19 December 2004

Government Video News – Washington, DC - 19 December 2004 – The question all of Washington is asking is: what gives?

The question continues to circulate among cocktail party guests and Kennedy Center grandees as the White House reasserted publicly on Friday President Bush’s support for the Secretary of Defense, amidst growing criticism of Mr. Rumsfeld even from within the cynical, self-serving, and self-righteously rank GOP rank-and-file. To get to the bottom of this story, Government Video News (GVN) sent reporters out to the field to comb through the high grass and conduct an exhaustive turkey-shoot, scattering birds everywhere in an effort to locate the golden goose that keeps its watchful eye out for Mr. Rumsfeld.[1]

After exhaustive research, GVN now believes the one person in all of these United States with a true understanding of Mr. Bush’s deviant past to be none other than Mr. Rumsfeld himself. Although research conducted by operatives of both parties – as well as journalists and members of the Jacques Chirac’s cabinet – turned up little substantive evidence during either campaign, the current protection of Mr. Rumsfeld seems to indicate that he holds the crucial Joker in a high-stakes card game.

“Gin Rummy,” the Beltway insiders call it.

After all, what else but sheer and unbridled blackmail could explain how one of the worst Secretaries of Defense since the Vietnam-debauched Robert McNamara could possibly keep his job while glibly tossing off lines about how the army was as it was, is as it is, and, as the French and Cole Porter have often said, whatever will be, will be. Even William Kristol – no Liberal, he – pointed out in the Washington Post this week that Mr. Rumsfeld’s inability to take responsibility for absolutely anything that goes wrong, ever, brings more shame on President Bush than anything else[2] (except perhaps Mr. Bush’s profligate spending of taxpayer funds or his inability to identify the remaining four letters of what he said was the 30-letter American alphabet; but he knows they’re there somewhere, hiding, like Osama, and he’ll get them eventually).

The speculation continues over the nature of Mr. Rumsfeld’s hand of cards. GVN has been told by none other than the recently-fired former CIA director George Tenet that Rummy’s back-pocket card is a tape of Mr. Bush cavorting, though Tenet declined to talk further, fearing he might be forced to return his newly-minted Medal of Freedom for speaking too freely and for telling the truth, for a change. Other GVN sources suggest that the tape is actually held for safe-keeping by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il – a man whose ambitions in film are well-known, if not well understood – with explicit directions by Mr. Rumsfeld to release the news to the Al Jazeera news network should the SecDef be handed a pink slip. Rumors that there was confusion over the term “pink slip” were denied by the Pentagon and the White House, though a spokesman in Secretary Rumsfeld’s office confirmed that he does not normally wear lingerie.

The Al Jazeera Network was chosen for its brazen and uncritical willingness to air explicit videos submitted by all terrorist governments and freedom fighters alike, although the video of Mr. Bush may be edited for content if it includes scenes of alcohol consumption deemed to be offensive to the pure Islamic eye. GVN submitted questions to Al Jazeera’s executive leadership about the nature of censorship and taste in Arabic-language newscasting; such queries remain unanswered to date. The network recently celebrated Mr. Bush’s re-election by running full and uncut versions of Matthew Barney’s “Cremaster” cycle, with the President’s face digitally placed over the artist’s, as well as a version of “The Wizard of Oz” that featured Mr. Rumsfeld as the Wizard and incoming Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice as the lost-and-searching Dorothy.

No word on which Cabinet secretary was cast in the role of Toto the dog.