Monday, June 22, 2009

Part 1: Obama Fly Swat - the Incident

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Disclaimer: The following post depicts real incident(s) in a sarcastic & sardonic manner. While some extracts of the post refer to real incident(s), most extracts are fictionalized/parodied accounts.
Washington D.C.
16 June, 2009
It was another Tuesday morning at the White House and things were going right on schedule, pretty much as planned - no security breaches or threats, no scandalous disclosures and no shoes being thrown (Ah wait! All these had become non-issues since quite some while ago, ever since the arrival of a charismatic, idealistic, dynamic leader, but I digress). Somewhere deep within the confines of the pristine white monolith, President Obama was being interviewed by a C.N.B.C. anchor-man on various issues ranging from Wall-Street to Health-Reform. Though the President was facing some thorny questions (asked no doubt by an anchor-man whose pay-cheques were regulated directly or indirectly by crony capitalists & Wall Street fatcats), it didn't seem to perturb him much. And then it happened…
A fly, a rather large one at that, came out of nowhere and launched an audacious assault on the President of the United States, the executive symbol and the living embodiment of America's power in the world. The Secret Service, an institution much glamorized in the country's films & media, portrayed always as adroit at presidential logistics & adept at presidential security, but whose track-record in the real-world contradictorily enough, hasn't been failure-proof (which is no doubt publicly attributed to "nefarious designs of tyrannical men"), stood paralyzed not out of fear but out of "shock and awe", notwithstanding their alleged superior neurological & cognitive abilities, supposed split-reaction-times and an abundant supply of technological gizmos.

As they watched awe-struck as mute spectators, the President himself seemed to be mildly amused at this half-hearted attempt that the minuscule fly made. He did admit that the fly perturbed him - apparently much more than some of the gravest issues facing the planet. He even verbally articulated his displeasure, instructing the assaulting fly to "get outta here", (which some opined also doubled up as a battle-cry), while simultaneously waving his hand in intimidation & defense. The C.N.B.C. crew in the meanwhile gleefully captured an audio-video feed of this inter-species combat that would no doubt hit America's air-waves as a contentious issue for pundits/analysts to belabor upon and also find a lot of takers in educational documentaries of how two different species with radically different sizes battle for the attention of the community.
Ideally, at this stage, several secret service agents , after having whispered complicated permutations & combination of laborious abbreviations (representing situational protocols & heuristic behavioral algorithms) to each other over super-encrypted secure digital channels, should have formed an ad-hoc tactical-response unit, moving in formation towards the President (source: Hollywood). It was assured (by Hollywood portrayals) that the end result would be a bloody execution of the assailant (in S.S. euphemistic parlance, "swift neutralization") while simultaneously securing the safety of the President. Alas, this failed to happen.
As the President was fighting a lone battle against the fly, the C.N.B.C. anchor-man opined rather intellectually that the fly was indeed one of the most persistent ones he had seen - there was a tacit admiration in his voice & an implicit suggestion that the fly possessed perseverance and fortitude - qualities that all Americans (and the World) need to emulate. The fierce battle had gathered enthralled spectators from amongst the C.N.B.C. crew, all of them egging on the President to go for the kill by chanting jingoistic slogans and juvenile cheers. After a prolonged arm-wrestling battle, the fly decided a time-out was in order. The President too was relieved that he wouldn't have to continue to keep up with this macho charade and tried to resume bilateral talks with C.N.B.C. Little did he realize that in the short time-span of a fly's life-cycle, a second was more than sufficient to rejuvenate for the next round of the fight. For in a second, the fly dramatically landed on the President's left-hand, as if to offer a hand of friendship announcing peace & reconciliation, all the while looking insidiously for a sign of complacency in the opponents demeanor, a sign of his opponent letting down his guards. President Obama saw through the fly's flimsy farce and decided to end the confrontation once and for all.
With measured movements, he raised his right-hand in a position that quite resembled the one he had used to take his oath. For a fleeting moment, it appeared that the President, apparently rendered insecure by a desperate opposition (with an odd-sounding moniker 'GOP') wanted no stone unturned or no oath un-uttered, and so not convinced about having taken oath twice under two independent/competent authorities, he had decided to re-take the oath to be apparently administered by the assailant-fly. But as he brought down his right hand in one continuous sweeping motion, it became clear, both from the angular velocity and the directional trajectory of the President's right-arm, that this was no proud oath-taking moment, but a hostile action whose intended consequence was the immediate termination of the said assailant. With one swift motion, the long-fought truculent battle was over - the preceding seconds of tension, mistrust, war and misery eclipsed by the sweet taste of a just victory. The victor brushed off the vanquished and saw it succumb to the force of gravity, only to be later swept by the victor's long wispy legs. The President seemed content with himself, having just realized the patriotic symbolism of the moment, also deciding to parade his kill for the cameras. He invoked a profound existential rhetorical question: "That was impressive, wasn't it?", following it up with a vehement articulation of victory: "I got the sucker".
The President then continued to discuss policy issues (non-interesting matters) with C.N.B.C. in his trademark composure and suave sophistication, quite as if to deny the occurrence of the epic battle that had unfolded a few seconds ago. As the interview concluded, the President, perhaps out of a mark of respect for the dead or admiration for the persistent assailant or esoteric curiosity (or simply perhaps out of a strict adherence to the Geneva conventions), decided to give the assailant-fly a dignified disposal. President Obama undertook a presidential parade in somber remembrance of the slain assailant, carrying the tender, lifeless body of the beast wrapped in tissue in his own bare hands. In doing this, he proved once again very visibly, that he is the humane warrior - providing a dexterous, pain-free execution to those who cross him needlessly while also ensuring dignified treatment in the immediate aftermath of these spars.
The President, unbeknownst to him, has seemed to kick off a storming pot of controversies on everything from Foreign Policy to Economic Policy to controversial domestic issues to backburner animal-rights issues. It has gotten everyone worked up – right from an (in)famous dead-pan comedy-show host to a yesteryear actor (who incidentally played a fly) to tyrannous dictators and evil men wearing pirate eye-patches. The impact of the actions that the President undertook during his armed encounters of the fly kind, shall no doubt shape public policy for years, if not decades to come. This shall be the subject of an investigative report (read: conspiracy theory/burning satire) put out by our hard-working reporters to be tabled very soon (as soon as we are able to concoct more lies and/or sensationalize trivialities for public dissemination) and you can then make an independent (but moronic & entirely misinformed) decision about whether the President has opened the Pandora’s Box.
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