The American Spectator

Dear Mr. Plunkitt—

The last few months were surreal. When PBS funding became a political issue, it felt too close to home. Then when Mitt Romney called me out by name during a nationally televised debate, I almost fell out of my nest!

That said, events also forced much introspection. As the debate wore on, I began to question everything I had ever been told. I learned that PBS receives millions from taxpayers each year, while the federal debt climbs ever higher. My life’s work is to teach children, and now I worry for their futures more than ever!

Coming to these conclusions was unsettling, to say the least. I’ve lived all my life in a cloistered public television studio. Now I feel like I need a rumspringa. I need to spread my wings and fly (although that analogy is probably lost, as my species is flightless—as you might have imagined given my excessive height, rotund backside, and small wingspan). How do you suggest I begin to understand these strange, new feelings?

Big Bird
Number 4
Sesame Street

Dear Big (may I call you Big?)—

Proceed with extreme caution.

To prove my point: Have you ever heard of Fluzzo the Meerkat? No? Fluzzo was one of the great puppets of the 1950s. He starred in several blockbuster movies, and basked in all the trappings of his celebrity: money, scantily clad meerkittens, cover treatment on the New York Times Magazine. But slowly, his political leanings leaked out. On trumped-up charges, he was hauled before a PBS kangaroo court (a puppet kangaroo presided, appropriately enough), and he was disappeared. Summarily executed, some suspect. Public television apparatchiks went to work shortly thereafter and painstakingly painted him out of every frame of every movie in which he had ever appeared. Today, it’s as if he never existed.

Proceed with extreme caution. You will never be safe expressing such feelings as you have described so long as the world remains divided by the Felt Curtain.
 —GWP

Dear Mr. Plunkitt—

I would like to propose a modest constitutional amendment. Our country is politically polarized. Elections are decided by razor-thin percentages. My recent bid for the presidency is a good example. A total of 62 million people voted against me. But 59 million people voted for me.

From a businessman’s perspective, the problem is clear: After any given presidential election, half of the customers are dissatisfied. We need market segmentation. We need to bifurcate the presidency.

Here’s how it would work: President Obama would govern the blue states, and I would govern the red ones. On matters in which the United States can have only one policy, we would make a joint decision. On other matters, we could craft separate policies for our respective territories.