Or North Dakota? Nobody ever looks at North Dakota.”

“I’m sorry,” it added after a minute of awkward silence. “It’s been a long night, and this is all so … new. I didn’t mean to bark at you.”

Indeed, the state has gone from its standard lowbrow mellowness to an unfamiliar and highly visible self-conscious irritability since the polls closed yesterday. Witnesses heard it curse when it couldn’t find its flip-flops late last night, and some have suggested that today’s 5 p.m. happy hour would be limited to a single near beer.

In other parts of the country, Democrats and Republicans alike experienced uncomfortable feelings about their older relatives living in the contested state. One New Jersey man, who asked to remain anonymous, claimed that he’d momentarily wondered if “the fucking state is crazy.” The man, whose mother and stepfather live in Palm Beach, immediately regretted the impetuous thought.

Others reported that calls to family and friends in the state weren’t going through.

“Did we take our phone off the hook?” Florida asked with an obviously sarcastic look on its face. “Doy.”

Gore has assured the state that, despite the mix-up, nobody thinks it’s “backwards” or “stupid and unsophisticated” or “a pus-filled nodule on the heel of this otherwise fine nation.” And in a fax this morning, President Clinton offered his sympathy: “I feel your pain,” he wrote. “And as you recount the ballots — carefully, this time — we stand completely behind you.”

The president added that he almost visited SeaWorld in 1986, which he’s heard is very nice.

Meanwhile, the state is hunkering down and doing its best to ignore the mounting pressure. Albert Grimley, a longtime friend, reports that encouragement is what’s needed.

“We all think Florida is very capable,” Grimley said, loud enough that Florida could hear. “Right? Don’t we think Florida is very capable? Yes we do. Wonderful … really.”

: Chris Colin is the author most recently of "Blindsight," published by the Atavist. More Chris Colin

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Not "Last Christmas" or "Wonderful Christmas Time." It's the smug and egomaniacal "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

By Tod Goldberg

Topics:Christmas, Music, Satire

When “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” came out in 1984, I pretty much thought I was British. I dressed like the asexual keyboard player from the Cure, pretended to love everything Depeche Mode was singing about – because, you know, people are people – and pledged undying love for bands I read about in the obscure British magazines sold at Tower Records. (In fact, only since getting Spotify have I even heard an entire album by the Blue Nile and, it turns out they sound like every other band I pretended to like in the 1980s, except for Belouis Some, who were terrible on a whole other level.) So “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” combined all of the greatest things in my world:

1. British bands.

2. British bands singing morosely.

3. British bands singing morosely about hungry people in Africa, a place I was familiar with primarily through playing Risk, but which I nevertheless felt a great passion for. We must get these people fed, the world kept telling my 13-year-old self, and therefore I, too, felt this very strongly … for about two months, anyway, because puberty was making me very interested in a whole host of other things.

At any rate, I loved “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and routinely waited for hours for the video to show up on MTV or “Night Flight” or “Friday Night Videos,” hoping against hope that I’d get to see the extremely moving vision of Boy George dressed like an advertisement for bulky women’s housecoats (watch the video, people) or see the plaintive look in Sting’s eyes as he sang the word “sting” (again, check the video, it’s a moment of utter grace). But what I especially loved was the righteous anger of Bono shrilling, “Well, tonight thank God it’s them instead of you …” So powerful, so wise!

It wasn’t until this month, however, 27 years in the dust — the song such an oldie it can be performed on “Glee” — when the song came on the radio that it dawned on me what a dick line that is. It got me thinking about the song in its entirety and what I’ve determined is that, of all the Christmas songs, it’s really the most fucked-up one that doesn’t have to do with the systematic bullying of a red-nosed reindeer. And so I present an annotated guide to how utterly corrupt “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” is, in line-by-line fashion:

“It’s Christmas time,
there’s no need to be afraid.”

Really? No need to be afraid? Does cancer stop on Christmas? What about prostate exams? Have you even pondered how frightening it would be if you were sitting in your living room on the evening of Dec. 24 and heard something coming out of your fireplace and before your wondering eyes appeared some lunatic in a red suit? What about getting the shit stomped out of you at Walmart? No need to be afraid? You lie, Bob Geldof!

“At Christmas time
we let in light and banish shade”

OK, now, as it relates to Africa, wouldn’t shade actually be a better gift?

“And in our world of plenty
we can spread a smile of Joy
Throw your arms around the world
at Christmas time.”

Unless, of course, you try to throw your arms around a place that doesn’t celebrate Christmas — like, you know, large parts of Africa — and instead of spreading joy, you end up starting 25 years of sectarian civil war.

“But say a prayer,
Pray for the other ones.”

I’m gonna go ahead and presume “the other ones” are the godless heathens …

“At Christmas time it’s hard
but when you’re having fun …”

Like, say, if you’re Simon LeBon and you’ve spent the last 12 months sleeping with supermodels, or you’re Boy George and you just got done shooting up some great smack, or you’re the other guy in Wham! and you’re just biding your time until the gig is up and you can marry one of those boxy Bananarama girls and race cars for the rest of your life …

“There’s a world outside your window
and it’s a world of dread and fear”

Technically, the world outside, at the time of the song’s recording, was a London street — and in the video it looks like it was filled with fans who wanted everyone’s autographb… and, in fact, according to the video, it looked like everyone was having a pretty smashing time.

“Where the only water flowing is
the bitter sting of tears”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Sting sings this line in what is a fantastic merging of the real world and the world where a guy named Gordon gets to name himself Stingb… and then gets to, ironically, sing the word “sting” but make it, you know, really serious, because it’s a dreary allusion to how dry it happened to be in Africa that year.

“Where the Christmas bells that are ringing
are the clanging chimes of Doom”

Just so we’re clear here, if they don’t know it’s Christmas, why would they have Christmas bells? And why ring in the doom when they are clearly already doomed? Wouldn’t doom just walk right in at this point? No bells needed.

“Well, tonight thank God it’s them instead of you.”

Ah, yes, the crux of it all. If there’s one thing the Bible teaches, it’s that you should thank God for other people’s suffering. Now Bono is a goddamn hero, we’re told, since he’s spent the last 30 years standing on moral high ground – a moral high ground paved with the money of kids like me, who didn’t know what the fuck “Sunday Bloody Sunday” was all about, but who were, like, totally in support of it – though one has to think he could have looked at the line before he sang it and suggested a rewrite. Maybe something along the lines of “Well, tonight thank God you have food and clean water and a slight disposable income which allows you the opportunity to buy this great song on the latest technology … the cassette tape! Get thee to Sam Goody!” If this song were written today, Justin Bieber would certainly have something wise to say, like, I dunno, “Well, tonight thank God you’re not a Kardashian.”

“And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time”

This is egregiously stupid. It never snows in Africa during Christmastime, because it’s the summertime there. Most specifically in Ethiopia – which is what this song is actually about, the famine in Ethiopia – it’s the start of the driest season. And it’s not as if people were starving in, say, South Africa, or else why would everyone have to get together a few months later to pledge that they ain’t gonna play Sun City? – but beyond that, it just doesn’t snow in Ethiopia. Ever.

“The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life.”

A shitty fucking life, as you’ve made abundantly clear!

“Ohh….
Where nothing ever grows
No rain or rivers flow
Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?”

No, because they are starving to death. And also, depending upon where they are in Ethiopia, they may very well be Muslim.

“Here’s to you…
Raise a glass for everyone
Here’s to them
Underneath that burning sun
Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?”

How grand. These rich former colonial oppressors are raising a glass to the Africans, who don’t even have any fucking water! You’re just sipping on wine like it’s nothing! You bastards! Send over a bottle of water!

“Feed the world

Feed the world

Let them know it’s Christmas time”

And here the real, dark truth of the song reveals itself. It’s not just about feeding the Africans, it’s about feeding the world and, in addition, letting the entire world know it’s Christmastime. This happened once before. It was called the Crusades.

All that said, still love the song. For real. Very catchy.

: More Tod Goldberg

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The GOP candidate collapsed in rage after being asked about whether he was too "unstable" to be president

By K.M. Breay

(Credit: AP/Charlie Neibergall)

Topics:Satire

This originally appeared on K.M. Breay's Open Salon blog.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has been hospitalized after collapsing this morning outside of a diner in Davenport, Iowa. The former speaker had just left a sparsely attended “meet and greet” at Annie’s Coffee Shop when he was confronted by ABC news reporter Jake Tapper, who asked Mr. Gingrich to explain why so many of his former colleagues have said that he is too unstable to be president. Mr. Gingrich glared at Mr. Tapper for several seconds before cursing, stumbling backward and then crashing through a nearby display window, reportedly filled with ladies clothing.

: More K.M. Breay

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Every writer who had a drink with Hitch has now told his story. But even Rushdie and Amis didn't know him like this

By Neal Pollack

Christopher Hitchens. (Credit: AP/Chad Rachman)

Topics:Satire, Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens and I were friends for 40 years, plus another five when we were enemies. He took ideas so seriously that if he disagreed with you on a matter that he deemed important, he’d literally throw you in a ditch. It was 1972, the height of our mutual virility. He and I went to a pub to celebrate his most recent intellectual victory over the establishment press. I intimated that sometimes women could be funny on purpose. Even back then, the thought enraged him. Hitchens threw a drink in my face, pressed a lit cigarette into my neck, and hit me over the head with a barstool. The next thing I knew, it was two days later and I was lying hogtied and naked beside the M5. Hitch had already severely damaged my reputation in a vicious essay in the Guardian. But that’s how he operated, and that’s why we loved him.

University, as you know, is the only time in one’s life when anything really worthwhile happens. I met Hitch there. The first time I saw him, he had a bird on each arm and a woman by his side. She beamed as he read aloud passages from “Homage to Catalonia.” He looked up.

“Who the hell are you?” he said.

“I’m your housemate,” I said.

“Are you in favor of the war in Vietnam?”

“Of course not.”

Hitch put down the book and took a swig of cheap Scotch.

“Good,” he said. “Because I refuse to fraternize with men who are afraid to be intellectual heroes.”

In the annals of history, only Orwell, Voltaire and maybe a half-dozen other guys could match’s Hitch ideological bravery and breadth of political knowledge. In 1977, after I’d returned to his graces by aiding him in a plot to assassinate Henry Kissinger’s character, Hitch and I visited Borges’ library in Buenos Aires. At the time, Hitch was working for the KGB while pretending to work for the BBC, and I was working for the Mossad while pretending to work for Burger King. But our many identities were merely covers for our lives as political writers at low-paying magazines.

Borges invited Hitch and me into his home, fed us tea and empanadas, and launched into a seamlessly brilliant discourse on surrealism in Latin American history. He talked for 30 minutes without stopping, during which time Hitch smoked six-dozen cigarettes. When Borges finished, Hitchens paused, spat in his ashcan, and said,

“Of course, you know, you’re wrong about everything.”

He then proceeded to refute Borges, point for point, until he reduced the blind scribe of Buenos Aires to tears.

No one loved ideas more than Hitch.

Much ink has been spilled, of course, about the legendary friendships Christopher forged with other writers throughout his life. For a time in the 1980s, he, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and I lived together in London. Hitchens rented us a six-story flat so we could swap partners more easily. Many was the time we passed the bottle until dawn, bemoaning Thatcher’s England, Reagan’s America, and also some stuff about the Middle East. Sometimes Hitchens would bring over a dissident writer who was fleeing oppression in his native country, and we’d all make fun of Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, then remove our pants to compare our manhoods. We were so middle-aged and foolish then, so committed to the struggle.

Hitchens spoke out against war, and also for war. In a span of five years, he bore witness to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the explosion of the Eiffel Tower, and the construction of the new holographic Eiffel Tower. He had acid in his pocket, acid in his pen and acid in his veins. Then Darkness fell, on Sept. 11, 2001. We’d all moved to America and gotten totally rich.

Hitchens changed that day. For months, he’d wander the streets at night, looking to drunkenly berate someone who disagreed with him about the evils of Islamofascism. Occasionally he’d attempt to strangle young journalists, who admired him unquestioningly, with their own neckties. But he was right. He was always right. Even when he was wrong.

The night they killed Osama bin Laden, he showed up at my apartment, drunk but lucid, quoting T.S. Eliot, Longfellow and, of course, himself. We stayed up watching CNN, which was actually pretty boring. In the morning, over a breakfast of corn flakes and whiskey, I said, “Well, I guess that’s the end of Islamofascism. Good job!”

Hitchens went into my kitchen, took a cutting board off the counter, and threw it into my forehead, drawing blood.

“Don’t be an imbecile,” he said. “The struggle never ends. Also, you must remember that there is no God.”

I needed four stitches that day. Hitch put them in himself, with his teeth. What a friend he was.

Rest in peace, dear man.

: Neal Pollack is the author of the literary satire "The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature," among other works of fiction and nonfiction. His latest book, a historical novel called "Jewball," was published in October. More Neal Pollack

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Sources report that the 43rd president often challenges strangers to games of Pac-Man

By K.M. Breay

Former President George W. Bush (Credit: AP)

Topics:Satire, George W. Bush

This originally appeared on K.M. Breay's Open Salon blog.

Every weekday at noon inside a North Dallas shopping mall, the 43rd president of the United States sits down at his usual table in the food court with two plates of magic fries, a jumbo Mello Yellow and a grande chimichanga with extra queso. “When he first started showin’ up at the mall, people would always come over and ask for his autograph or whatever,” said Daryl Vanderveen, a 19-year-old cashier at Sbarro Pizza. “But now that he’s here so much nobody even looks up from their lunch.”

Sources interviewed for this article said that Mr. Bush spends at least eight hours of each day at the Preston Hollow Shopping Center, a popular retail destination near his home in suburban Dallas. “Other than that chimichanga lunch he doesn’t really have a set routine,” said one source. “Sometimes he’ll hang around Lenscrafters trying on glasses or head over to Abercrombie & Fitch and watch the girls fold pants. Last week I saw him inside Pottery Barn sleeping in a leather recliner.”

But some mall employees are beginning to complain about the former president. “The other day I was taking a smoke break near the fountain and he just kept asking me stupid stuff like, ‘Guess how fast I could get a hot dog in the White House,’” said Amber Kaul, who works part-time at the T-Mobile kiosk. “So finally I’m like, ‘I dunno, ten minutes?’ And he’s all like ‘more like two minutes’ and then he snaps his fingers and gives me this cocky look like I’m supposed to care.” Donna Simpson, a barista at the mall Starbucks, said the former president is often a distraction from her work. “He sits down over there with a pencil and a piece of paper and supposedly starts working on his ‘Freedom Institute,’” said Ms. Simpson. “But after about five minutes he comes over, takes a seat at the counter and starts telling how there’s Milk Duds on Air Force One or how Dick Cheney has a glass eye. I’m like, ‘Dude, there’s about 50 people in line right now, go away!’”

Nestor Martinez, a 20-year-old mall security guard, confirmed that on at least two occasions he’s had to speak to the former president about his behavior. “We started getting complaints that he was hanging around the men’s room asking guys if they wanted to have their picture taken with him,” said Mr. Martinez. “When I told him to stop, he said, ‘Let’s go sort it out over a game of Donkey Kong.’ So after my shift we went over to the arcade and I beat him in a best of three. Then he got all pissy and said Donkey Kong sucks anyways.”

Two sources have confirmed that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was recently enlisted by friends and former aides to speak to Mr. Bush about the situation. “She asked him point blank if it was true that he’d spent an entire afternoon doing nothing but riding up and down the escalators,” said the source. “The president got really defensive and refused to give Condi a straight answer.”

When the president left office nearly three years ago, it was announced that he would establish a “Freedom Institute” and work full-time toward promoting democracy and human rights throughout the world. But some close friends and former advisors admit privately that Mr. Bush has not made progress on either front. “He told me he was going to dedicate the rest of his life to confronting tyranny,” said one prominent GOP fundraiser. “I’m not sure how you do that by hanging around the mall challenging strangers to games of Ms. Pac-Man.”

In response to questions about the president’s schedule, a spokesman released the following statement. “The president continues to work towards advancing freedom around the world.”

: More K.M. Breay

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A new novel takes a satirical look at how modern society handles sex and romance

By Christopher Byrd

Topics:Fiction, Satire

This article appears courtesy of The Barnes & Noble Review.

Like relationships, books can uncover knots in our psyches that might otherwise have remained obscured. Using myself as an example, I noticed that when speaking to friends about Helen DeWitt’s “Lightning Rods,” the word “fun” leaped to mind but slipped out bashfully through my lips. To what extent a streak of literary Puritanism burns within me, I cannot fully compass. Admittedly, “fun” is not a word that I’m used to deploying in a review. Yet, there is no denying that DeWitt’s third novel — an office satire about a plucky entrepreneur named Joe who transforms an erotic fantasy into the idea behind a multimillion-dollar company — is the most well executed literary sex comedy that I’ve come across in ages; just the thing to lighten a subway commute or add zest to a lunch break.