I.M. Salmon

Leprosy: the decisive edge for admission to elite colleges

January 16, 2017

To: Exceptional High School Juniors

From: Elite College Admissions (ECA) in Cambridge, MA.

Subj: The Fat Envelope Advantage

Congratulations! You are receiving this e-mail message because you’ve scored 1550 or higher on the new SATs and maintained at least a 4.04 GPA.

Are you still looking for that decisive edge that sets you apart from tens of thousands of other applicants to Stanford, Harvard and Princeton? Your peers will be ladling soup at homeless shelters and collecting used toys for the Ronald McDonald House, but how many will have volunteered at a leper colony in India?

ECA had signed an exclusive agreement with the Agondi Leper Colony in Goa, India. Located on the Arabian Sea coast, the area is known for its white sand beaches, flora and fauna and kayaking. Your deluxe suite at the Taj Exotica Hotel (5 stars) is only a short, air-conditioned van ride from your one hour per day of service at the colony.

Because we are staffed entirely by Ivy League graduates, we know that admissions officers place a premium on essays that detail the HOW and WHY of your international experience, not only a description. We pride ourselves on writing college application essays that are indistinguishable from your own voice, and this allows us to convey your transparent commitment to caring about India’s underserved lepers.

Our foolproof essay includes a bibliography showing your immersion in the topic. And, to avoid a verbal faux pas while at the colony, we include a list of insensitive comments. Examples: “Lend me a hand,” “gimme some skin,” and any “pull my finger” jokes.

The politically correct and medical term for leprosy is Hansen’s Disease. But at ECA we still prefer “leper” because this works to your advantage. Agondi Colony patients are no longer infectious, but the stigma and ignorance surrounding leprosy means that unenlightened admissions officers will be bowled over by your intrepid courage and boundless empathy.

The committee will see an on-site video of you mingling with victims’ blindness, severed limbs, and hideous facial disfigurations. Squeamish being around crippling deformities? We can photoshop you giving Mother Teresa worthy embraces and shaking claw-like hands. In short, your application will wrench tears from the most jaded “We’ve Seen It All” officials.

Note: This opportunity is strictly time limited because only sixteen of the original 3,000 patients at Agondi are still alive, the youngest at 81 and the oldest 95. Bit by bit, we anticipate a precipitous drop-off to occur. Worse yet, the capacity now exists to eradicate leprosy worldwide, so act quickly.

Cost: $25,000 for two weeks, plus airfare. For an additional fee, side trips to Mumbai, New Delhi and Bangalore are available. Only twenty-five students will be accepted for Summer 2017.

For online application forms go to: ECA@LepCol.com

Note: Author I.M. Salmon is known in some circles as Gary Olson.

Israel and US schmooze about Arabs and Indians

July 12, 2016

Rabbi Irgun Kahane-Ariel, Israel’s Deputy Minister for Occupation Affairs, sat down with George Armstrong Winthrop, Acting Director of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, for their annual confab in Washington, D.C. A partial transcript of their conversation became available to the Dandy Goat.

K-A: Shalom! “Ma nish” (What’s up?), my friend. Hey, did you hear that Obama wanted Israel to to return to the pre-1967 borders? Native Americans quickly responded, “What about us? Let’s go back the pre-1492 borders in America!” But seriously, George, why did the Indian cross the road? He spotted a liquor store on the other side.

GW: Good one! Okay. Why did the Zionist cross the road? To occupy the other side!

K-A: Enough frivolity. Are you keeping the maize-munchers off the warpath?

GW: We have 337 reservations on 55 million acres. Most of the land is terrible, even uninhabitable, but parts of it contain $1.5 trillion in oil, natural gas and uranium.

K-A: So, what’s the plan?

GW: Following your example, we’re going to offer generous financial incentives for a settler movement onto this land. The first wave will be religious zealots, survivalists, ex-private security contractors, and, of course, folks just looking for spacious living with an easy commute to work. We’ll bribe some rez radishes to help us.

K-A: Radishes?

GW: Red on the outside, white on the inside.

K-A: My advice is to allow a few radical groups to flourish on the reservations. Then you can refuse to negotiate with terrorists. Why not encourage a new American Indian Movement with slogans like “Scalp All the Pale Faces”? Creating enough white fear that some tomahawk-chuckers will go off the rez will allow you to find a final solution.

GW: Irgun, I’m taking notes as fast as I can! Also, a handful of tribes have reaped enormous profits from casinos near major metropolitan areas. If we get that money flowing off-reservation to Wall Street banks, the rez Indians who help us can remain — for now. Any more advice?

K-A: One more thing. Whining settlers are a royal “veytik in der tokes” (pain in the ass) for the government. But they do create irreversible facts on the ground. Later you can say, “It’s politically impossible to remove them.” In Israel, our next step is setting up seven to eight tiny mini-states in Judea and Samaria — in the West Bank — and Gaza for a population transfer. We’ll encounter some grousing from the usual traitors, boycott dupes, and anti-Semites, but in a few decades Israelis will say, “Toda raba (thanks a lot), but what took you so long?”

GW: I like it, I like it. Apartheid South Africa’s ten Bantustans or “homelands” for their tribes worked like a charm, until communist agitators began stirring up the natives.

K-A: And then Castro stepped in to help Mandela. At least we’re spared that problem!

GW: Not to sound immodest, but our own ethnic cleansing project was almost perfect — a total of nine million, or 90 percent of them. We don’t have enough Injuns left to start intifadas and make insane demands. The expulsion of your own redskins from Palestine in 1947-49 was, not to put it too indelicately … a botched job.

K-A: George, it’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, but, yeah, as we say in Hebrew, it was a “fascia,” a real screwup. Israeli historian Benny Morris reminds us — all too often — that our Founding Fathers failed to “finish the job.” Now the Palestinian Arabs are reproducing like rabbits! But those seven to eight hutches should do the trick.

GW: You’ve probably heard that anthropologists have recently found evidence that Stone Age Europeans were in North America at least 15,000 years before the Indians. Tools have been found on our East Coast and we’re waiting for DNA evidence. Just like your 2000-year brief hiatus, we’ll correct the history, reassert our right of return and starting removing the remaining squatters. We’ll pay Canada to take them and even suggest a slogan: “A land without people for a people without a land.” We’ll still have the Redskins, even though a 7-9 record will be a good year. And we have you to thank, Irgun — you wrote the book on all this, showed us how it’s done!

K-A: You’re too kind, my friend. Your shining city on a hill has inspired us. And your unstinting financial and military support has made possible everything that we are today.

Senator strikes deal with God over refugees

June 17, 2016

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), arguably the most pitiless opponent of refugee resettlement in the United States, has undergone a stunning change of heart.

In a tearful interview with Oklahoma City’s KOFO-TV’s Channel 4 news, Inhofe said, “God spoke to me in a dream last night and said, ‘Jim, emigration to your own celestial home depends upon your easing the way for the world’s refugees to make their earthly home in America. I’ll leave the number and conditions to your conscience.’ I dropped to my knees and said, ‘Okie dokie, Lord.’”

Speaking in a quavering voice, Inhofe told Channel 4 viewers, “I’ve been sinfully tardy in asking forgiveness for my unchristian behavior toward the 20 million Middle Eastern and North African refugees pining, as we say down in Oklahoma, to be ‘livin’ in high cotton.’ I’m fixin’ to introduce the Love Thy Refugee as Thyself Act (S.1776), under which a full 100 Syrian, Iraqi, and Afghan refugees will be admitted to the United States.”

Sen. Inhofe, the former mayor of Tulsa, continued, “Unlike the freedom-denying countries these people fled, we believe the responsibility to succeed or fail depends entirely on individual effort — in this instance, freely pulling yourself up by your own sandal straps. In that spirit, my bill starts with the refugees’ free choice whether or not to take advantage of this opportunity.”

The bill stipulates that all applicants have a GPS microchip tracker implanted under their skin for monitoring by Homeland Security for five years. Over that period, points will be awarded for various acts of good citizenship and tallied up.

“Those model refugees who accumulate sufficient points will be eligible for citizenship,” Inhofe explained. “Those who choose not to will be deported. That’s the American way.”

A total of 7,500 points, awarded by a combination of the following ten opportunities, guarantees citizenship:

Enthusiastically agree to work in cinder block factories on the U.S.-Mexico border while living in a relocation center. Points awarded by number of blocks contributed to the new Freedom Wall. (5 pts per block)
Belt out all three verses of “America the Beautiful” in unaccented American English. (400 pts).
Cheerfully undergo baptism into the Christian faith, including public renunciation of previously held heretical beliefs. Sen. Inhofe confided that Pastor Billy Bob Gathers, Tulsa’s billionaire, mega-televangelist, has offered to perform this sacred sacrament online for a one-time only, discounted refugee rate of $99.99. (1,000 pts)
Quickly volunteer as “replacement workers” in the event of labor strikes. (500 pts)
Shrewdly offer “womb-for-rent” at whatever price the market will bear. (Points determined by skillfully demonstrating ruthless entrepreneurship; maximum 750 pts)
Secretly file reports on any suspicious activity among other refugees. (35 pts per report, with bonus points for information on family members)
Freely surrender one or more unneeded body parts to those in need who occupy “essential command positions” in the U.S. economy. (700 pts per kidney, 1200 pts per lung lobe, 2200 pts per eye)
Eagerly accept jobs that are too poorly paid to provide even a minimum standard of living. The opportunities are endless, from slaughterhouse kill floor workers, oil riggers, and orderlies, to maids, fast food workers, and pest control technicians. (600 pts, double if the job opportunity is in Oklahoma)
Proudly display a Statue of Liberty tattoo on one’s forehead (200 pts for B&W, 400 pts for R,W&B)
Diligently avoid protest activity supportive of so-called “social justice issues” unless performing surveillance on other refugees. (800 pts for a clean, five-year record)

Those applicants who reach 7,500 points will have their citizenship documents signed and presented by the U.S. president in a White House ceremony, unless the date conflicts with the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State football game.

Finally, casting an apprehensive glance toward the heavens, and perhaps recalling his bargain with God, Sen. Inhofe urged the refugees to begin amassing points as quickly as possible, “because our remaining days on earth are known only to Him.”

Top business school tells all: how we produce the best psychopathic predators

June 6, 2016

The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School is offering a new course this fall: BUS 415: Concealing Your Psychopathic Identity: The Secret to Becoming a Master of the Universe by Adopting the Persona of an Empathic Individual. Intrigued by the title, I arranged an interview with Dr. Howard Roark, Dean of the Wharton School, and Prof. Maxine Moregreen, who is teaching the new course. What follows are the verbatim notes from our conversation.

Roark: This course title refers to the high percentage of our students who are clinical psychopaths. And I say that with a mixture of awe, envy and immense pride. Wharton’s MBA psychos eat the lunch of Stanford and Harvard B-School students.

Me: You’re not saying that Wharton is populating the world of high finance with serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, or, god forbid, people in the mold of Hannibal Lecter from “Silence of the Lambs,” are you?

Roark: (chuckling) No, no, nothing like that. Some 3-4 percent of the U.S. population can be classified as psychopaths, individuals totally incapable of feeling empathy or remorse and lacking any social conscience. These psychopaths in suits are found at the highest levels of government, business and the military. One of every ten people on Wall Street is probably a psychopath. Heck, I might be one but you’d never know it. (Roark displays an enigmatic grin.)

Me: So this is your ideal applicant pool?

Roark: Yes. We want these exceptional outliers to apply for admission to Wharton. We then try to weed out any psycho wannabes who show signs of “Empathic Distress Disorder” (EDD), or even a scintilla of genuine concern for others. We show the applicants graphic images of the loaded hold of a slave ship, pictures of torture victims at Abu Ghraib, and photos of a dead baby washed ashore from a sunken refugee boat. Any sign of empathic engagement results in immediate rejection.

Me: Professor Moregreen, tell us how your new course bears on this?

Moregreen: Sure. I try to provide students with a public face that conveys empathy. Psychopaths are almost always mistaken for normal people but we’re all about removing any risk of discovery.

Me: How do you do that?

Moregreen: The best way to manipulate consumer behavior is to leverage the message, “We really care. We want to walk a mile in your shoes.” If customers believe your brand truly cares about them, they’re likely to adopt brand loyalty, and even become brand evangelists.

In my class I invite professional stage actors to portray optimized empathetic behavior. Another day, we watch the classic 1956 zombie film “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers” to gain appreciation for the challenges facing “pod persons” as they try to avoid detection by normal people. Not to drop names, but former President Bill Clinton skyped with us, demonstrating the facial expressions, voice inflection and hand gestures behind “I feel your pain.” He’s a master.

Me: Your attention to detail is impressive.

Moregreen: I offer practical tips to convey undetectable “faux” empathy to obtain the inside information for establishing trust. These include: showing curiosity about their lives, asking questions about hobbies, learning the names of spouses and children, and using a mirror to practice that all-important warm smile. Depending upon the situation, a hug and even a few tears can close the deal. We caution our students not to engage in the latter behavior without sufficient practice to pull it off. It must come across as spontaneous.

Finally, passing the course requires performing a flawless impersonation of an empathetic person. This is done before a focus group of marketing and advertising executives, and, believe me, they can detect a phony from a mile away.

Me: This has been totally enlightening. Do either of you have a last takeaway for our readers?

Roark: For spring term, Professor Moregreen is offering an exciting new course, MGMT 711: Social Impact Investing: How to Do (Very) Well by Pretending to Do Good. It’s already oversubscribed!

There truly is a card for every occasion

May 19, 2016

Perpetually on the lookout for another market niche, the greeting card giant Hallmark Cards, Inc. has unveiled a new entry.

One would have thought that a card already exists for any contingency, but, in a flash of business-school avarice, Hallmark’s crack marketing team identified space for another lucrative profit center: cards for motherfuckers.

To wit, upon opening the new card, a pre-recorded voice chip announces in no uncertain terms, “Have a nice day, motherfucker! Guess who?”

Hallmark spokesperson Felix Good believes there are two potential sets of card buyers within this category, each with slightly different needs, and the cards reflect that difference. According to Good, “Who hasn’t left a card rack sorely disappointed at not finding a card that conveys their contempt for that lecherous boss, oleaginous brother-in-law, or that SOB neighbor?” With a knowing grin, Good added, “Sent anonymously, the recipient will forever be wracked with lingering doubts about the sender’s identity.”

The second set of card purchasers, a much smaller group, is more compassionate, and the sender’s empathy is never in doubt. Here, the sentiment borders on forgiveness for prior transgressions. The voice on the card’s chip pleads, “Although everyone knows you’re a motherfucker, some of us believe you have the potential to redeem yourself.” Another card takes it a step further, gently but forcefully stating, “Yes, you’re a first-rank motherfucker, but we hereby grant you a 24-hour amnesty period to mend your ways. We urge you to take advantage of this offer before it’s too late.”

Finally, unlike so many greeting cards that are associated with a national holiday or special occasion, motherfuckers are virtually ubiquitous, thus providing the company with an almost unlimited global demand. Good says, “Investors will want to get in on the ground floor, and they’ll be in good company, as the creator of this line of cards is a genius — and, now, a very rich motherfucker.”