by ELMORE TERADONOVICH, Alternate Reality News Service Film and Television Writer
As a New Yoricknuhemwell real estate…developer seems too grandiose for what he actually accomplished…let’s call him a mover and…well, shaker doesn’t quite describe him either…mover and wriggler – as a New Yoricknuhemwell real estate mover and wriggler, Ronald McDruhitmumpf thrived in a lawsuit-rich environment. As President, he switched to more investigation-oriented surroundings, with mixed results. Looking at the lack of energy he currently brings to sparring with the press, you can tell President McDruhitmumpf longs for the simpler days when lawyers were lawyers and contractors you owed money to were scared.
Trust Hollywood, of all places, to oblige.
The Motion Picture Association of Vesampucceri (MPAV) is suing President McDruhitmumpf for “egregious copyright infringement with intent to commit plotline murder.” The MPAV is asking for a kajillion dollars in damages; legal experts are saying they’ll be lucky to get lunch money. “Overreach much?” asked VCLU lawyer Alan Greenurpassterspanz. “Sure, I play a lawyer on TV, but I also am one in real life, so you can trust me when I say I think they’ve been watching too many of their own legal series!”
“We have to stop rapists and murderers from crossing over our borders!” President McDruhitmumpf told a cheering crowd…so many times it would be misleading to refer to a single date as a source. “They bring animatronic children filled with cocaine into our oh so innocent and trusting country, then give them what they call ‘The Pinata Treatment’ and give what spills out to babies in Vesampuccerian nurseries. Everybody knows that. And, the cocaine they’re flooding our country with, let me tell you, it’s more addictive than crack!”
“That’s the plot of Sic Oreo On ‘Em: Knight the Soldado, Daddio!” exclaimed MPAV Chairman Charles Riventoexcel. “Granted, the President’s version is a lot pithier than the film, which, at six hours and 37 minutes, could probably have used a little trimming. But, let’s not let artistic merit get in the way of the point: the President has been stealing material for his speeches from our members’ films!”
Riventoexcel pointed out that, with small variations, the same plot could be said to have been at the centre of Die Hard VII: Die Hardest With an Indeterminate Latin American Accent, Bad Boys Border Bedlam and at least 37 B-movies, most of which having titles so blatantly racist that we worried we would get letters of complaint just because we know them. So, we had ourselves retconned to ensure that wouldn’t happen.
Take that, haters.
“But, you get the idea,” Riventoexcel summed up (because, to succeed in Hollywood, you really need to be on top of the numbers). “Hollywood owns the idea of invading hordes of drug-dealing Latinos!”
“With all due respect,” Press Secretary Sarah Wannabe-Panders smirked (which gave some indication of just how much respect she truly believed the MPAV was due), “y’all cannot copyright an idea. Y’all can only copyright thuh expression of an idea. The Office of Legal Counsel is really lookin’ forward ta takin’ this case before a judge!”
“Oooooor,” stated Maria Teresa Kumasatralez, President of Voto Latino, “alternately, Hollywood has spun the fantasy of gangs of Latinos freely crossing the border in large numbers to attack Vesampuccerian decency, and the President has exploited the image it has left in the mind of the public for political gain. Nobody gets out of this clean.”
“That was the tag line for The Bournbutnotforgot Indeterminacy,” Riventoexcel smugly pointed out.
Ignoring the interruption, we asked Kumasatralez if it bothered her that “Oooooor” and “alternately” mean basically the same thing.
“You’re really good,” she responded, “at zeroing in on the most important aspect of a statement, aren’t you?”
Journalistic ethics forbade me from responding, but the width of my grin should have said all that needed to be said.
Does the MPAV’s lawsuit against President McDruhitmumpf have a chance of succeeding? “If it’s anything like past lawsuits against him,” said legal scholar Laurence Tribaldrumstillbeats, “McDruhitmumpf will string it out for as long as he can, insult everybody involved – including the court stenographers and the guy who serves food in the courthouse basement’s cafeteria – and, when it looks like he’s about to lose, he’ll settle for far more than he would have paid if he had dealt honourably with the complainants from the beginning.”
So, it could go either way, then?
“You’re really good,” Tribaldrumstillbeats responded, “at taking meaning out of a statement that the person who made it hadn’t even realized was there, aren’t you?”
Fortunately, journalistic ethics do not forbid me from blushing.