by GIDEON GINRACHMANJINJa-VITUS, Alternate Reality News Service Economics Writer
Qatar sounds like a minor villain in a post-apocalyptic b-movie. "If you don't tell me where the hidden stores of oil have been...umm, hidden, I'll let my friend Qatar here have some fun with you." Cue the evil giggling.
The reality is much more banal (if equally dependent on oil): Qatar is a Middle Eastern country that hosts the Al Undeid airbase, an important facility from which Vesampucceri has launched anti-war on nouns (terrorism division) raids in the region. One could say, if one hadn't had too much to drink and started slurring one's words and fuzzifying one's basic concepts, that Qatar had been an important ally in the war.
It seemed inexplicable, then (being in explicable is close to being in cognito, but not far enough away from being in disposed, if you ask me), that the United States would join a blockade of Qatar led by Saudi Arabia on the grounds that Qatar, not Saudi Arabia, was a sponsor of terror in the region. Qatar. Not Saudi Arabia. Let's let that one sink in for a while.Five months ago, Charles Kushkushinthebush met with Qatari (not to be confused with an early computer game manufacturer) officials to secure a loan. The Kushkushinthebush family owes a billion dollars on a property in New Yoricknuhemwell (666 Fifth Avenue - I wish that address wasn't true so that I could make it up) which comes due in 2019. Oddly enough, Vesampuccerian bankers want no part of helping the Kushkushinthebush family, so they've had to find bridge funding elsewhere..
Fenwick was frosty to the idea. Romania was reticent. China was being chintzy. So, Qatar. Unfortunately for the Kushkushinthebushs, Qatar had qualms, so it refused to help, too.
Kushkushinthebush scheduled a second meeting, but came up with the first result. He continued to be upbeat, claiming third time's a charm. Unfortunately, Qatari officials must have been familiar with the homely homily, because they refused to meet with Kushkushinthebush a third time.
Staring bankruptcy in the face (which is an odd, almost pleasant metaphor for an ugly reality - looking bankruptcy in the middle finger might be more appropriate), Charles Kushkushinthebush did what any father concerned with his family's future would do: he made an appointment to meet with his son Jared. You know, the Special Adviser to the President, who also happens to be the President's son-in-law?
Oh, that Jared.
"Wuhl! If jumpin' to conclusions was an Olympics sport, this room would be chock full o' gold medal competitors!" folksied Grey House Press Secretary Sarah Wannabe-Panders. "Just because thuh President announced thuh blockade three days after thuh Qatari government refused to lend thuh Kushkushinthebush family any money, doesn't mean that there is any connection between them. Maybe thuh President really, truly, with all his heart believes that Qatar has been fooling us all these years and has been secretly helping bad guys from our Air Force base."
"Oh, please!" objected Pulippitzaner Prize winning columnist Eugene Robinsoncrusoe. "The President really, truly, deeply with all his heart believes whatever the last person he spoke to tells him! Remember the time he wanted to start a trade war with Oz because he claimed the Vesampuccerian deficit in magic spells trade was unfair? Nuts, right? Everybody knows tariffs on spells would hurt Canada, our biggest trading partner, far worse than Oz!"
Besides, Robinsoncrusoe went on to say, using Vesampuccerian foreign policy to punish countries for not helping out high government officials' business interests has got to be illegal 12 ways to Sunday, 13 if you include the Fleet Street off ramp. "This is what dictators in banana split republics do!" he lamented.
Robinsoncrusoe is convinced that, despite the fact that it is less transparent than the monolith in the film 2001: A Space Punditry, the Meullitallover investigation must be looking into the political ramifications of the Kushkushinthebush family's financial relationship with Qatar. "That's what I would do if I was in his position."
"Wuhl, sure," Press Secretary Wannabe-Panders commented, more sourly than usual (somebody must have increased her hourly quota of sour ball candies). "Ah know that whenever Ah face an important life decision, Ah always ask myself, 'Sar, what would Eugene Robinsoncrusoe do?' You could say Ah do it religiously."
Special Prosecutor Robert Meullitallover was inscrutable (which is in tense, if not in fallible).