In the not-too-distant future…
On a beautiful fall day, Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts was abuzz with a cacophony of football fans and classic rock blaring over the PA. On the field, the New England Patriots and San Francisco Forty-Niners warmed up for their ensuing game. Eventually, the music faded out, and a voice cut through the crowd noise.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to direct your attention to the Jumbotron. US forces are currently engaged with Al-Qaeda in the city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. To honor America, they will be performing a surgical strike on an Al-Qaeda base.”
The crowd roared its approval. On the Jumbotron was a decimated Middle Eastern city with a firefight going on amidst the ruins. Tanks and other American vehicles advanced down a street under enemy fire. The video then cut to a fighter jet cockpit.
Over the static of his radio, the fighter pilot delivered a message to the assembled throng: “On behalf of the US Air Force, I’d like to dedicate this strike to the people of New England and San Francisco. Good luck to the Patriots and Forty-Niners in today’s game. We’re doing this for you!”
The next shot was an aerial view of Jeddah, soon punctuated by an explosion that shook the camera and the plane it was attached to. A plume of smoke, dust and debris filled the screen as the fans cheered. The view switched back to the fighter jet cockpit.
“Now, are you ready for some football?!”
Fireworks went off around the rim of the stadium as the crowd lost its collective shit. Of course, there were always plenty of “surgical strikes” to show the folks back home. With all the wars going on in the Middle East and elsewhere, the Pentagon could’ve shown live coverage of an attack happening that very moment.
But this one wasn’t live. It was prerecorded, then meticulously edited and audio-mixed to give it the veneer of authenticity and immediacy. The government couldn’t run the risk of showing footage of a bomb accidentally landing on a hospital or an orphanage, a disturbingly frequent occurrence.
Although, honestly, considering how the fans ate it up, they probably would’ve gotten the same reaction with live footage. But there was some danger that the athletes wouldn’t like it and might stage a walkout. Even though they were millionaires, a lot of people seemed to sympathize with them. Why ordinary people found millionaire athletes sympathetic was anyone’s guess.
No, they just couldn’t run the risk. It had been hard enough tamping down the kneeling-for-the-national-anthem controversy. Colin Kaepernick and the other ringleaders were blackballed, but it took a considerably greater effort by the league to keep the virus of non-patriotism contained.
There had been enough of a fallout when President Palin reacted to video of a hospital getting bombed by the US. She did her best Urkel impression: “Did I do that?” It was actually more reminiscent of Bugs Bunny. “Ain’t I a stinker?” her face and body seemed to say.
The mouth-breathers on the Right were sent into raptures of joy, of course. Tucker Carlson appeared to climax on camera as he watched the press conference on a loop. Sean Hannity offered to be her sex slave. Rush Limbaugh spontaneously danced a jig in his studio and finally dropped dead of a heart attack. Whatever he found on the Other Side could not have matched the bliss he was feeling as he expired.
The mainstream media (or “MSM”) denounced the president, and the Libs had their usual hissy fit. Rachel Maddow poured gasoline on herself and struck a match, opening up a huge whole in the MSNBC primetime lineup. There were many who felt she should’ve thought of her bosses before making that decision, but others shamed them for disempowering a woman, and a gay woman at that.
Who cared that their bread was all buttered on the same side? That they all fed from the same trough? That they all accepted the same basic premises about the righteousness and glory of the American Empire? These Republicans kept saying the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet. It was like they didn’t even believe in the loud part anymore. The Democrats at least had the decency to maintain the illusion of a humanitarian foreign policy.
“Urkelgate” provided media fodder for months. The content mills chugged along relentlessly, gobbling up each new outrage and abomination like ambrosia and spitting out venom, bile and puritanical condemnation. Jaleel White held a press conference to denounce the president’s use of his character’s trademark catchphrase. Predictably, the MSM applauded his principled defense of the Norms, those sacred guardrails that would surely save us from this president-gone-wild.
But, unlike Trump, Palin knew how to milk a scandal. She found the media’s wounds, stuck her finger in and just rooted around, driving the press mad with a pain so intense that it verged on pleasure. They were her slaves. They claimed to hate her, but there were still a few Americans left who knew better.
