Better to Have it and Not Need it, Than Need it and Not have It

File in the "just in case" drawer.

Presidential Apology letter #3. The Softsell

The White House
President Geofferey C.M. Horvath __ ____ ,203_

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Washington)-Office of the POTUS.

We all know my father is something of a rascal. During the campaign, his antics often proved an amusing, and occasionally welcome distraction from a tough election campaign fraught with the serious issues facing our great nation. Even my opponents in the Democratic and ReAnimist parties would occasionally get a good chuckle out of some his stunts. Who can forget the time he caused Teddy Roosevelt’s reanimated corpse to goosestep down to the Lincoln memorial where he danced a merry jig with Lenin and Ezra Pound all the while belting out show toons from “Kismet”? Or when he “debated” Pope John Paul II, Walt Disney’s head and Stephen Jay Gould about the existence of a soul on the Paris Hilton Show? We all learned a valuable lesson on the limits of reanimation that day. (and if there any Catholics left after John Paul’s II’s stunning revelations on the afterlife, again, I’m very, very sorry).

However, in an attempt to amuse, my father sometimes over reaches and, quite inadvertently, occasionally causes some grief and stress. While his intention was to amuse when he added helium to the moonbase gas mixture, even the engineers admit, they expected the gas to clear in a few hours. Technically, it’s still quite habitable and much scientific and social research still goes on there, its just not reported by anything with live audio. Also, the less said about his prank with the Zombie Muhammad, the better.

It is in this vein that I ask my fellow North Americans to have some patience with him at this moment in history. First contact with an alien species was bound to be extremely tricky in any event, and it is worth pointing out that they contacted him. While the Recticulan culture is extremely complex ,they had been studying us for quite some time, so it was, as my father said, “a fair assumption they knew it was a joke”. I love my father very much and remain supportive of him. While the fact that he is something of a scoundrel cannot be, at this point, argued, as his son it is my duty to stand behind him in this troubled time. I ask the nation now to bear with us, and be assured that we are making every effort to repair the small breach in our relations with the first members of the interstellar community. Vice President Freeman, Richard Feynman and my father are with the Recticulans now, along with a cadre of cultural and social experts, working through the situation. The Recticulans are an extremely advanced culture, used to encountering other species and rationality is a key to their psychology. We are explaining, clearly and cogently how a whoopee cushion works, it’s cultural significance and it amusement value for a species like ourselves which does not use a bladder in it’s reproductive cycle as the Recticulans do. No one could have anticipated that they have an equivalent translation for that sound, nor is it reasonable on their part to assume that my father has ever met the Ambassador’s mothers.

We look forward to a quick and satisfactory solution to this in the next few days. Peace be with us all and God(s) Bless America!


Geofferey C.M. Horvath
President of the United States of America