Dear viewers,
At our news network, we have received a number of complaints about our current political coverage. Some of you have insisted that we are sacrificing our journalistic integrity for views. That could not be further from the truth. We believe that in order to stay fair and balanced, we must give equal airtime to the incumbent Democrat and the guy who wants everyone to drink their own piss.
We are not alone—nearly every other network has also speculated that this race will come down to the wire. And sure, technically, that prediction has yet to come true in any way. But if we say it enough, it might! As journalists, it is our job to treat all your options with equal weight: keeping your current president, or drinking a Slurpee-sized cup of your own urine every morning.
As for the nation’s most hotly contested Senate race, we aim to show our audience the benefits of both sides: the sitting Democratic senator, and the innovative challenger who wants to replace all music with chalkboard-scratching sounds. We understand voters have an incredibly difficult decision to make.
The senator released a statement this weekend saying she’s “confident voters will make the right choice, and it’s just a matter of time until they voice that choice at the ballot box.” In keeping with our journalistic mission to hold those in power to account, we challenged her statement on air, informing her that she might be coming off as a bit too bold.
Meanwhile, the upstart challenger told reporters yesterday, “We need to only be listening to bad, bad sounds. That’s just the way it’s gotta be. It’s your wedding night? I don’t care. Every song is nails on a chalkboard. Not the short kind, either—thick, long nails slowly scraping against one of those really old chalkboards that can’t ever fully be erased.”
It’s essential to provide clear and balanced coverage of the benefits of both sides, even if one side is based purely around using auditory torture to cause an excruciating feeling to permeate our bodies for all eternity.
Finally, we would be remiss if we did not address the most high-profile House race between two newcomers: a candidate running primarily on raising wages, and a man who wants cars to have more rights than people. We, like our viewers, could not feel more torn.
On the one hand, a minimum wage that matches current costs of living is long overdue. On the other hand, there may be unseen benefits to getting rid of traffic lights, crosswalks, and sidewalks and letting cars take over the entire world. We have also decided to give an hour-long primetime interview to the car-championing independent candidate. (Full disclosure: It turns out that the candidate is a literal car.)
We hope this explanation of our recent and longtime political coverage has instilled confidence in you, our viewers. Thanks for trusting us. Up next: Should all major US cities replace their tap water with arsenic? We’ll interview people on both sides of the debate, right after this commercial break.
This is an excerpt from frequent McSweeney’s contributor Eli Grober’s hilarious new collection, This Won’t Help: Modest Proposals for a More Enjoyable Apocalypse. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, The Experiment.