Happy Furry Puppy Story Time with Norbizness

Did You File The Serial Numbers Off the Drop-Piece?

Nobody withstands an interrogation by zombie Orbach!

I ordinarily wouldn't be devoting an entire post to something that's probably playing on CNN 24-7 (don't worry, I didn't check), but the recent unpleasantness with the air marshals has started to play out like an episode of Law & Order if it was written by Koko, the sign-language ape, using a Law & Order Mad Libs template. You can almost see a ghostly, tight-faced Jerry Orbach peeling away the layers of bravado and deception through his world-weary, withering Brooklynite* sarcasm. I think the plot has gone something like this:

-- the guy was screaming about a bomb in a plane full of passengers, saying "Season's Greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas," brandishing a set of knitting needles he had whittled to a knife-like point in the bathroom, and had disabled the smoke detector in the bathroom. He wasn't smoking, he was just mischievous.

-- Oh shit. No, no, I know what you're going to say. I suppose that if that story's going to fly, we should have probably not tried it out when there's a WHOLE PLANE FULL OF PASSENGERS to be interviewed by every news outlet on the fucking planet. Yeahhh. Well, we kind of already put that story out there. C'mon memory hole, old chum. Work your magic.

-- I'm not going to take any more questions on this for the time being. This is the part of the episode where a power-player has the sit-down with the District Attorney (in my mind, it's still Adam Schiff, not that redneck ex-Senator. Did anybody ever adequately explain why somebody who looks and sounds like Tennessee football coach Phil Fullmer got elected D.A. in New York?) and explains that this whole inquiry needs to go away very quickly.

-- Could we go ahead and plant some phony-ass cover story? Don't worry, we've got some friendly people in the press.

I guess it's good that most of our terror-related activities are covered in a gigantic shroud of CIA secrecy and Secretary of State lies, because the visible portion in America, from the botched trials in Detroit in 2003 and Florida recently, to our failing grades from the 9/11 Commission, do not inspire much confidence. More questions from Washington Monthly, Balloon Juice (especially in the comments, where the age-old struggle between pants-wetters and steely-eyed protectors of our freedom is playing out), and the Washington Post (the term "mixed reviews," as if the shooting of a guy with bipolar disorder was the new Narnia movie, is a bit strange).

By the way, we cut the funding for air marhsal training to create a new income tax deduction for solid gold toilet paper dispensers! More on our strange budgetary process later.

* I don't know the five boroughs or whether this is a correct term or whether Lenny Briscoe or Jerry Orbach was from there.

** OK, OK, he's from the Bronx! Everybody knows that! I'm glad that's the main topic of discussion in the comments!

Posted by Norbizness at December 8, 2005 11:56 PM