Alice in Issues Land

The US District Court of Manhattan has issued 212 permits this year to groups protesting the controversial Alice in Wonderland statue in New York’s Central Park. The court has also issued 420 permits for demonstrations supporting the work. The sculpture depicts characters from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland just above the east 72cd Street entrance close to the Children’s Zoo.

Members of Leave Kids Alone claim that the posture and disposition of the seven year old heroine suggests she is “servicing” the oddballs and animals surrounding her and is a celebration of child molestation and bestiality while the Champions of Pedophilia counter marched claiming the figures depict our heritage of child marriage and cross breeding. Three Native American tribes claim that the mushroom the party takes place on is a sacred part of their religion while Japanese Americans think the mushroom represents Nagasaki’s worst day.

Last month, Antifa clashed  with supporters of the National Organization of Women over whether White Rabbit was White Supremacist Rabbit or Playboy Rabbit. As the blood spilled out into the street Brownshirts and Ku Klux Klan members entered and polished WR and pledged undying loyalty to the figure chanting “White on white is right!”

Over a dozen Tea Party groups from across the nation have paid tribute to their founder The Mad Hatter who has been particularly jovial for an inanimate bronze object since President Trump was elected.  A few conservation groups have made appearances questioning the absence of his Mad Tea Party mates March Hare and the narcoleptic Dormouse. In March, Black Rabbits Matter formed a strike line in front of the statue for a week protesting the absence of the dark March Hare and the prominence of The White Rabbit.

Food Purists and Anti-GMO groups chose to bring their own Mock Turtle figure who is not depicted in the diorama. Mock Turtle who sings “Beautiful Soup” to Alice as he blubbers has a calve’s head on a turtle’s body illustrating how a calve’s head was often substituted for the pure pescetarian delicacy. 

Other characters not portrayed in the diorama proved no less controversial. Numerous Democratic clubs and organizations that supported Bernie Sanders marched around the statue against the Clintons who they said acted like the Queen and King of Hearts in the last election.

Don Arrup

Satire1

Transgender Joe

By the winter of 1964 the four sisters next door had already divvied up the Fab Four for future wedlock and crowned Barbie the Queen of whatever activity her wardrobe suggested. The toy manufacturing terrorist organization Hasbro had long decided that the one inch plastic soldiers sold by the platoon to boys were of such low profit margin that Japan and Taiwan could have them. 

Hasbro, however, knew that there was no greater appetite in the world than an American boy’s hunger for war and destruction. The only question was how to satisfy and hopefully addict boys to a unique weapon, game or whatever that would require countless upgrades or ammunition. Their answer was a doll for boys: GI Joe. 

Hasbro realized that they couldn’t call Joe a doll. Gender confusion was a capital crime in the early 1960’s so the bros at Hasbro created the term “Action Figure” which in England was changed to “Action Man.”

Since GI Joe lacked reproductive equipment the neutral term “figure” remained both more accurate and more confusing at the same time. Countless boys wondered if they could be in the military when they grew up even though they had genitalia. Many boys, like my younger brother and myself, who had investigated our neighbors unadorned Barbie doll realized that Barbie and Joe were the same down there.

My younger brother, hypnotized by commercials transmitted between Three Stooges shorts, requested a GI Joe while on Santa’s lap that December. Santa came through and on one of those rainy winter days when we would venture next door to play with the sisters the dolls came out.

All of us were transfixed the moment my brother and the eldest sister Elizabeth turned Joe and Barbie to face each other. Nothing seemed to happen at first. Plastic can be very emotional but almost never mercurial. Barbie and Joe played it cool.

I never felt affection for either doll. They didn’t portray gender beauty or virtue. They lampooned it. In a way, the dolls reflected the rigidity of our stereotypes. 

By my high school years boys and girls were wearing similar unisex fashion clothes and hairstyles. Women wearing pants found their vaginas sealing up just as the doctors had warned. Long haired boys developed breasts and their penises shrank to clitoral dimensions. As gender disappeared in the late Baby Boomers political changes were taking place as well. Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party embraced the death of gender but they were defeated by Ronald Reagan and the Cowboy Republicans.  

Conservative orthodoxy at the time believed that only the constant handling of firearms, power tools and sport utility vehicles could maintain American manhood so a mega defense buildup began. Gun laws, building codes and clean air regulations were eased or erased. As the waves of testosterone began slapping our shores again and newly skirted women’s vaginas opened like Morning Glories in sunshine a Golden Age of conflict free matrimony, prolific pregnancy and idyllic college romance reined for two generations.

But Life and the World have a way of balancing things out. This excess of problem free bliss allowed Americans to indulge and each year our girth grew. Now our obesity is destroying our gender. Testosterone abhors a belly and our shapelessness and abominable abdominal overhang hides if not smothers our sex. Psychologists and shoe salespeople report increasing incidents of citizens with neutral names like Pat and Terry forgetting their gender and standing in the middle of stores screaming for shoes. 

Appropriate footwear.

And isn’t that what we all want? 

Throughout these decades of sexual identity mayhem only Barbie and Joe have remained relatively unchanged. True, Barbie has put on a little weight and her breast bumps have succumb to the gravity of popular criticism. Joe has remained tight lipped about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and Trump’s You’re Out of Here Because You’re Queer.

So, for those of you who don’t currently know a G.I. Joe, Satire1 interviewed one of the original twenty two million Joes produced by Hasbro in the mid 1960’s. Our Joe is a veteran of the Vietnam War, Grenada, both Gulf Wars and Afghanistan and ten pre pubescent American boys. He is presently unassigned and possibly retired.

S1

Private Joe. What are your thoughts on President Trump’s tweet that he will discharge every member of the United States armed forces who is suspected of being transgender or does anything to blur the lines of gonadial destiny?

Joe

S1

Would crossdressers in the ranks compromise our security and by they’re very presence draw sneak attacks from China, North Korea, Iran, Germany, Russia, Vietnam, Japan, Canada, India and Norway?

Joe

S1

Would fully embracing the individual’s right to choose their gender identity jeopardize hard earned protections for women like Title IX and minority contracts?

Joe

S1

As a doll, you probably don’t go to the bathroom but can you understand how women of a long oppressed minority might interpret men of any color or preference as invading what little public privacy and dignity this society affords them?

Joe

S1

Now that biologists have determined that gender is a delicate balance of the estrogen and testosterone that fluctuates in each human being not only throughout our gestation as a fetus but throughout our entire lives and is at least calling into question the concept of a lifelong fixed polar gender identification do you refuse to wear pink because the United States Armed Forces do not have uniforms in that color or because you feel that it looks and/or is girly?

Joe

S1

What relationship is demanded by the Constitution of the United States of America between individual citizens and their fellow citizens? Between individual citizens and their local government, state government and federal government? 

Joe

S1

Can I quote you on that?

Joe

Don Arrup

Satire1

How To Pass A Health Care Bill

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Senate Majority Washroom.

“Hey, Jack, been looking all over for you. Don’t use that soap. There’s no hot water and you’ll never get it off your hands. I’ve been thinking about your concerns about leaving Medicaid intact and, believe me, I am in complete agreement with you on this but even though almost a third of my constituents are on it- mostly in nursing homes- the only ones who vote in every election- Hank, he’s the numbers guy on this bill- he says that Medicaid is such a budget buster that it will implode of its own weight in ten years before anything in this bill even really kicks in. So, can I count on your vote? Every one of us knows there isn’t a damn thing in it you agree with but I guarantee it will play out just how you want.”

“Bill, Bill, there’s no toilet paper in that stall. Oh, too late. Well, here, let me just get some from this stall. Let me see if I can get this whole roll off. Doesn’t look like it. I’m going to feed you under the separator here the end of this roll and you just pull nice and even and you’ll have as much as you need. Don’t let it go slack. I think there’s some water on the floor here. Now, about your vote on repeal and replace. Can I count on your support this time? I know you feel that we haven’t given enough funds to Medicaid but it’s only a cap on growth not a cut. Maybe we better talk about this later. My glasses are fogging up. We’ve tagged Medicaid growth to the general inflation rate but the donkeys will be back in power sometime before all this kicks in so it really is no real fuss in the real world. You know we don’t deal with reality here. This is the Senate.”

“Tom, Tom, Tom Tom. Excuse me. Well, isn’t your wife the lucky woman. I wanted to talk to you about your opposition to cutting funds to Planned Parenthood. I can understand why a man of your endowment might hesitate to- opps- unexpected dip for the big boy, heh? You made quite a splash. Let me get you some paper towels. I can see why you might want to protect funds that deal with unwanted pregnancies but PP advises on abortion as well and you know that isn’t going to fly with our base. So, we were all hoping that you would reconsider and maybe we can slip them a couple of bucks in a defense appropriations bill. No one’s read one of those in decades. Okay? So you let PP go and I’ll let you go PP.”

“Chuck, Chuck. What? The zipper’s stuck? Here, I used to work on cars when I was a teenager. While I help you with- your shirt’s caught up in the upper teeth here again- help you with this we’ve got to discuss funding for diabetes and obesity. Now, I know you don’t believe that Americans are really overweight and I agree that the liberal media is run by anorexics but being what you call well fed - can you pull your stomach in some I’ve almost got it- both stomachs- well fed for a hog state can affect the health of some of our citizens from less vigorous areas of the country. Just two more teeth and you’re a free man here, Chuck. Now, can you free me?”

Don Arrup

Satire1

Let's Party

All you have to do to destroy the Democratic Party is give them both houses of Congress and the White House and they will pass legislation that nobody likes.

All you have to do to destroy the Republican Party is give them both houses of Congress and the White House and they won’t pass any legislation and will actually make the Democratic legislation popular.

Don Arrup

Satire1