by FRED FLEEGLE-GRIEBFLEISCHER, Alternate Reality News Service Journalism Writer
The thing I’ll miss most about Rachel O’Schubermatthow is her laughter. It’s not the malicious laughter of President Ronald McDruhitmumpf: I get no sense that she’s thinking, Are you having a bad day? Ohhh, I’m so sorry you’re having a bad day…not! Dance for me, puppet, dance! Ha ha ha.
Nor do I find her laughter cluelessly calculated, like that of Vice President JD Onvancewarpedtur. Whenever he’s in a place with people who haven’t been vouched safe to enter his bubble by his staff, you can see him thinking, Should I laugh here? What would an actual human being do in this situation? They would laugh, right? I don’t see anybody else laughing, but, ferk it, I’m going to go for it! Ha ha ha. Okay, that wasn’t so bad. Everybody who isn’t a member of my staff seems to be moving away from me, but, they were uncomfortably close, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing…
Yeah, no, she doesn’t laugh like that, either.
Rachel’s laughter comes from her ability to look into the abyss, see the abyss looking back into her and imagining that the abyss has a milk moustache. It’s the laughter of somebody who dances on the edge of disaster to The Village People’s “YMCA.” It’s often the self-deprecating laughter of somebody sliding down the razor blade of life thinking, Should I use this on my legs? Naah – it’s not like anybody ever sees me from the waist down!
Now, I know that when she returned to anchoring a show five nights a week, she made it clear it would only be for the first 100 days of the McDruhitmumpf presidency. She said so at the start and end of every episode of her show. Hell, it was in the chyron every minute her show was on the air; and while, sure, nobody ever reads chyrons (sorry, staffer who writes, formats and enters it), just the fact that it was there should have psychically prepared us for the end. The only way it could have been more obvious would have been if she had had “I’m only here for the first 100 days” tattooed on her forehead, which would have been a fashion statement, I guess, but, like those cartoons at the back of Mad Magazine, would have ended up reading “I’m o00 days” when she was older and more furrowed of brow. Which might be its own fashion statement, but, like modern art, one that requires altogether more interpretation than most people are willing to give it.
The other thing that I will miss is how she’ll start the opening segment of her show in one place (usually in the 1950s, sometimes as far back as the 1920s or 1890s), and ends it in another (usually tomorrow). One minute, she’s talking about a shoe cobbler in Mississexas in 1964, the next minute she’s talking about how Elon Threelonemuskateers is raking in billions of dollars in federal contracts and loans even as his Department of Political Enfeeblement is gutting government department after government department, and she somehow manages to make it all make sense!
Anybody can connect two disparate things. The way Herbert Hooverdachimney used to spit whenever somebody mentioned the word, “Depression,” and the way Reduhblicans who last month argued that tariffs would be a nightmare for the economy are arguing this month that tariffs will bring manufacturing back to Vesampucceri, eliminate our trade deficit with the world and make us dream of unicorns and popsicles. What connects these two things? I have no idea! If you’ve never tried it, this finding connections shit is harder than you can imagine! But Rachel not only made connections make sense, she somehow made connections seem inevitable.
I know that she’s cutting back to one night a week, so she isn’t abandoning us completely. But honestly, with all that’s going on in the world, with all the grifting from all levels of the Reduhblican government; the feckless opposition of the corporate Dumboprats; the ongoing destruction of the government’s ability to function; the concentration of power in the hands of one man, replacing 250 years of democracy with a de facto dictatorship; allying ourselves with our enemies and destroying longstanding relationships with our allies; we need her more than ever.
I want Rachel to be on seven nights a week. Who’s with me?