January 05, 2010
Drone Wars: News at Six
"Nothing is as scary as living through a bad idea," Michael Michaels got the editorial meeting underway. "When it's happening anyone who is halfway sane thinks the whole world is on a free-fall slide to hell. Afterwards you can joke about it. Afterwards the immediate danger of the old bad idea is gone. So many worse ideas have filled the gap in the meantime the whole thing is funny like a bad joke. Everyone can look back on the old bad joke with twenty-twenty hindsight and shrug it off."
"What's on tap today?" the news editor cut the dim-witted anchor off.
"I'm not sure if it's actually such a bad idea," the political desk started the ball rolling. "It's a little complicated, but here goes. How about the Puppy Dog Channel? New Mexico Senator Loudan Rich is way out in front of it. His latest anti-Rebel strategy. Can't figure out if it's a bad idea or genius. What he wants is to have a channel that plays nothing but images of cute puppy dogs frolicking twenty-four seven at every major government checkpoint. Here's the quote: 'No need for metal detectors, pat downs, interviews,' so the senator's argument goes. We could make it a question: Superfluous police theater?"
"Everyone likes puppy dogs," Michael Michaels said in his best anchorman voice.
"In fact, the Senator believes anyone who doesn't like puppy dogs is against the American way of life, a villainous enemy of the State. So, the best way to weed out insurgents hell-bent on bringing down the US government, according to the senator, is to make them watch puppy dogs at play," the political desk continued.
The news editor turned it over in his head. "I like it," he finally said. "The story's got legs. But what's the gimmick?"
"Most everyone would think the Puppy Dog Channel was the cutest thing they ever saw, right?" the political desk fleshed it out a bit more. "Anyone caught reacting in a negative way or looking away as they pass the monitors is immediately separated from the rest of the crowd and directed into a special line. There are some tactical problems, but Senator Rich is already at work on a fix. Curmudgeons, it was pointed out to him, would likely get swept up in the dragnet. Among patriotic citizens there are undoubtedly a few bitter old coots that hate small children, kittens, and puppy dogs, a small number of ill-tempered geriatrics so forth and so on."
"I saw the senator speak on Meet The Press," Michael Michaels said. "He was really putting the meat into the microphone. He suggested the line get divided. 'Two lines,' he said. 'One for the firing squad, the other for the restroom.' The civilization-hating anarchist saboteurs will go down the main path to their certain death and the old fogies will go to the restroom which is where they probably were headed anyhow."
"Bladder control," the news editor scoffed.
"The Puppy Dog Channel?" Michael Michaels mused.
"Let's go with it," his editor smiled. "What else?"
"The Smart Mattress?" the business desk perked up. "It's the latest black market craze to hit the nation."
"I don't know," Michael Michaels answered. He hated the idea of a mattress that was smarter than him.
"Maybe we should put our weight behind it?" the news editor nudged.
"Maybe," Michael Michaels conceded. He knew full well there was more to the story. Some of the mattresses had gone haywire in the past and the Federal Trade Commission considered them so dangerous they were outlawed for public consumption.
"You know those dreams you have about how you didn't graduate from high school?" the business desk offered a possible lead in.
"I never did graduate from high school," Michael Michaels joked.
"Maybe you could have used a Smart Mattress? Ever since Private Joe Shmuck got his nothing's been the same," the business desk offered. "Something along those lines. Private Joe Shmuck could say something like: 'In my old reoccurring dream I never graduated from high school. Now that I have my Smart Mattress I've graduated from college. I still have the old anxiety, but I'm not anxious anymore. Before I got the Smart Mattress I never even went to class in my dream. Now I do even though it's bizarre because I am so much older than the other kids. In my old dream I used to skip all my classes because the premise was so ridiculous. Now I actually attend my classes. And even though I am still sometimes really late I don't sweat it as much with the Smart Mattress.' What do you think?" the business desk turned to the news editor.
"Needs more drama," he shot back. "A hook."
"What if someone in Private Joe Shmuck's dream breaks into his locker and steels his class schedule?" Michael Michaels gave it some thought. "At first Private Joe Shmuck is upset, but then he realizes he doesn't give a shit. I mean he's already graduated from college in his dream. What does he care about high school? Zip. Nada. Nothing. It is like an anxiety nightmare, but because he has a Smart Mattress he doesn't care one iota one way or the other!"
"Okay," the news editor said. He clearly had some reservations, but he let them go. "What's going on over at the science desk?" he asked.
"Professor Ivar Zimbolist over at Fort College has an interesting theory about human migration patterns and how they could pertain to the Civil War here in the States," the science desk answered. "According to the professor, people who lived in the warmer climates were loud. They loved the sand, the sun, and the surf. The loud people were philistines. They liked eating, fucking, and fighting, not necessarily in that order. They liked all the things loud people like. Most of their time was spent on the beach. 'Loud and lazy' is how the professor describes them in his book. They ruled the world. They still do. There were lots of seashells all around them, the professor has discovered, so they made seashells their currency. It was the simplest and laziest thing to do so that's what they did."
"What's the pitch?" the news editor wanted to know.
"Well," the science desk continued, "The loud people were so obnoxious anyone who liked peace and quiet was forced to move to the outskirts of town. But before they knew it the loud people began to overpopulate the warm tropical shore they inhabited and they started to impinge on the outer-lying hamlet the quiet people had settled. So the quiet people moved even further away. 'That's how they got to the polar ice caps,' the professor writes on page 123. They figured it was so inhospitable and uninhabitable up there the tropical loud mouths would never follow them. They were wrong. For a while they were free from all the mindless chitchat of the loud people. It was a kind of golden era for them up there on the North Pole. They read and did all the creative things people can do when they are not crowded out of their own minds."
"A golden era of silence, however short lived," Michael Michaels ended the meeting. The show was about to go on air. He took his seat on the news set and smiled his million-dollar smile. Under the harsh klieg lights in the broadcast booth the anchorman looked positively alien, like a Venusian talking head.
"It's not what you sell, it's how you tell them the price," Michael Michaels briskly launched into the first story of the newscast. "Drone War Idol has just announced they will donate Pray Station laptop game-boxes to every underprivileged schoolchild in Uruguay. A top executive was quoted as saying: 'This isn't just a media stunt designed to boost our ratings. Think of the children. Every kid in the world deserves a chance at fifteen minutes of fame. And not only that, these kids are heroes. Think of them out there protecting us from the evil-doers here in our own front yard.'
"Later in Drone Wars news, we will take an insider look into the version XVI recall. We will also look at New Mexico Senator Loudan Rich's latest security proposal -- The Puppy Dog Channel; Smart Mattresses in the military; and a new study out of Fort College that could shed some light on the Rebel psychology.
"But first: the Federal Government closure of its embassy in Atlanta, Georgia. After six military trucks with weapons and explosives went missing the compound was temporarily shuttered as a precaution. Officials believe local insurgents hijacked the trucks. A State Department spokesperson would not deny or confirm concerns about instability in the region. 'It's premature to call Georgia a failed state,' the spokesperson said. 'But we definitely don't want it to turn into another North Dakota or Idaho,' the spokesperson added. The government of Georgia faces a secessionist uprising in the south and a rebellion in the north..."
--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2010
