Appeasing the News Demons

By Maralyn Lois Polak

Editor’s note: The following column is an invented work of current-events satire purely for the purpose of humor.

When Greta Van Susteren had her facelift several months ago, she was certain world events would immediately improve.

I can almost read her mind. Can’t you?

A not-unintelligent woman, professionally trained as an attorney, she somehow fancied herself a kind of Human Sacrifice, Anne Sexton for the world headline set, offering herself up to the News Demons, er, Deities, with each surgical snip, suck, lift, abrasion, peel and tuck.

“Oh, ye gods and goddesses of current events, and past history,” she might have prayed, “please accept my sags and wrinkles and bumps, my droops and frowns and lines, my snickers and yammers and snorts, as an act of oblation in the extreme. End war, injustice, famine, crisis, spin, and bad skin. Dismantle the Armageddon Brigades poised to blow the planet to Kingdom Come. Disperse the Haters, the Liars, the Connivers. Diminish their tribes through attrition, hair dye, and TV watching.

“Settle the Mideast conflict to the satisfaction of all parties, and then throw the biggest post-millennial bash – ever. Re-animate the dead and give suicide bombers their own history re-enactment museum, only in miniature, with Barbie dolls and GI Joe dolls, and candy instead of plastics explosives.

“Give them all the bubble-gum and video games they want.

“Let Bin Laden turn himself in, along with the legions of official look-alikes posted in caves and culverts all over the desert. He’ll come in, if you install his chef to make the prison food, and panel his cell with mirrors, for unlimited posturing, won’t he?

“Have Saddam implode in a dramatically documented case of Spontaneous Human Combustion. But make sure he’s really dead this time. If he’s the anti-Christ, well, he’s been known to slither away.

“Unmask George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Karl Rove, Condy Rice, et al., as the Petrie-Dish People, a band of genetically engineered Intergalactic Teletubbies who have been ruining, er, running the American show for decades.

“Ship this Scream Team all to Bikini Atoll, force them to watch the surgically enhanced perfection of bikini contests for Newsweek’s bathing-suit issue, before showing them how perfectly that gigantic ant colony lurking in the bowels of Europe works.

“And then hurling them back to their natal Death Star, give them rakes and hoes, equip them with exotic tools from Brookstone, and let them test their mettle as space colonizers – hammocks optional.”

Each day, Greta prayed her puffiness and swelling and bruising and pain would be sufficient appeasement to the News Demons to get things back on track.

“End adversity, and reconcile adversaries,” she prayed, so strenuously that sometimes, she forgot to take meals or even graze Sushi as she continued her cataloguing: “Banish hostility, prejudice, graffiti, desecration of sacred places, confiscation of lands, destroying families, torching buildings in the name of hate.”

Permanent eyeliner was a small price to pay for dismantling the engines of war, angst, evil, no?

And so Greta’s profile … ascended. She grew … perky. Her skin tautened and her squint vanished, her eyes began to stare back at her, a gaze pulled into perpetual surprise. Her newly plumpened lips pouted out the still-depressing details of the day, domestic and foreign.

But she began to wonder why … why she had traded her natural-born face for a nose like a nipple and a smirk like a Muppet … why she had done it … why, when nothing had changed. Not one jot or tittle!

Oh, woe!

Jerks were still jerks, losers plenteous, insanity reigned. And now, the news!

Maralyn Lois Polak

Maralyn Lois Polak is a Philadelphia-based journalist, screenwriter, essayist, novelist, editor, spoken-word artist, performance poet and occasional radio personality. With architect Benjamin Nia, she has just completed a short documentary film about the threatened demolition of a historic neighborhood, "MY HOMETOWN: Preservation or Development?" on DVD. She is the author of several books including the collection of literary profiles, "The Writer as Celebrity: Intimate Interviews," and her latest volume of poetry, "The Bologna Sandwich and Other Poems of LOVE and Indigestion." Her books can be ordered by contacting her directly.
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