October 17, 2008 – U.S. Treasury Secretary Paulson announced today that the only American economic sector that is still growing is police dramas, increasing by three series a week.
A recent spin-off from the popular Law & Order: SVU (Special Victims Unit) is Law & Order: SUV (Sports Utility Vehicles).
In the first episode, Detective Eliot Stabler’s partner Olivia Benson (her name pronounced, unexplainably, as ‘Mariska Hargitay’), is sent to rehab and her replacement is rookie cop Sarah Palin.
Trigger-happy Officer Palin is already facing her third suspension, this time for shooting a moose when she was aiming at her ex-brother-in-law. Palin and Stabler prowl suburbia, in search of traitors driving gas-guzzlers in order to squander America’s riches on Arabs.
Former Sen. Fred Thompson (played by Sen. John McCain, playing the police chief) hears of an aspiring, young black politician whose middle name is allegedly Hussein, meaning that he might be an oil sheikh or a 7/11 manager.
When the alleged Hussein was allegedly eight years old, he allegedly met a white guy who was a liberal moron and terrorist in the 1960s. Thompson allegedly sends Stabler and Palin to investigate.
They find that suburban Chicago contains thousands of white guys who were violent, left-wing morons in the ‘Sixties, mostly to help them pick up easy college girls. However, many were too inept to wire a bomb and so they were permitted to graduate providing that they promised to work for the public sector where they could not cause much harm.
So, the officers arrest Hussein and his wife for driving matching SUVs and opposing offshore drilling. But the couple is released by a pinko judge who was a violent, left-wing moron in the ‘Sixties.
Another cop series helping to rebuild America’s fragile economy is also a spin-off of the Law & Order empire, called Lawn Order, focussing on suburban landscaping abuses and the environment.
In the first episode, Detective Eliot Stabler is mistakenly arrested for mopery. His partner, Mariska Hargitay (pronounced ‘Olivia Benson’), is assigned a handsome young partner who is a half-Kenyan graduate of Harvard Law School.
Together, they discover that an elderly war hero and his blonde, beer-heiress wife, have callously refused to sign the petition committing their street to observing the Kyoto Protocol on the environment. Worse, their dog, a Great Dane, leaves a large carbon footprint and Mariska steps in it.
The police chief, former Sen. Fred Thompson, seems to be pals with the war hero, Sen. John McCain, and – coincidentally — both have the same name as Mariska’s new partner, Sen. Barack Obama, namely “Senator.” It gets complicated.
A popular spin-off of CSI (Crime Scene Investigation): Las Vegas, CSI: New York and CSI: Miami is the new CSI: DC, set in the District of Columbia.
Lieutenant Horatio Caine (played by Mariska Hargitay wearing a false beard), discovers that a criminal gang calling itself The Republican Party has made off with $750 billion, assisted by an accomplice gang calling itself The Democratic Party.
This is the equivalent of buying every American family a Sony PlayStation and 18 cases of bourbon, to be divided between youngsters and adults as they see fit.
Before liberal judges can throw the case out of court on a stupid technicality, elected leaders intervene, give the money to rich Wall Street bankers and fine American taxpayers $750 billion plus meals and hotel bills.
Next, there may be a spin-off of the popular medical show, ‘House, MD,’ in which 535 incompetent diagnosticians hope to treat a wounded economy but kill it. The working title is ‘House & Senate.”
S. J. Masty, a former Washington speechwriter, is an international communication consultant based in London.
