he White House faced embarrassment this week when their usual method of distracting the population with lesser problems backfired, leading them to unintentionally misdirect public attention back to the original problem. While the administration hoped to draw notice from earlier remarks misdirecting national awareness to the slave trade.

Popular theory is the White House misdirected media attention to the Middle Eastern slave trade to distract from the continuing aggression in "free" Iraq, and possibly some of the Nixon comparisons President Bush has endured over the course of the week; when Middle Eastern allies such as oil magnate/American investors Saudi Arabia took offense at the promise of sanctions, the White House sought to avert public outcry against the ally by launching a new attack—this one, accidentally, drawing notice back to the failing economy and bleak financial prospects for most Americans.

"It's a shame in this country that men and women can work all their lives and having nothing to show for it," said Condoleezza Rice, as a few aides standing by gave each other quizzical looks. "Especially in America, a country recognized world wide for having so much prosperity. And yet, we're losing quality jobs everywhere but the service industry. The president is most definitely angered by this, and is sorry he's passed so many economic policies to keep it in place."

Failing to recognize that the disparate situations between the rich and poor in the United States was the same initial social ill so many wars were started to draw attention away from, Rice continued to assault the very structure of American finance.

"America continues to make advances in industry, medicine, and of course, commerce—advantages only a handful of Americans will fully experience, since the system is built to allow only partial upward mobility, preserving a luxury status for a privileged few, who triple their earnings by sending skilled jobs overseas and cutting the bottom out from the working classes."

Concluded Rice: "That seems to me a much more devastating problem affecting this nation than the 800,000 slaves reportedly trafficked through the fine countries of our allies, right?"

It was a classic clusterfuck as only this administration could manage, doing potential damage to four and a half years worth of social reform rollback and securing the position of the upper classes. Realizing their mistake the Saturday after the statement was made, the White House had little choice but to keep the misdirection rolling.

"The War on Terror is at its worst," said Press Secretary Scott McClellan, rushing into the press room Saturday morning, while most of the reporters were still pretty hung over for a long night's/morning's drinking. "We have elevated the terror level to 'fantastic,' which is uh… pretty bad. We've heard rumblings throughout the Middle East that Al Qaeda may be preparing for another strike on U.S. soil. And if intelligence hasn't picked up anything on that yet, they most certainly will within the next few hours."

Though the War on Terror is a subject that hasn't unified Americans with the same strength it originally did in late 2001, it seemed like the safest place to leave public scrutiny until everything had blown over, or at least until the next major summer blockbuster got everybody talking about Batman or alien monsters or something again.

merica’s nuts were chapped a bright red this week with news that former FBI second-in-command W. Mark Felt, 91, had come out of hiding to end a 30-year mystery, announcing that he was Deep Throat, star of the semenal porn film that took the country by storm in 1972.

Americans from all walks of life gagged at the news and the sight of Felt, who has aged poorly since his starring role as the sex kitten known for her plucky personality and propensity for swallowing rod all the way down to the balls.

Despite lacking establishment distribution or any tangible evidence of a script, the 1972 film Deep Throat was a gigantic hit, inspiring excessive repeat business from about a dozen guys who couldn’t get enough of the erotic “art film.� Even a lawsuit from the Sword Swallowers’ Guild over the film’s title couldn’t slow the movie’s success, and it went on to gross over $600 million in musty theaters nationwide.

Over the years, “film buffs� and conspiracy theorists have debated endlessly over Deep Throat’s identity, concocting a long list of likely suspects including White House counsels John Dean and Fred Fielding, speechwriter Pat Buchanan, and Nixon chief of staff Alexander Haig, who colleagues admit looks particularly fetching in a halter top and g-string bikini.

For readers who vomited during that last paragraph, hope remains that this could all be one big misunderstanding. Some have suggested that Felt wasn’t Deep Throat at all, and is merely a sad old man grasping at his last stab at fame before he kicks it. Though such strange sex fantasies coming from an old man may strike some as unlikely, in fact it is not an unusual syndrome, as can be documented by Dr. Nikolai Balsvet of the McClurg Institue.

“Many older gentlemen Mr. Felt’s age have a tendency to confuse porn with reality,� explained Balsvet. “They often re-imagine their lives as tawdry purveyors of humiliating sexual excess, cum-dumpsters, cock-hungry hose hounds drooling for shaft, feeling no shame in their fevered pursuit of raw Johnson.�

“It’s not unusual for a man of Mr. Felt’s age to mistake his life story for that of a dirty slut who spent her life begging for smoking hot man missile,� agreed Dr. Lou Morales of the mail-order clinic. “Most elderly men go through a similar phase. I’ve based my entire practice just treating geriatrics who think they were Traci Lords.�

Industry insiders confirm this trend, pointing out that the 40-year reunion parties for most porn films are attended by more elderly former accountants than they are dried up post-hotties with silicone bags bouncing off their sneakers.

“Back in my day, I couldn’t get enough of the dong,� explained retiree Elmer Bainbridge, purported female star of the 1964 porn epic Muffin-Stuffin’ 3. “I was insatiable,� added Bainbridge, coughing up something wet and abundant into a handkerchief.

Felt’s family is standing behind the former FBI official in spite of the controversy.

“I love my dad regardless of whether he’s a delusional old fart or a former gutter-slut blowjob queen,� explained proud daughter Joan Felt to the media. “Those are all just different sides of the man I call dad.�

I was one of the lucky ones. I got to be in one of the first Macy's Day Parades, before it all went downhill. "The David Hartman Years," as I think of them.

It wasn't all cheap and gaudy back in my time. The floats were hand-painted, like works of art, not covered with smelly flowers to queer it all up. Why, just ahead of me the whole time, as I walked the parade, was a float that was a beautiful tribute to Michael Angelo's Sistine Chapel. Not the famous Italian painter guy, but Michael Angelo, a guy in New York famous for building a Gingerbread Sistine Chapel. And no one ever ate it either, since Adam's genitalia generally put everybody off their appetite.

We had balloons back then, too, but they weren't any damn Muppets or Woody Woodpecker or nothing. We had more respect than to put just anyone in a parade—we made balloons in the images of our most famous celebrities, like Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Rudolph Valentino. The W.C. Fields balloon was life-size. Even better than these cheap balloons they use today, ours were the main form of transportation between continents. If you looked out the window and saw Fatty Arbuckle sailing right toward you, you knew your country might soon be invaded by a massive army.

It took quite a bit of strength to hoist those balloons everywhere and not get lifted away into space. There weren't as many people back then, we knew how to control ourselves, sexually speaking, so only one person to a balloon we had. A hoister, which is what we called fellows who did the hoisting, had to secure themselves firmly to the earth with two pockets packed full of lead sinkers. Praying a little beforehand didn't hurt either.

I was a hoister in that parade, and you can probably just imagine how green jealous ol' brother Goose was. It had been his lifelong dream to be a hoister, even before we invented parades in 1912, and it drove him out of his mind to turn on the radio and hear me hoisting that Douglas Fairbanks balloon down Main Street, New York. He was so furious he punched the doorframe and hurt his hand, and it was in a cast for weeks. He also went down to the local corner bar with a gun and began randomly shooting people, but knowing Goose, that could have been for any reason. Sometimes he just liked to play a fierce game of tag with complete strangers.

But truth be told, outside of driving my brother on a mad killing spree, the whole parade thing seemed kind of empty. We weren't celebrating anything, since the Macy's parade was held on No Particular Day, which wasn't famous for anything, before they decided to have it on Thanksgiving. Nothing, that is, but our own hubris. We were an infant nation back then, still effectively sitting at the kids table. We threw parades just because we liked to create things, create them for no reason other than we had the will to do it and for the sheer delight. That's what made this country what it is today.

That and the several wars, I mean.

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