Humoring the headlines: March 9, 2015

By Laurie Baron

Laurie Baron
Laurie Baron

SAN DIEGO─ President Obama chided Americans for having the lowest voter participation rate among Western nations.  Fox News cited this as another instance of how he doesn’t love America and pointed to the high audience voting rate for American Idol to disprove his charge.

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Boko Haram pledged allegiance to ISIS prompting the organization to offer franchises for other Islamic terrorist groups who want to affiliate with it.  ISIS will open a chain of McJihad recruitment centers with green crescents over their front doors and ticker tapes updating the number of infidels it has killed.  The advertising slogan will be: “We’re hating them.”

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After marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, the first family toured the National Voting Rights Museum, but not before they had to present photo identification cards and pass a visitor test to gain entry.

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The Associated Students of the University of California, Irvine voted to remove the American flag from student government offices because “flags not only serve as symbols of patriotism or weapons for nationalism, but also construct cultural mythologies and narratives that in turn charge nationalistic sentiments.”  Embarrassed student leaders vetoed the measure the following day explaining that the resolution came from a delegate’s term paper for Political Science 305, Deconstructing Political Iconography, which accidentally got circulated as an action item at the Associated Students’ weekly meeting.

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Apple is set to unveil its new Apple Watch.  In a preemptive legal maneuver, the creators of Dick Tracy are suing for copyright infringement.

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Baron is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University.  He may be contacted via lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com .  San Diego Jewish World points out to new readers that this column is satire, and nothing herein should be taken literally.