Part 1 (1/2)
The Borowitz report: the big book of shockers.
Andy Borowitz.
AXIS OF EVIL Kim JONG II, CHAIRMAN.
Dear Imperialist Stooges:.
Being President of North Korea and Chairman of the Axis of Evil is no day at the beach. Sometimes when I tell people that, they think I'm just bellyaching. Well, there's only one thing to do with people who accuse you of bellyaching-execute them on national TV.
Psyche! If you're going to hang with Kim Jong II, you better get used to my twisted sense of humor. I've often said, you don't have to be crazy to be President of the most evil nation on Earth-but it helps. I'm totally bent, and I encourage the people I work with to act like whack-jobs, too. If I see that one of my aides is walking around with a spent fuel rod up his a.s.s, I know just how to fix his wagon: I execute him on national TV. Psyche! I swear, I've got a million of 'em.
Don't get me wrong: I love my job and I wouldn't trade it for any other job in the world, not even a mindless one that pays boatloads of money like Shaquille O'Neal's or Dan Rather's. If I had to make a list of what I like about being President of North Korea, it would go like this: (1) buying nuclear technology from Pakistani scientists; (2) threatening the West with imminent annihilation; and (3) acting ”mercurial.” And that's just the top three! You don't know how bodacious it is to stand on your balcony and watch 1 million brainwashed soldiers in uniform pa.s.sing below you with all of those awesome missiles and tanks and s.h.i.+t. I may put on my frowny-face for the cameras-that's a part of my job I like, too-but inside, Kim Jong II is saying to himself, ”Sweet I”
So what don't I like about my job? It all comes down to three little words: Axis of Evil. Every time I think about the day I agreed to be Chairman of the AOE, I could practically kick myself! Here's the way it went down: I was at an A0E meeting (it was our annual golf outing in Scottsdale) with Iran and Iraq sometime back in 2002. Someone-I think it might have been that douchebag Saddam Hussein-suggested that I would make a kick-a.s.s Chairman of the Axis. Well, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't flattered. When you've dedicated your whole life to evildoing, there are really only two ultimate dream jobs out there-running the Axis of Evil or a movie studio. So, all-day sucker that I am, I said yes!
Word to the wise: anyone who says that being Chairman of the Axis of Evil is a chance to roll up your sleeves and do lots of evil s.h.i.+t is totally selling you a bill of goods. I'll tell you the truly ”evil” part of the Axis of Evil-the paperwork! I thought being put in charge of the AOE would mean I'd be spending most of my time cooking up sinister plots or maybe designing secret underground hideouts and junk, but as it turned out about 99.9999 percent of the job is administrative. Evil my a.s.s-I might as well be running AARP.
To make matters worse, in early 2003 the other AOE members started dropping like flies, leaving yours truly holding the proverbial bag. I remember turning on the TV and seeing all of those statues of Saddam toppling and saying to myself, ”Not cool, man. Not cool at all.” But Iraq dropping out of the Axis of Evil was a nightmare for me in more ways than one. Not many people outside the AGE knew this, but Saddam Hussein was Chairman of our f.u.c.king Refreshments Committee. Now that he was gone, there was no one, I repeat, no one, to work on the Axis of Evil's Spring Dance.
Then Iran started talking about letting nuclear inspectors into their country, and I'm like, Excuse me, but when did this become the Axis of Wussies? How come no one sent me that f.u.c.king memo, folks? All of a sudden, all kinds of crazy s.h.i.+t was going down (don't get me started on Libya) and I was like totally, totally out of the freaking loop.
Which brings me to another thing about my job that I'm not bananas about: when you're dictator of a closed society like North Korea, it's really tough to get access to accurate news and information. Maybe it's the fact that there are no independent newspapers, TV networks or radio stations. Maybe it's because people won't tell you the truth since they're afraid you're going to ”shoot the messenger.” If there's one thing I've learned, it's this: you shoot a few thousand messengers and it really comes back to haunt you.
But I was determined never to be blindsided by world events again. I gathered together the top officials from North Korea's Ministry of Truth and told them to fan out across the globe and bring back a news and information service that was so accurate, so thorough, so unimpeachable that it would keep me ahead of the curve from now until the end of time (which I've currently penciled in for May 2008). After weeks of scouring the planet for such a news service, they finally came back with one: The Borowits Report.
From that day on, I haven't gone a day without it. In fact, you could say that the superb, in-depth reporting of The Borowitz Report has turned Mr. Kim Jong II into something of a news ”junkie.” Simply put, the news stories one finds in The Borowitz Report day in, day out, can't be found anywhere else. A quick scan of such headlines as OPENELY EPISCOPAL MAN JOINS VILLAGE PEOPLE or BUSH MAY LACK GENE FOR HUMAN SPEECH makes you wonder-where was the rest of the news media when these stories were breaking? But even as I devoured stories like those, it dawned on me that The Borowitz Report was more than just the world's most accurate news service. In showing the world for the treacherous place that it is, The Borowits Report offered North Korea the information necessary for our very survival!
Springing into action, I collected the most shocking news stories from The Borowitz Report, had them translated into Korean and compiled into a book complete with notes from my own personal ”blog.” I then forced every man, woman and child in North Korea to buy the book and required them, under penalty of death, to submit to a government-mandated pop quiz on its contents. Within its first week on sale, The Borowitz Report: The Big Book of Shockers sold well over ten million copies in North Korea, shooting to number one on our nation's bestseller list and staying there for twenty weeks, until it was finally knocked from its lofty perch by The South Beach Diet.
Word of the book's history-making sales figures eventually reached the U.S., where a prominent U.S. publisher quickly snapped up the American rights to the book and translated it from Korean back into English. It is to that publisher, Simon & Schuster, that I dedicate this book. To everyone at S&S, let me just say this: working with an American publisher for the first time can be a scary experience, even I or a North Korean dictator, but all of you evildoers made this evildoer feel very much at home.
Peace out, Kim Jong II.
MAJORITY OF AMERICANS NOW BELIEVE EVIL IS BAD, SURVEY SAYS.
Sign that President's Message May Be Getting Through.
In an indication that President Bush has been effective in communicating his message to the American people, a new survey released today indicates that a majority of Americans now believe that evil is bad.
Of those responding, 54 percent strongly agreed with the statement ”Evil is bad,” with 21 percent strongly agreeing with the statement ”Evil is very, very bad.”
By wide margins, those surveyed also agreed with the statement ”Evildoers are bad.”
In one of the most persuasive pieces of data in the survey, 87 percent agreed with the statement ”Evildoers are bad because they do evil, which is bad.”
And a whopping 91 percent agreed with the statement ”I really mean it.”
The University of Minnesota poll, whose margin of error is plus or minus five percentage points, shows that the President's message about evil, evildoers, and other evil stuff may be taking hold.
However, those responding to the survey still had some difficulty identifying the three members of the ”Axis of Evil” whom President Bush identified in his State of the Union speech.
Only 12 percent correctly identified Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, while 23 percent incorrectly named Batman supervillains the Joker, the Riddler, and Catwoman.
President Bush's speeches about evil being bad have sent approval ratings for evil tumbling to an all-time low.
In other poll results, 61 percent agreed with the statement ”Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., is the capital of the USA,” and 57 percent correctly identified the number two as the sum of one plus one.
KIM'S BLOG Most people figure that whenever President Bush talks about ”the Axis of Evil” or evildoers or whatnot, that would really p.i.s.s me off. Au contraire, homes! The fact is, every time he says the word ”evil” it's just more free publicity for yours truly.
Face it, before Bush was President practically no one had even heard of Kim Jong II or North Korea or our superscary nuclear weapons program, but thanks to all of his speeches, my brand awareness is now sky-high. In some parts of the world I'm now better known than Vanilla c.o.ke! There's only one word for that: awesome.
I'll tell you something else. Before Bush was elected, I was busting my hump to get publicity-Internet banner ads, radio spots, you name it. I even showed up at the Golden Globes one year with Mary Steenburgen. What did it get me? Nada!
The fact is, nothing gets your name out there faster and better than being called ”evil” in a State of the Union address. If there's one thing that bugs me, though, I guess it's this: people can't decide whether to spell my name Kim Jung-Il or Kim Jong Il. My publicist says that the whole spelling thing is keeping me from truly breaking out and we've got to clear it up somehow if I want to make it to the cover of People. (Everyone knows how to spell ”Clooney,” she says.) Now I totally understand why Cher and Madonna went the one-name route! I guess when people just start referring to me as ”Kim,” then I'll know I've arrived.
OSAMA'S WIFE, DEBBIE BIN LADEN, SPEAKS OUT.
Rips Terror-Hubby in Exclusive Chat.
Question: What's worse than being the world's most wanted man, hunted by U.S. Special Operations Forces while bunker-busting missiles jangle your nerves morning, noon and night?
Answer: Being trapped in a one-room cave with four really p.i.s.sed-off wives.
Much has been written and said about Osama bin Laden, the evildoer, but relatively little is known about Osama bin Laden, the henpecked husband.
Until now.
Sources close to the bin Laden household say that there is ”trouble in paradise,” and a recent exclusive interview with one of Osama's four wives, Debbie bin Laden, appears to bear this out.
”The world knows how evil Osama is,” Debbie bin Laden says. ”What they don't know is how cheap he is.”
The exclusive Debbie bin Laden interview appears in the new issue of Angry People, a popular Kandahar magazine.