Take three domestic issues recently in the news: PBS is worried about losing its funding, the military is resorting to video games to entice young recruits and Wal-Mart's in-store television network is now the fifth most-watched network in the nation.
Plainly, PBS needs to be co-opted by a partnership between the Defense Department and Wal-Mart. An amalgam of these institutions would emit concentrated quanta of freedom so intense, they could melt a flag pin clear off a politician's lapel. What nobler use of the public broadcast system could there be than to deliver quality, overt propaganda to a captive capitalist audience?
Forget merely slashing prices, the Wal-Mart Dot and that creepy \gingerbread greeter"" could start slashing the bonds of tyranny.
Official news updates could be broadcast through stores as ""Sesame Street News"" segments, anchored by Grover the Journalistic Poseur, The Fuzzy Math Count and the venerable Kermit- until he's felled by bloggers.
Though Buster the Bunny can't ""morally"" visit children with lesbian parents, he could visit Festus the Fetus, a lovable if undifferentiated fusion of gametes who pleads for a chance at life from a 42-inch plasma screen suspended above the condom aisle.
The culmination of this grand consolidation, however, would be Wal-Mart kids' viewing centers, which at once socialize the next generation and free up their parents to spend and keep fine PBS programming in production, even resurrecting a few classics.
John Ashcroft can come out of retirement to bring his lyrical skill to the role of Mr. Rogers, whose absence will be explained by a tragic yet heroic attempt to save the trolley from hijackers.
Kids can watch as Mr. Ashcroft and his team hunt down the assassins who tried to poison Popularly Elected Executive Friday, defeat puppet-Michael J. Fox and his Stem Cell Center of Murder with their concentrated prayer power and bust up the Internet indecency ring.
Henrietta Pussycat, Bob Dog and Mr. McFeely have been running out of the clock.
Then, on ""The Magic School Bus' Extraordinary Rendition Adventure,"" class pet Liz the Lizard is abducted by homeland security officials, hooded and tossed on a plane to Syria, where she's tortured, held beyond reach of due process and ultimately released without charge or explanation motnhs or years later.
Once Mrs. Frizzle (who has renounced all ambiguity in favor of promoting traditional marriage and traded her fribble fashions for fatigues) and the class unravel the process, they realize Liz is no victim, but the truest of patriots.
Finally, all the money and clout going into this project might finally be enough to make a new Snoopy special: ""It's Fun to Shoot Some People, Charlie Brown!"" Snoopy's animated Flying Ace can take to the skies once again alongside live-action U.S. fighters, and together they can vanquish evildoers to that catchy Peanuts piano tune, then land and do the Snoopy Dance in celebration.
A new classic will be birthed when, amid said happy-dancing, Charlie Brown fires his weapon into the air, turns to his faithful pooch and says, ""Gee, Snoopy, frivolous warfare is pretty neat-I feel so f---ing patriotic!""
What, you don't think it could happen? Look at Condoleezza Rice's hair, then look at Lucy's... Coincidence?
Holly Noe's column runs each Friday. The doctor is in at flamingpurvis@yahoo.com
