How Will Ya Spin It?

[cue theme music]

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to an all-new episode of "How Will Ya Spin It?" ... the game show where political hopefuls prepare for a profitable career in self-serving public service! I'm your host, Robin Taxim.

[cue applause]

And now, I'd like to introduce tonight's three politicians! I'd like to, but I can't, because they're not here!

[rim shot]

Unfortunately, contestant Number One couldn't be here tonight, because he's busy showing up unexpectedly at the Iowa State Fair, which is a pure coincidence that has nothing to do with the upcoming election season.

Contestant Number Two is not here, either, because she's busy showing up unexpectedly in her favorite state, New Hampshire, which has suddenly replaced Iowa as her favorite state until tomorrow, when she travels to her favorite state, South Carolina, on her way to her favorite state, Florida.

And contestant Number Three was unable to make it tonight, because he's planning to make an announcement shortly about an announcement to announce his plans to form an exploratory group tasked with gauging public opinion about his plans to announce his formation of an political action committee. However, he did swing by and vote "Present" so we would validate his parking, and he would like to remind our studio audience that was for showing up before he was against it.

[cue theme music]

Not to worry! During the ten years we've been on the air here at "How Will Ya Spin It?" politicians have promised to show up every single week, and we haven't seen one yet!

[rim shot]

Anyway, all of you already know how we play "How Will Ya Spin It?" We confront you viewers at home with a dozen ethical or political challenges, and it's up to you to pick the best way to spin it! So let's get started, eh?

[cue applause]

Okay, Challenge Number One: You're an average, run-of-the-mill politician; in other words, you're under indictment and you cheat on your spouse. Your major re-election donors insist you support legislation to deregulate pharmaceutical research, but your staff discovers that the new drug would cause anyone with a larynx to turn yellow and explode.
Audience?
[audience] HOW WILL YA SPIN IT?
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A: Vote "Present."
B: Blame George Bush.
C: Hold a barbecue to raise money for the victims of UDE ("Unplanned Dermal Expansion").

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Challenge Two: You've wrapped up another grueling three-day work week, a week that included several luncheons and cheating on your spouse. You decide to spend the rest of the month on a taxpayer-funded "fact-finding" jaunt to Aruba, but you're challenged by a citizen watchdog group.
How will ya spin it?
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A: Arrange an exclusive interview with the hosts of "Aruban Idol."
B: Cancel the trip and hide out in a hotel with the Wisconsin legislature.
C: Point to internet chatter about al Qaeda targeting reggae music.

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Challenge: Your "holier than thou" ethical crusader image has gone a bit inky, due to some minor moral inconsistencies, like getting hundred-dollar haircuts, fathering an out-of-wedlock child, and robbing donors of several hundred thousand dollars (which you stole to help cover up cheating on your spouse).
How will ya spin it?
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A: Blame the right-wing media for conspiratorial witch-hunting.
B: Post social media videos of you cutting your own hair.
C: Schedule a press conference. Let people know that you feel so ashamed, you can barely enjoy your "global warming" conference in Aruba. During the presser, be sure you're not holding a Mai Tai.

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Challenge: You're a fairly normal (albeit astonishingly dull) career politician. But one day, perhaps due to some severe childhood head injury, you have a psychotic episode of historic proportions, during which you make the staggeringly insane claim that you invented the Internet.
How will ya spin it?
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A: Ghost-write a book titled "An Inconvenient Untruth."
B: Blame George Bush.
C: Donate your larynx to a victim of UDE. After all, you're not using it.

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Challenge: You somehow get tricked into holding a Town Hall meeting, during which you have to actually talk to those faceless drones from back home who keep re-electing you. During an impassioned question from one of your constituents, your cell phone rings. You notice that it's your broker, getting back to you with an illegal insider-trading tip.
How will ya spin it?
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A: Take the call. Voters are idiots, and will forget all about it by November.
B: Take the call. Find out where the constituent lives and name a Post Office after her.
C: Take the call. Leak that the constituent may be cheating on her spouse. Then raise taxes.

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Challenge: In order to get re-elected, you promised the Rotarians a new nuclear power plant. You promised the Moose Club a downwind coal-fired battery array. You promised PETA a peat-powered windmill farm, and you promised the Quakers an Ordnung-friendly power grid fueled solely by kinetic energy generating from rubbing two Amish Boy Scouts together. Meanwhile, you secretly accepted 113 taozillion dollars from a Chinese company to back legislation legalizing off-shore generators that produce electricity from diced yak parts.
How will ya spin it?
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A: Deny you ever met with the Chinese government.
B: Deny you ever ate Chinese food.
C: Learn Mandarin.

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Challenge: A picture surfaces on the Internet, and some charge that it's a "candid" shot of you in your underwear and that you, a married man, facebooked the photo to a coed intern who is underage, and is on a terrorist watch list, and is an illegal alien, and who used to date your spouse. To complicate matters, the underwear's made of leather. With reinforced grommets that spell out your initials. Plus, it's a plus-sized ladies' corset.
How will ya spin it?
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A: Claim you have no idea who's in the underwear, but you have people looking into it.
B: Claim your social media account was hacked. By George Bush.
C: Raise taxes on leather imports.

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Challenge: In order to get re-elected, you promised your constituents that they would be taller if they would just vote for you. Obviously, you were lying, a habit you embrace with a furious intensity, as if lying were seven of the Ten Commandments. Nobody got any taller, of course, with the exception of that one family who lives out by the Rotary Club's nuclear power plant.
How will ya spin it?
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A: Lower knee-caps in the other forty-nine States.
B: Blame George Bush.
C: Outlaw height.

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Challenge: You'd like to run for President, even though you grew up in another country, and you've never had a private sector job outside of academia, and your two-sentence resume consists of organizing "Save Our Swing-Set" neighborhood fundraisers, and you can't articulate a coherent sentence without reading from a teleprompter. You'd like to cheat on your spouse, but the last time you made her angry, she hit you with the teleprompter. During the campaign, an obviously biased reporter dares to question your credentials.
How will ya spin it?
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A: You invite the reporter on a Lake Michigan fishing weekender with a guy named Tony the Fixer.
B: You obfuscate by demanding to see Donald Trump's birth certificate.
C: You point out that you did, after all, draw that sword from the stone.

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Challenge: You'd like to run for President again, based on your long-standing tradition of running for President, and also because you have some kind of weird, wind-proof hair-helmet with follicles that haven't moved since Gutenberg invented the analog Kindle. Pundits posit that your coif could cope with an EF-4 tornado. Plus, you're named after a baseball glove.
How will ya spin it?
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A: Wear starched white dress shirts, every day, until voters are numbed into thinking all the other candidates are just bohemian flannel-tramps.
B: Cash in that "One Hundred Times Is The Charm" teeth-capping coupon.
C: Point out that your religion once supported polygamy, which kind of makes cheating on your spouse redundant, if not downright masochistic.

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Challenge: You've been indicted for misappropriation of campaign funds, cheating on your spouse, tax fraud, lying under oath and dating a farm animal.
How will ya spin it?
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A: Go on record as being firmly pro-Farm Subsidy.
B: Blame Old MacDonald.
C: Counter with the argument, "Well, I may have my faults, but at least I'm not a heterosexual Christian."

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And tonight's final Challenge: You're the target of an FBI sting operation, during which you were filmed purchasing Aruba, charging it to your government credit card, and cheating on your spouse.
Audience?
[audience] HOW WILL YA SPIN IT?
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A: Donate your credit card points to charity.
B: Blame George Bush.
C: Announce your re-election campaign.

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[cue applause]

Well, folks, that wraps up another episode of "How Will Ya Spin It!" My thanks to our studio audience and to those of you tuning in from home!

[cue theme music]

And remember the "How Will Ya Spin It?" motto, folks ... as a famous actor once said:

"The most important thing in this job is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made!"

[rim shot]