McCain to Interpret Palin Tonight via Simultaneous Translation

Gov. Sarah Palin's words in her debate tonight evening with Sen. Joseph Biden, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, will be piped into America's ears through GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain in a simultaneous translation. This was not meant to muzzle Palin's spontaneous conversation, McCain asserted, but to prevent any Al Qaeda ventriloquists lurking in the auditorium from putting words in her mouth.

"I have more experience than anybody else on earth in counterterrorism," McCain said, "and I know Gov. Palin has a unique vocal timbre easily imitated by terrorist mimics." He announced that he has suspended a dentist appointment, a fact-finding trip to Guam and the annual Beer Distributors' Ball in Phoenix to be in St. Louis -- to protect the spunky, four-eyed Girl of the Frozen West.

"Gov. Palin will more than hold her own in tonight's debate if I have anything to say about it," McCain predicted, "and, obviously, I will. She'll bring up what I call the Iraq Free-For-All and how Sen. Obama's call for calm discussion plays right into the hands of the prime minister of Spain and other strongman tyrants. But let me make it clear that even if you hear my words and not hers, she is her own person."

The perky Alaskan moose-butcher was busy trading walrus recipes with the Mrs. Dalai Lama, a McCain campaign spokesperson said, and unavailable for comment, but, in any case, McCain wasn't finished.

"I have now decided, in the urgent interests of protecting our national security, to suspend my trip to St. Louis for tonight's debate," he then told a shocked press corps. "Now isn't the time for a fair and free exchange of ideas by seekers of high office -- which is why I invite Barack Obama to join me in rushing back and forth around the nation on chartered jets until something happens."

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

This post originally appeared at the Washington Independent

Comments

[zanzig]

10:57 PM on 10/02/2008

"...which is why I invite Barack Obama to join me in rushing back and forth around the nation on chartered jets until something happens"

Has anyone considered just what carbon emissions are being produced by all of the candidates as they do this? Given America's fabulous technological advances, how difficult is it to arrange for live time video conferencing and other such interfaces so that the candidates don't come off as such hypocrites talking about the environment as they proceed to shred it?

[demfriend]

07:45 PM on 10/02/2008

And we citizens of the US of A have wondered why the world sees us as crazy and unstable? * years of Bush the "cowboy" and the potential of 4 years with the POW who is a "cowboy" hidden with a baseball cap. McCain's version of himself as the savior of the world or at least the US with tanks, missiles, bombs and whatever weapons of war he can get his hands on makes me think of the wimped out mama's boy who wanted to be John Wayne when he grew up. It would be nice to have a leader who sees himself as a human who isn't the answer to everything but will put at his side all of those qualified to do the best for us. The dreamed up version/image that McCain has wasn't even true when he was younger. His claim to fame is like hundreds of others POW status during war but he would have you believe, because I do not, that he was the only one who went through this hell and came out alive. That's is what scares me. That he has sold enough people on his version of himself and not the real one.