Editor’s note: Michael Ackley’s columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell the difference.
You may think you know what transpired last week during U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s sit-down with Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. You don’t, but we do, and we’re happy to share a transcript of that meeting, below.
Let’s skip the preliminary greetings, thank-you-for-attendings and the like, and move right to the meat of the discussion.
Sen. McCain: All right, Ambassador Rice, now that we’ve had the preliminary greetings, thank-you-for-attendings and the like, let’s move to the meat of the discussion. How could you go forth Sept. 16 and say the attack on our Benghazi consulate was due to an offensive video?
Ambassador Rice: I was given talking points from the intelligence community that said it was a spontaneous demonstration against the video and that the demonstration got out of hand.
Sen. Graham: But the intelligence community, in the form of former CIA Director David Petraeus, says the original talking points said it wasn’t a demonstration, but an organized, terrorist attack.
Ambassador Rice: I was given talking points from the intelligence community that said it was a spontaneous demonstration that got out of hand.
Sen. Ayotte: Ambassador, we know now that the State Department and the White House knew – in real time – that it was a terrorist attack. How could you go out five days later and say it was a spontaneous demonstration?
Ambassador Rice: I was given talking points from the intelligence community that said it was a spontaneous demonstration that got out of hand.
Sen. McCain: You are our ambassador to the United Nations. Are you telling us you weren’t briefed about the actual situation before you were sent to five televisions networks Sept. 16?
Ambassador Rice: I was given talking points from the intelligence community that said it was a spontaneous demonstration that got out of hand.
Sen. Ayotte: Weren’t those talking points actually prepared by the White House?
Ambassador Rice: The intelligence community. The intelligence community. Talking points. Talking points.
Sen. Graham: For somebody given only talking points, you certainly seemed to have a detailed understanding of that “spontaneous demonstration.” My goodness! You must have been thoroughly briefed and rehearsed.
Ambassador Rice: Talking points. I was given talking points. By the intelligence community.
Sen. Ayotte: If this is how you conducted yourself on the Benghazi matter, I have to wonder how you do your job as U.N. ambassador.
Ambassador Rice: They give me talking points.
Sen. McCain: How in the world do you expect to do an even more complex job, as secretary of state?
Ambassador Rice: They’ll give me talking points.
Sen. Graham: You attended Stanford University and Oxford, is that right? Did you get talking points in college, too? Or did you do any thinking for yourself?
Ambassador Rice: Thinking? Thinking? I remember thinking.
Sen. McCain: How about now, Ambassador? Do you do any thinking for yourself now?
Ambassador Rice: Thinking? Thinking? White House, intelligence community, talking points. Talking points.
Here the transcript ends. We had it analyzed by Dr. Howard Bashford, chief of forensic psychology at Flatline Memorial Hospital in Silver Spring, Md.
“It’s evident that the ambassador has been heavily medicated,” said Bashford. “Clearly, she has been given a combination of pharmaceuticals that simultaneously saps her ability to speak for herself and gives her the aggression necessary to transmit preprogrammed phrases.
“There also is evidence of post-hypnotic suggestion.”
“Does this lack of independence disqualify her from a job such as secretary of state?” we asked.
“Not in this administration,” said Bashford.
Historic parallels, or, why the entertainment industry should stick to entertaining: “Entertainment” magazine gushes that the movie of “Les Miserables” “may be the most politically provocative mainstream movie of 2012, brimming with themes of social and economic inequality that could be ripped from the U.S. presidential race …”
And the film’s director, Tom Hooper, declared, “[W]e’re living in a time of incredible rising anger against the extraordinary explosion of inequality and injustice in our society.”
In fact, this is a theme of the left. For example, you can find a post on “Politicus USA” that says, “all the root causes of Hugo’s work are not only alive and well, but have promoters; promoters known as the Republican Party.”
Yep. You know, Republicans are jailing thousands of Americans for stealing bread and forcing toddlers to labor in squalor. Perhaps these champions of the downtrodden are a bit confused. They must actually be thinking of the Hollywood characters exploiting illegal aliens as nannies, au pairs, gardeners and sub-minimum-wage day laborers.
