Dear Dirty America

ADAM MICHAEL LUEBKE

I don’t often read anything in The New Yorker, but for some reason I was drawn to an article Andy Borowitz wrote a couple days ago. It’s a fake news article. It’s supposed to be funny, I suppose, but really it’s a spoof article any bright third-grader, or any bored high school student, could have written.

Here’s a peek, if you haven’t seen it:

The third and final Presidential debate ended in dramatic fashion tonight as President Obama punched Republican nominee Mitt Romney in the face, knocking him unconscious before a national television audience.

As Mr. Romney lay motionless on the floor at Lynn University with 35:06 remaining in regulation, moderator Bob Schieffer declared the debate over, calling Mr. Obama’s punch “a clean shot.”

It doesn’t get any more clever or hilarious than that. I’d be happy to leave Andy Borowitz alone, except that he gets to write pieces for one of America’s most esteemed publications. Either Borowitz isn’t worth a shit, or it’s the NYer. Or both. I can’t tell.

Does Borowitz get paid for writing banal articles like that? Hopefully not. Maybe it’s just charity work. In that case, I would say who cares? Nobody works as hard, or gives their best energy for charity work.
Taking pictures with Batman as good as America gets
Does Borowitz have children? I don’t care, but if he does, maybe he said, “Junior, go ahead and take the reins on this next article Daddy has to write. Go ahead, write anything you want about this presidential debate. Daddy will help if you need it.” Of course, Junior didn’t want to write the whole damn article for his father, so he said, through giggles, “What if Obama punched the other guy right in the face?”

I have to admit, I thought for two seconds during the second presidential debate — wouldn’t it be funny if Barack Obama dropped his mic and tackled that bullshitter Mitt Romney? Quickly, I told myself that no, it wouldn’t be that funny. And it would make an even worse spoof article or blog post.

During the third presidential debate, I thought, wouldn’t it be hilarious if Bob Schieffer had a loaded 9mm taped beneath the desk, just in case one of the candidates snapped and started beating his opponent, or maybe Bob, or maybe somebody in the front row of the nearly all-white audience?

It’s not unlikely one of the candidates would come unglued. It’s common knowledge that both Obama and Romney are heavily drugged to keep their nerves flat and their spirits up. We know Mitt Romney takes many pills of many colors to keep his mood just above rock-bottom. He’s been called a suicide risk before, but you won’t read that in the mainstream news. How would it feel to put so many of your fellow countrymen out of work with your investment company? Or to capitalize off the drug trade? Or to not know or have a goddamned clue about how you really stand on any social issue?

That’s got to take a toll on anybody’s psyche. And to have a wife with a fake right arm that she removes, from time to time, to beat family members over their heads. Sure, the media refused to go into all the details about the mysterious “surgery on her right arm”. The old one was gangrenous. The new forearm is so state of the art it has the thinking power of ten iPhones combined. But what will she do with that arm? Time will tell. Dear Jesus, if you thought your life was crazy, spend two days with the Romneys, if they’d let you.

And Obama is no better. That bastard. How does he sleep at night when he commands large fleets of drones roving the world, seeking to kill anybody he and his team of 100 deem a threat? He’s got kids. I’m sure images of dead children in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen affect him as much as they do for any other human on this planet burdened with a soul. Without the best pharmaceutical drugs on the planet, he would hang himself in the Oval Office after thinking of the thousands of kids, mothers, and fathers he’s ordered to be destroyed.

Maybe Borowitz should punch himself in the face. Or use Ann Romney’s right hand. That would be just as funny, and if he did it forcefully enough, perhaps he’d learn a lesson about how painfully depressing for society it is that its writers keep contributing to the mountains of tired, ineffectual literature in America’s top publications.