Tuesday, June
1, 4:26 PM PST
Health Department Joins War on Terror
by Brent
the Johnson,
NA!P NewsWire
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Apparently worried about the continuing
relevancy of his office during the so-called War on Terror, Health
Secretary Tommy Thompson announced that he would "reinvent
and re-engineer" the Department of Health & Human Services
(HHS) into a "fighting force that will make terrorists rue
the day they threatened the health and, erm... human services...
of America."
"Without
question, the most fundamental threat facing our citizens' health
and, uh... human services... is not widespread poverty, nor industrial
pollution, nor the lack of universal healthcare, nor chemically
tainted water," Thompson explained at a press conference
yesterday.
"It's not even the cases
of profound and disturbing cases of generational incest in West
Virginia and the Carolinas," he continued. "Indeed,
the greatest threat to our collective well-being are heathens."
Effective immediately, the HHS
will be divided into dozens of sub-departments designed to meet
the terrorist threat head on. They will provide "new and
innovative" approaches to hostage extraction, black-op assassinations,
deep-cover infiltration, intensive prisoner interrogation and
even low-intensity warfare in outer space.
Ann Glanders, once head of the
department's Administration on Aging, is now leading up the new
HHS Office of Space Safety.
"I'm not sure what kind
of qualifications I bring to this new job," said Glanders,
a 40-year veteran of the HHS, from her new satellite headquarters
in low-Earth orbit. "But as a public servant who majored
in Home Economics at Florida State, I'm used to that. And I just
adore my new space-ray guns."
Later, during a one-on-one interview
with The New News at his favorite bar, Thompson scoffed
at the idea that his overhauled department may be replicating
efforts by other government and military operations.
"What, you mean like that
whole Abu Ghraib thing?" he asked. "Look, the problem
with the agencies like the CIA taking charge of intensive, painful
and illegal interrogations is that everyone's kinda looking for
them to do it. But when you see us engaging with the enemy, you're
all, 'Man, those guys would never engage in torture.' That's
our advantage!"
"Nobody expects the Department
of Health & Human Services," he later re-iterated after
a few drinks. "Hey! I said, Nobody expects... hey, do you
get it or what? Python?"
With drinks continually refreshed
as the evening wore on, Thompson became more and more open.
"Hell, what do I know about
'health and human services?' I don't even know what 'human services'
means, " chuckled Thompson. "I was governor of Wisconsin
before this job, and I'll tell you what: Wisconsin ain't Jenny
Craig. We got fat, greasy bratwursts and even fatter, greasier
bellies. Hell, we invented butter burgers and frozen custard."
Thompson added: "Mmm...
frozen custard..."
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