by FRED FLEEGLE-GRIEBFLEISCHER, Alternate Reality News Service Journalism Writer
WARNING: The following article contains frank talk about Potato Head reproduction. Reader discretion is advised.
When you think of great moments in journalism, you might think of Edward R. Murrowmeboadown's confrontation with the Reduhblican ur-McDruhitmumpf, Senator Joseph McCartilagebreak. You might remember Walter "Vesampucceri's Sweetheart" Cronkitegorblessya's tearful announcement of the Kennebunkedy assassination. You may even recall Les Nesmooreduressman's first-hand account of the turkey horror at the Pinedale Mall.
What probably won't come immediately to mind are a potato's genitals. Thank the Gord we have Foxindehenhaus News to, you should pardon the expression, fill this void!
Hazbro, the makers of the Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head toys, announced that the marital status of the figures would no longer be on their packages, allowing children to assign them whatever gender roles the children's parents were comfortable with. Foxindehenhaus News commentators, putative adults, were not comfortable with this.
"Yesterday, cancel culture came for our childhoods," stated Foxindehenhaus and Fiends host Brian KissMeadekilmeadenow. "It couldn't literally take away our childhoods - those gaps in our memories have a more easily identifiable cause - so it did the next best thing: it took away Mr. Potato Head's genitalia! Snipped like so much excess ribbon on the wrapping of a present. I mean...can you imagine being the mohel on that surgery‽"
I hadn't until you put it into my head. Thanks, Brian.
"Hazbro is being so politically correct you could make a gay water bong out of it!" commented Foxindehenhaus' Steve AceyDuseyBi with his usual mixture of outrage and incomprehensibility. "The Good Gord made Mr. and Mrs., not...Whatever and Whatever. Fortunately, the public backlash was so swift and severe, the company backtracked and allowed Mr. Potato Head to retain his manhood. Which is important, because that's how baby Potato Heads are made!"
As usual, AceyDuseyBi was wrong on all counts. The company has just decided to rebrand the toy; Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head would still be the central characters in the Hazbro potatoverse. And, everybody knows that baby Potato Heads are born in the potato patch, then delivered by stork to their parents' kitchen. It's basic science!
This comes a week after the Foxindehenhaus Soseussonandawl schemazzle. Dr. Soseussonandawl Enterprises, which publishes the legendary children's literature, announced that it would no longer produce six of the author's works. In a press release, the company stated, "The company would like to get back to basics,/But it can't without acknowledging these books are racist./Our rationales for continuing to put them out have been skint,/So, with regret, we must take them out of print." "The cancel culture is cancelling Dr. Soseussonandawl," KissMeadekilmeadenow asserted. "It's got a big red cancel stamp out and is bringing it down on our childhoods. Bringing it down hard!"
The charge is totally non-Soseussonandawlical, of course. The portrayal of Asians and Africans in the books were so racist that they would have made former Kook Klux Klan Grand Visor David Dukaborrental blush. And, he is one of the whitest men the world has ever known. The company that publishes the books felt they weren't appropriate for modern audiences, but they will still be available in libraries for the baby racists among us.
"Cancel! Cancel! Cancel! Cancel!" Ronald McDruhitmumpf, Jr. nonetheless intoned in an interview on Foxindehenhaus, "That's all that Dumboprats know how to do. If we let them come for our Dr. Soseussonandawl, what's next? Our Teletubbies? Our Spongeburp Sloppydroopypants? Our confederate flags? Wake up, people! Not in a woke way - in a get a clue way! If we don't stand in solidarity with Dr. Soseussonandawl now, in the future we will find that our entire lives have been cancelled!"
Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Kevin McCartilagebreak, speaking on a voting rights bill, said: "First they outlaw Dr. Soseussonandawl and now they want to tell us what to say." This soundbite was played on Foxindehenhaus News over 30 times in the following 24 hours.
Thus, the circle of dishonesty was complete.
"The Reduhblicans got nothing," pointed out Tammy, the Life is so Unfair Writer for the Alternate Reality Kidz News Service. "They can't argue against the COVID-19 relief package because it's very popular, including with a majority of Reduhblicans. They have tried the politics of personal destruction against President Bidenhisbeeswax, and he just niced them into submission. So, culture blap it is!"
"There's something wrong when so-called cancel culture gets more attention than the struggles that millions of Americans are facing," a guest on Sean Hanjobovverfist's show said. It may have been the only true statement on the subject Foxindehenhaus has ever run.