April fool’s month starts off briskly on opening day: President Obama coins a new euphemism when he referred to an American air strike as a “kinetic action.” As we all know, air strikes are terrifying, destructive, bloody, and loud, while “kinetic actions” are merely kinetic.
White House officials suppress French President François Hollande’s phrase “Islamist terrorism” in the official video clip of a meeting in Washington.
A group of Stanford Review students issued 15 demands including the demand that “the Administration immediately accept the aforementioned demands.” Demand #12, “that Stanford base grades only on attendance records in class, since all other measures are discriminatory,” has stirred some doubts about the sincerity of the SR demands, but the Stanford Administration is proceeding cautiously.
Nick Searcy tweets: “I fear that #The Chalkening may scare American students so badly that they will go home and live with their parents well into their 30s.” The fear is justified, but some people suspect the actor of mocking student sufferings.
The Daily Mail reveals that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is planning to take part in a nude photoshoot for a gay magazine, to raise awareness of body issues and testicular cancer.
April 2: Maureen Dowd publishes a story about her interview with The Donald. She claims he admitted making “a mistake when he retweeted a seriously unflattering photo of the pretty Heidi Cruz next to a glam shot of his wife, Melania.” Donald Trump? A mistake? Admission? Who believes that witch?
April 3: The Daily Mail confesses that the Trudeau story was a hoax.
April 4: John Kasich withdraws his offer to appear nude in nude in Vanity Fair in order to raise awareness of the testicular magnitude of establishment Republicans.
April 5: The Washington Post publishes a column by Lauren Taylor entitled “Don’t laugh: I have a serious reason for raising my cats gender-neutral.” Turns out that this helps her learn “to use plural pronouns for her friends, neighbors and colleagues who individually go by they, their, and them.” This, Lauren explains, is a solution to the question of how to identify people without requiring them to conform to the gender binary of female and male. The Lauren goes on and on and never gets at all funny. The whole article is pretty grim.
April 6: Emma Kasich tells a press conference that she has no interest in becoming her father’s vice presidential pick, adding that her twin sister, Reese, was even less interested. In point of fact they are way underage, but both very interested in their dad’s pick, as is their mother and several other citizens of Ohio.
April 7: Minnesota’s Gov. Mark Dayton issues an executive order forbidding nonessential travel by state employees to Mississippi owing to that state’s suppression of the traditional American right to enter the rest-room of your choice, depending on the gender of your choice on whichever day you choose to choose.
April 8: The Minnesota Taxpayers and Skinflints Coalition (MTSC) demands that Dayton explain why government employees are allowed to travel anywhere on the taxpayer’s dime for nonessential purposes.
April 9: W. Wittering Bleatley, President of the University of Maine at Beans Corner (UMBC), proudly announces that his institution has replaced all gender-signifiers on the university’s restroom doors with question marks.
April 10: The New York Times issues this correction: “An article on March 20 about wave piloting in the Marshall Islands misstated the number of possible paths that could be navigated without instruments among the 34 islands and atolls of the Marshall Islands. It is 561, not a trillion.”
April 11: The service dog retained by the University of Maine at Farmington to provide emotional support for LGBTQ students is stirring ill-feeling. Some students believe that Fidel is no true service dog but an uncredentialed pet smuggled in on false pretenses. His defenders insist that Fidel self-identifies as a service dog.
April 12: Responding to criticisms of his tone and behavior, Candidate Trump tells CNN’s Anderson Cooper there are “two more people I have to take out. And when I take them out, I will be so presidential, you won’t believe it. And then, of course, I’ll start on Hillary and then I’ll be a little bit less presidential.” This, he was quick to say, was only because he has to. He has no choice.
April 13: Donald Trump asks the Pittsburgh crowd “How about Joe Paterno – are we going to bring him back?” Enthusiasm for this proposal was muted since old Joe, having died on January 22, 2012, must be well rotted by now.
April 14: The Saipan Tribune reports that Gov. Ralph DLG Torres of the U.S. Territory of the Northern Mariana Islands is touting Public Law 19-42, which includes a $1,000 excise tax on pistols, as “a role model” for other U.S. states and jurisdictions.”
Sure. Any readers ever been to the Northern Mariana Islands, or the Southern Mariana Islands? Ever met anybody that’s been to those alleged islands? Does Michael Bloomberg think anybody’s going to fall for this hoax?
April 15: A FOIA demand discloses a Gallup survey showing that United States Postal Service (USPS) workers feel that they rarely receive recognition for good work; that their supervisors don’t care for them as people; that they don’t feel their job is important; that they lack opportunities to learn and grow, and that their fellow employees are not committed to doing quality work.
April 16: Reacting immediately to the USPS revelations, Rep. Fred C. Dobbs (R-Idaho) submits the “Going Postal Readiness Act,” which authorizes all American citizens above age seven to enter post office facilities fully armed. Rep. Dobbs scoffs at USPS management assurances about its “crack team laser-focused” on the problem. Postal employees who are crack shots with laser sights are exactly what concerns him.
April 17: President Obama met with some deep-thinking rappers at the White House to discuss criminal justice issues when an ankle bracelet sets off. Turns out that rapper Ricky Ross is out on a $2,000,000 bond for abducting and pistol-whipping his house contractor. Ricky will be invited to a future meeting for a discussion about novel techniques for negotiating with Republicans.
Kayla-Simone McKelvey, Kean University alumna and president of the Pan-African Student Union, pleads guilty to tweeting fake death threats against black students. This seemed like a good idea at the time since 100 black activists from New Jersey’s Kean University were holding a protest rally against racial intolerance.
April 18: Whole Foods in Austin, Texas, investigated the charge by a gay preacher that his special-order cake had been attacked with hate speech. He found security footage showing the alleged victim frosting his own cake with the word “Fag.” Whole Foods promises legal action against “Rev.” Jordan Brown for his attempted shake-down.
April 19: Seizing on the above events, Snivels-R-Us, Inc., a rapidly expanding grievance consultancy, announces a full menu of “fail-safe” strategies and tactics for generating sobs, wails, sympathy, empathy, and a variety of material compensations.
April 20: In Indianapolis, Donald Trump calls his rallies ‘”the safest places to be anywhere in the country, safer than any seminary, monastery, convent, girl scout coven, or graveyard ever heard of in the history of North America since 1488…or whatever”
April 21: Al Diamon, the Great Beard of Hernia Hill, and this columnist have decided to proclaim April 21 Single Malt Scotch Celebration Day.
April 22: Fresh from his New York triumph, Donald Trump quietly sent a delegation to the Republican National Committee with the message that he was about to move into the “presidential phase” of his campaign. In fact, he promises to become the most presidential candidate in American history—twice as presidential as George Washington (“Honestly, who looks presidential with wooden teeth. My teeth are more presidential than anyone’s. Just look at ‘em”).
April 23: Scholar, socialist, Chavista, actor, activist, Danny Glover tells a Bernie Sanders rally that Dante was a French philosopher and Maryland a part of the Confederacy. Astonishingly, no one in the crowd seemed astonished at these astonishing revelations.
April 24: Senator Cruz remarks that even if Donald Trump dresses up as Hillary Clinton, he still couldn’t go into the girls’ bathroom.
Trump replied that he didn’t need to dress as Hillary Clinton to go into the girl’s bathroom. He owns 1033 executive bathrooms on eight continents and is free to enter any of them dressed any which way he chooses. More, he welcomes all visitors of any gender or none.
April 25: During a rally in Rhode Island, Donald Trump, looking awesomely presidential under his white baseball cap, denounces John Kasich’s eating habits as “disgusting.” In point of fact, he said had never seen anything more disgusting in his entire life and he has seen thousands of thousands of people eating pancakes.
April 26: John Kasich launches a hard-hitting TV ad attacking the Republican Establishment.
April 27: White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest reacts to Donald Trump’s idiosyncratic pronunciation of ‘Tanzania’ by sneering that “Apparently the phonetics are not included on the teleprompter.” Observers who remember his employer’s reference to that Haitian ‘corpsemen’ are wondering whether the young fellow was speaking in earnest or merely joshing.
April 28: Vice President Biden flew into Baghdad, stirring intense speculation among the natives about who he was and whey he was there.
April 29: During an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, Hilary Clinton remarked that she had “experience with men who sometimes get off the reservation,” stirring intense speculation about to whom (aside from the obvious) she was referring.
April 30: Interviewed by Jake Tapper on CNN, Hillary Clinton has some interesting things to say about constitutional protections for Hillary Clinton, Supreme Court deliberations, and the process for adjusting the First Amendment when the Justices resist coming to the correct decision: “Remember, Citizens United was an attack on me, so I take it very personally and even before Senator Sanders got into the campaign way back in April of last year, I said we are going to reverse Citizens United and if we can’t get the Supreme Court to do what I think would be the right decision, then I will lead a constitutional amendment.”
April 31: April has only 30 days, fool.
APRIL IS IRRITABLE BOWEL MONTH EVERY YEAR, BUT THIS YEAR MORE THAN EVER.
