The Weekly Screed (#696)

Apocalypse now… and
tomorrow… and the day after that
by David Benjamin

“Good morning, ladies and germs! It’s Monday, and I’m Fred Fiermonger, alongside my co-host Abigail Angst, and this is ‘Good Grief, America,’ your daily wake-up-and-smell-the-napalm call here on the Anecdotal News Network. As you all know, we are broadcast live (until we all perish without warning in a ball of fire) from a bomb-proof bunker in an undisclosed location that changes on a weekly basis to avoid satellite surveillance. Today, as always, we’ll be dwelling hysterically on isolated incidents that are rife with alarm and taken out of context, exaggerating them into horrific trends that foreshadow a cataclysm so Biblical that, before sunset today, it will turn into a heap of stinking, toxic ash the hopes and dreams of every patriotic, Christian white family in what used to be the United States of America! Abby?”

ABBY: “I’m sorry, Fred. This story is so awful and sickening that I have to go behind the scenes and puke. Excuse me.”

FRED: “Okay then. The reason Abby is upchucking into a torpedo can is that three teenage girls from Denver — who might have been pre-emptively shot if not for a confiscatory gun-control regime engineered by Colorado’s ultra-liberal governor, John Hickenlooper — almost made it to Syria. The three traitorous little veil-wearers were planning to fight for ISIS, the sinister billion-strong Muslim terrorist army bent on ransacking every home-schooling household in America, imposing Islamic law and beheading everyone who speaks English or eats pork.”

ABBY: “I’m back, Fred. How’s my breath.”

FRED: “Suck on a mint, Abby, and tell us. What’s the most frightening and dastardly thing about this whole stomach-churning story.”

ABBY: “Well, Fred, you won’t believe this, but, after these seditious Sharia-mongering zealots, all three of African origin — AFRICAN, Fred! — were caught in Germany — GERMANY, Fred (Hitler, Nazis, Angela Merkel), they were brought back to American soil. Brought back here, Fred! Into our very midst.

FRED: “Yes, Abby, God help us. These three ISIS dupes spent 24 hours in the Frankfurt airport, where dozens of flights arrive daily from Africa, each one a potential carrier of new strains of the Ebola virus, each strain a potential mutation that could be transformed into an airborne biological weapon by mad Muslim scientists. At the airport, the ISIS recruits, each one as African as the ace of spades, had time to meet secretly with God-knows-who. And now, Abby, they’re here, in America — probably coughing and spitting, spewing their bodily fluids every which way, and free — FREE, Abby! — to meet with the thousands of ISIS terrorists embedded invisibly across the length and breadth of our nation.”

ABBY: “Oh, Fred, I’m all the more frightened by these evil Muslim death squads, because we know nothing — not one damn thing — about their numbers, locations, or even their existence. As the viewers of ANN know painfully well, the most groundless suspicions concocted by the most fearful fancy are the purest proof of all the evil forces that haunt out nightmares (especially on cable TV). We have no evidence of the ghastly plots we warn you about constantly, which only proves the brilliant secrecy maintained by this ruthless network of Islamic sleeper cells. Soon — perhaps today or tomorrow — our fears will be realized. A genocidal wave of bearded mujahedeen in stolen Humvees, crossing from Mexico, will sweep aside our rent-a-cop military and invade our gated communities, burning our Bibles, converting our children and turning our women into harem girls for the sadistic caliphs of an Islamic State that stretches from Istanbul to Honolulu.”

FRED: “Thank you, Abby. I’m scared silly now and I bet everyone else is, too. Now, it’s time to ask our gratuitous terrifying question of the day. Abby?”

ABBY: “Fred, America needs to know the answer and we need to know it now (if it isn’t too late already)! Today’ question is: Can you get Ebola from your PET? What’s in the water your goldfish swims around in? When your schnauzer licks your face, is he bathing you in fatal fluids? When your cat pees on your pillow, is she signing your death warrant? Think about it, America!”

FRED: “Abby, our guest today is chairman of the Senate Paranoia Caucus, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Welcome to ‘Good Grief, America,’ Senator.”

SEN. GRAHAM: “Troops, troops, troops! We need to send troops NOW, before it’s too late! Troops to Denver! Cordon off those traitorous teens! Burn them out, lock them up at Gitmo! Quarantine Colorado! Kill every dog and goldfish. Bury them under six feet of quicklime! Marines to Frankfurt! Surround the airport.  Navy Seals to Syria. Deploy troops from Istanbul to Honolulu. Bomb every inch of the Middle East. Drone them into the sea! And fill the sea with quicklime!”

FRED: “Thank you, Senator, for that calm, cogent analysis.”

SEN GRAHAM: “Oh, Fred, it’s not easy. You can’t imagine how I struggle to stay combed and cool in the mist of our dark-souled and disloyal president’s myriad betrayals and multiple conspiracies. If I hadn’t just gotten an injection of thorazine directly into my frontal lobe, I don’t know if I could cope.”

ABBY: “Senator, are you sure it was thorazine? Who gave you the injection? Could it have been a Muslim? Or a Liberian? Was it Nancy Pelosi?”

SEN. GRAHAM: “Oh my God! It was probably Ebola! Or Mad Cow! Or that Oklahoma execution drug that makes you twitch for 45 minutes! I’m gonna die! We’re all GOING TO DIE!”

FRED: “Thank you, Sen. Graham. And good luck in the November elections.”

ABBY: “Next, a word from our sponsors. But first, Fred? The motto of ANN and every ratings-grubbing cable-news outfit in the new-media universe.”

FRED: “Be Afraid, America. Be Very Freaking Afraid!”