Sarah Palin’s Big Day

Little Miss Sarah had just finished installing her hand-baked oil rig in the back yard and was busy not-aborting her fifth child when an old, old man with a wide, saggy face and a lot of scary younger men in black suits and sunglasses and funny little twisty wires snaking into their ears came striding up the path of the little governor’s cottage in Juneau.  “Oh my word, what a day to leave those old dog sleds out on the front tundra,” Little Miss Sarah whispered to herself as she wiped the crude oil from her hands and trotted just as fast as she could to the door just as one of the scary men in sunglasses started rap-rap-rapping on the panels.

“Sarah Palin?” the man said as she opened the door and peeped out.

“Yes, that’s me,” Little Miss Sarah said timidly. Even though she enjoyed shooting wolves from airplanes, something about these men filled her with a certain apprehension.  “I certainly hope I’m not being offered the Vice-Presidency,” she thought to herself.  “Why, I don’t even know what the Vice President does every day. I mean, I’m just not sure it’s a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans and for the things that we’re trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the U.S.”

But as soon as the men heard her speak, they stood aside and the old, old man with the saggy face came forward with a smile which turned her blood to ice.  But the words he spoke, despite the thoughts which had just been running through her head, warmed her little heart.

“Sarah,” he said, “I’m John McCain, and I’m running for president of the whole entire country of America, and I’ve been secretly watching you for months.  Even when no one else outside of Wasilla even knew you existed, I’ve thought you were…well…I’ve thought you were the one for me.”  He blushed and looked down.  But a moment later he took a deep, deep breath, held his head high, looked at her with an expression of ghastly kindness and said “Sarah, will you be my Vice President?”

How Little Miss Sarah’s mind reeled!  She hadn’t been this happy since watching that group of polar bears drown.  The man running for president wanted her to be by his side!  But still, something crowded its way into her mind.

“But Old Mr. McCain, why me?” she asked.  “Why not Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty or Joe Lieberman or Mike Huckabee or Colin Powell or Rudy Giuliani or Michael Bloomberg?  They all have much more gravitas than I do, and more than two-tenths of one percent of the country has heard of them.”

“Well,” said Old Mr. McCain, “Mr. Lieberman is Jewish and Mr. Romney is something called a ‘Mormon,’ so my good friend Mike Duncan told me I wasn’t allowed to ask them, no matter how hard I begged.  Mr. Pawlenty is completely boring, Mr. Huckabee has a funny name and is crazy, and everybody laughs at Mr. Giuliani for mentioning 9-11 too much, the terrible day on which as many people died in one day as die in car accidents every single month year after year which no one ever talks about or even seems to notice.  And Mr. Bloomberg thinks for himself way too much, and is mayor of a place called ‘New York’ which is full of gays and hispanics and artists with long hair.  Plus, he’s Jewish too even though he doesn’t act like it.  But,” Old Mr. McCain continued, “the most important reason I didn’t pick any of them is because I’m not the only person running for president of this great nation of ours.  As it turns out, I’m running against a colored man named Barack Saddam Hussein Ayatollah Khomeini Hitler Obama who barely won his own primary election against a woman named Big Ma Hillary, and the newspapers and tee-vee shows just keep saying over and over and over again how many of her supporters are just furious that they won’t have the chance to vote for a lady.  Because, as I think we both know” (and here he nudged Little Miss Sarah in the ribs, an action which made a clammy shudder run all through her much-more-attractive body), “the only reason Big Ma Hillary’s supporters were supporting her was because she was, you know, a girl.  And as everyone knows, girl voters only care about voting according to superficial demographic categories rather than on issues.  That’s why it was such a silly idea to allow them to vote back in 1919, only seventeen years before I was born.”

Little Miss Sarah considered this for a moment.  “Then why not ask Olympia Snowe or Kay Bailey Hutchison or Jodi Rell or Susan Collins or Elizabeth Dole or even Linda Lingle?”

“Well, you see, Sarah, that’s a complicated question” said Old Mr. McCain, strangely not bothering to shoo away a horsefly which had landed directly on top of his head.  “But the short answer is, they all said no.”

“In fact, they said no while backing quickly away and waving their hands in front of their faces,” Old Mr. McCain added.

Little Miss Sarah looked around the little Governor’s Cottage with an unfamiliar, hard gleam in her eye.  She looked at the old polar bear blood stains on the walls, at the spent shotgun shell casings cluttering up the dining room floor, at the slowly melting tundra outside her door.  “All roads in Juneau lead nowhere,” said Little Miss Sarah with a sudden coldness.

“Now, that’s not true,” said Old Mr. McCain, attempting a kindly smile which Little Miss Sarah avoided looking at.  “Being governor, even of a state like Alaska, is perfect training for the very distinctly possible event that, when I fall and break my hip, or my heart attacks me, or I have a stroke on the day after I take office, you’ll have to become president and take over the reins and run the U.S. government all by yourself for four years.”

“No,” said Little Miss Sarah, “I just meant that in Juneau, all roads really do lead nowhere.  It’s the only capital city in the United States not accessible by road.”

But old Mr. McCain didn’t hear her because he was seeing Little Miss Sarah’s makeup for the first time.  “What a cunt,” he muttered.  “Why didn’t anyone tell me she was such a trollop?”  But Little Miss Sarah had already gotten on the plane to St. Paul, so she didn’t hear Old Mr. McCain say this, or see him punch the closest Secret Service agent in the face a second later.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the agent, his blood mingling with the moose carcasses underfoot.  “I was just shooing that horsefly off your head.”

“Oh, I thought you were making fun of my bald patch again!” chuckled Old Mr. McCain.  He flashed a grin at all his men and off they went to write the press release.

PABT and the Noble Fight Against Photography

Due to the tragic spillage of a Sigg bottle full of Vitamin Water all over the server at amNewYork’s central headquarters last week by the assistant sub-editor of the Sports section, a number of articles were permanently deleted from the electronic archives of New York City’s most widely-read subway-based newspaper.  They are being re-created from memory and whatever wadded-up notes could be rescued from the trash.  amNewYork regrets the error, but is happy to report that FOCW, New York City’s most widely-read blog, has donated space for the electronic re-printing of our first re-constructed article.  We invite you to read it below:

“FORT” AUTHORITY BUS TERMINAL

Latest anti-photography initiatives at NYC’s most beloved public building have cost $100M and counting

The best evidence of the beefed-up security at the Port Authority Bus Terminal might be that a guy snapping photos inside can get stopped five times – once by a Port Authority employee, once by a plain-clothes cop, once by a homeless guy who wants you to give him five dollars because he claims you took his picture without asking him, once by a pair of German tourists who want you to take their picture with their own camera, and once by a uniformed cop who tears your camera out of your hand and only refrains from dashing it – and you – to the floor because you were able to hastily assure him that you’re not somehow affiliated with Critical Mass.

“They don’t like it when people start taking pictures,” a Port Authority functionary said with a nervous glance at the smoked-glass enclosure on the upper level where the mechanical brain of the Port Authority senses even the very smallest infraction of the rules, the very slightest instance of something out-of-line.  But ignores all of it except when someone draws attention to himself by pulling out a camera.  The reporter was escorted to the bus station’s administrative office where the confusion was cleared up.  Though what this “confusion” referred to exactly – whether to what the constitutional rights are of a US citizen in a public place, or to the, shall we say, “misunderstandings” which can result when an unnecessary rule is selectively enforced depending on who is breaking it – the reporter forgot to mention.

The busiest bus station in the world, where some 200,000 terrorists passengers come through each weekday, has during the past year taken steps to prohibit photography, which has directly resulted in the foiling of at least 274 plans to blow up the Port Authority in the past month alone.  “[The PABT] has all the attributes of a suburban shopping mall, such as homeless people, surly employees, broken public art and vile restrooms, and a major transportation facility, such as a complete lack of anywhere to sit or to store luggage, and a pervasive, unrelenting sense of total paranoia amongst the staff at large,” said Ernesto Caudiis, the Port Authority’s chief operating officer.  “It is in the category of those kind of facilities that have been targeted around the world, and as Sir Isaac Newton proved over three hundred years ago, a building cannot – absolutely CAN NOT – be hit with a terrorist attack until some part of it is photographed by a tourist or an amateur photographer.  Therefore, at a cost of $100 million, we have set out to prevent this building from ever being photographed again.  Except by the press, who can of course photograph the building all they like and then publish those photographs in newspapers which will be read by hundreds of thousands of terrorists people.  That’s absolutely fine.”

The Port Authority has added steel cross braces to the south side of the south building as a seismic retrofit – a halfway-completed project to help the structure withstand natural disasters and which therefore has absolutely nothing to do with security but which is being noted here in order to fill up a couple of extra lines.  Exterior columns were strengthened.  Security cameras were added.  “Security cameras are important,” Mr. Caudiis noted, “because in the event of a major terrorist attack on the building, it will be very important to be able to supply actual footage of the attack to the major TV news programs.”  And are the cameras being used preventatively as well?  “Oh yes,” Mr. Caudiis said.  “Images from all 217 cameras are fed to two grainy monitors which are stared at vacantly by poorly-paid security guards, whenever they’re not dozing off or staring blankly at the floor which is hardly ever.”

Other security additions include bollards along Eighth Avenue to keep vehicles from ramming the building.  The glass in the doors and the walls along the east and north sides of the building has been made shatter-proof.  But the sad truth remains: all of this will be rendered absolutely useless should some unauthorized person take a snapshot of the Port Authority building someday.

Nicholas Detemi, a security consultant, said that while it’s impossible to thwart all attacks, you can still pay his firm a lot of money to devise high-profile “security upgrades” mostly involving increased passenger inconvenience and the redistribution of finite resources towards efforts at security theatre and away from actual, behind-the-scenes anti-terrorist detective work and intelligence activities.  “That stuff’s not visibly impressive or glamorous, so who cares,” Mr. Detemi said.  “Nobody’s gonna pay me six figures to tell them the FBI needs more staff and funding, and that until they get it – I don’t care how many bollards they stick in the sidewalk – they’re basically at the mercy of sweet Jesus Christ.”