Posted on May 14, 2008

 

The Jolly Green Giant's

Senate Testimony

by

Daniel Clark

 

 

Sen. John KERRY: Mister Giant, you are an obscenely wealthy man. Some would even say you haven't legitimately earned this obscene wealth of yours. How do you respond to those criticisms?

Mr. Jolly Green GIANT: People have got a right to their opinions.

KERRY: In fact, you live in a palatial mansion in the sky, isn't that correct?

GIANT: I have a big house at the top of the beanstalk, if that's what you mean.

KERRY: Built on the backs of the little people, no doubt. We've all seen how food prices have skyrocketed recently. This is a clear case of gouging if ever I've seen one.

GIANT: I don't know what you mean by that. My products are subject to supply and demand like anything else. I can't just decide to raise my prices in order to increase my profits, or I'll lose my customers to rival brands. That's how competition works.

KERRY: Oh, so that's your game. Well, rest assured, you've gotten away with this "competition" scheme for the last time.

Sen. Barack OBAMA: Mister Giant, do you really expect us to believe that these food prices are not artificially high?

GIANT: No I don't, Senator. It's just that, to the degree that they are, it's the government that is responsible. When you pay subsidies to farm owners who leave their land unfarmed, you're doing that to reduce the supplies of certain crops, for the explicit purpose of keeping prices artificially high.

OBAMA: That is untrue. I deny that categorically. I have never even heard of that. Furthermore, I condemn these actions of my fellow senators. Whatever they've done in the past has got nothing to do with me. I mean, I just got here.

Sen. Joseph BIDEN: Mister Giant, I look at your inhuman figure before us here today, with your freakish green complexion -- and I mean that in a good way -- and I wonder if you are able to relate.

GIANT: Relate to whom?

BIDEN: Whom? Is that what they teach you in those fancy Martian private schools?

GIANT: I'm not a Martian. I'm a green giant.

BIDEN: Same difference. You zucchinis all stick together. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Sen. Robert BYRD: My wife would always call me to the window to show me the first robin of spring, but invariably, what she would point out was not in fact a robin, but an oriole.

BIDEN: If my friend, the distinguished gentleman from West Virginia, will yield for a question, does this oration have anything in the world to do with the subject of rising food prices?

BYRD: I suspect it inevitably will, if I may continue. Now, a Baltimore oriole has an orange belly like a robin does, but apart from that, the markings of the two birds are quite dissimilar.

[SECTION DELETED]

BYRD: … And that is how Vitamin D has come to be known as "The Sunshine Vitamin."

GIANT: I couldn't agree more.

Sen. Hillary CLINTON: Mister Giant, what would you say to Mary Lou Nascar from Deliverance, Mississippi, whose daughter Ellie recently died of hookworms, because her mother was forced to choose between food and medicine?

GIANT: I find it hard to believe that the only two options a family has in its budget are to eliminate either food or medicine. Are you sure this Nascar family really exists?

CLINTON: How can you be so callous to the suffering of innocent composite characters?

GIANT: If they're in such dire financial straits, I take it you are going to vote to extend their tax cuts.

CLINTON: I'm not the one who's on trial here, Mister Giant.

GIANT: Nobody is on trial here. This is a congressional inquiry, not a criminal court.

CLINTON: Yes, of course. I'm getting ahead of myself. But don't worry, I'll get you, my pretty.

GIANT: Pardon me, Senator?

CLINTON: It's a figure of speech.

Sen. Ted KENNEDY: Let's dispense with the anemones, Mister Green Jeans, and cut to the chaser. Are you now, or have you ever been, a capitalist?

GIANT: Of course I am.

KENNEDY: Aha! So you admit it. You've fallen into my parlor, said the eensy-weensy fly.

GIANT: With all due respect, Senator, I don't think you know what you're talking about.

KENNEDY: What are you incinerating? I resign that remark. I don't have to stand for an insole like that, from the likes of Ike. You're out of order. This whole corpuscle's out of order! Raddemannenuh! Bleblabbemanamah! Aggremunnesnuh!

[END OF TRANSCRIPT]

-- Daniel Clark is a Staff Writer for the New Media Alliance. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.

 

 

Return to Shinbone

 The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press 

 Mailbag . Issue Index . Politimals