Oddly, “3quarksdaily links”:http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2007/02/homeland_securi.html to a parody of “ready.gov”:http://www.ready.gov/ as though it had only recently appeared. “Here’s a post of mine”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2003/02/20/public-service-announcement from almost exactly four years ago about this. (Four years! Jaysus.) It was one of the earliest bits of blogging I did that got some circulation. Rereading it now, I think the narrative it presented holds up rather well in the light of recent history. Certainly better than the official version. So here it is for old times sake, below the fold.
The Dept of Homeland Security would like to take this opportunity to explain the current political situation to you all.
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Reports about North Korea are disturbing. |
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We don’t want to act as though the sky is falling on our heads… |
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But North Korea’s Nuclear capability is quite frightening. The CIA says their ballistic missiles could hit the west coast. Their leader is a bit loony, too. |
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That might mean no more San Francisco. |
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But the message about this nuclear threat is not getting through to the right people. |
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Instead, they are paying attention to Iraq, looking for nasty weapons (though not as nasty as nukes). Soon they will invade. |
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We are invading because Saddam |
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Many people have been protesting the proposed attack. |
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They think it is not in U.S. interests, is a distraction from preventing further terrorist attacks, or might lead to a big geopolitical disaster or long-term mess. |
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But the White House is ignoring these protests, because policy is not made by focus groups. At least, not by focus groups made up of loony-left hippy-dippy fifth-column protestors, anyway. (Who knew there were quite so many of them? Some of them were even disguised as normal people.) And the war’s going to be over really quick anyway. |
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Besides, if things get messy after the invasion, we can always back out… |
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…and wash our hands of the whole thing. Right? |
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In the meantime, don’t buy any of that fancy French food. It isn’t patriotic. |
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Attorney General Ashcroft would also like you to lay off the book-reading for a while. |
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And remember, Don’t Mess with Texas. |
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Abbas Raza 02.14.07 at 6:32 am
Hi Kieran,
Sorry about this. When I posted this at 3QD earlier, I had no idea that you had done something similar four years ago (3QD didn’t even exist then!). Your version does hold up rather well.
Cheers.
Kieran Healy 02.14.07 at 1:24 pm
Oh, I just meant that both the site and that parodies are much older than you thought — I certainly wasn’t the only (or the first) person to poke fun at it back then, either … there were loads of similar parodies at the time.
norbizness 02.14.07 at 2:11 pm
DAMN, MUTANT, NOBODY WANTS TO SEE THAT SHIT.
KCinDC 02.14.07 at 3:07 pm
The images aren’t loading, but they display if viewed as individual images. Is kieranhealy.org set up to examine referrers and block other sites from embedding its images?
Kieran Healy 02.14.07 at 4:26 pm
Yes but it should display CT ones. I’ll look into it.
Kieran Healy 02.14.07 at 4:28 pm
Fixed.
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