JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Duke slain! Atreides heir lost, presumed dead.

Photo: Dunes, Paoay
 

The winners of our Alternate History headline-writing contest are:

“Elected, Shocked, Dead.

“Surprised by own victory, McCain suffers heart attack.” by Juan.

“NO-BAMA!” by Cacs.

“No, we can’t” by wengkisantos.

Honorable mention: “Garci in DC” by walterrobles.

Juan, Cacs, wengkisantos, please post your mailing addresses in the Philippines. 

Thanks to everyone who sent in their entries. We were supposed to pick just one winner, but what the hell.

 

This is brilliant: A collage of dozens of newspaper front pages (via Boing Boing) the day after the US Election. I didn’t notice if it includes the Philippine Daily Inquirer headline: “Black in the White House”. 

Newspapers usually have a back-up banner in case something else happens (Dewey Defeats Truman being the classic example). If John McCain had won, what might have been the headlines the following day?

Would the Inquirer have gone for “White In The White House”? My options would include: ”Same Old, Same Old”, “What a shock”, and “Let’s move to another planet.”

Time for a contest! Compose a front-page headline for a McCain win. Winner gets a copy of Stars and Bars by William Boyd, to be mailed to a Philippine address. The deadline is Thursday. Remember: headlines should be short.

Photo: Obama fist thump from Boston.com

An Open Letter to Barack Obama from Alice Walker (The Color Purple)

“One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. . .” Read Alice Walker’s letter.

And because a poetic president needs a foul-mouthed enforcer to make sure the job gets done, a vocabulary lesson from White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

Washington, D.C. – “Fucknutsville”
Republican – “Knucklefuck”
What his mom fondly calls him – “little shithead”
How he ends phone calls to donors and candidates – “Fuck you. I love you.”
His message to the Republicans after the Democrats took back the House in 2006: “Since my kids are gone, I can say it. They can go fuck themselves!”

Rahm Emanuel has just been named White House Chief of Staff by US President-elect Barack Obama. Rahm is the second son of the Emanuels. Zeke the eldest is a bioethicist. Ari the youngest is a Hollywood superagent, the inspiration for Jeremy Piven’s character in Entourage.

Rahm and Barack in The Telegraph

Esquire on the three Emanuels: “Mrs. Emanuel had three sons. Zeke, serious and studious, would leave the family home, become a doctor, and go on to work at the highest levels of the National Institutes of Health, one of the foremost experts on health-care policy in the country. Rahm, the mouthy middle boy, 19 months younger, not so studious, would emerge from a near-death experience at 17–a gangrenous finger had him in a hospital delirious with fever for weeks–a somewhat more focused person…”

In the Telegraph: “One story, more than any other, sums up the intensity, loyalty and, at times, downright nastiness upon which Mr Emanuel’s reputation is built. At a dinner to celebrate President Clinton’s first election victory, Mr Emanuel began to name those who he believed had earned his enmity. As he listed the names of those he saw as traitors, he grabbed a steak knife, stood up and began plunging the knife into the table and shouting “Dead! Dead! Dead!” after each name…” Then there’s the story of the pollster who crossed him, and got a rotten fish in the mail.

Black, Jew to Run Nation, in Gawker: “America, now you’ve done it. You just elected an African-American from Chicago President, and traveling with him to the White House will be his good friend Rahm Emanuel..”

I love him already. So the “Muslim”‘s first pick: a Jew! It’ll be fun.