The Bush Signal

I stumbled across an article today entitled "Bush Says He Lets Red Phone Go Straight to Voicemail". In the article, President Bush responds to Hillary Clinton's recent "red phone" attack ads in which she implies that in the event of a global disaster, neophyte Barack Obama would let terrorists eat your sleeping toddlers.

The first few paragraphs from the article contain a rather disturbing confession from the President:

President George W. Bush commented on Sen. Hillary Clinton's controversial "red phone" campaign ads at the White House today, telling reporters, "When that red phone rings, I just let it go straight to voicemail."

Mr. Bush rarely comments about the Democratic presidential contest, but he said that he had to speak up about Sen. Clinton's red phone ads because he found them "so confusing."

"If I answered the red phone every time it rang, I would never get any sleep," Mr. Bush said. "Sometimes it starts ringing at 9 PM, and I am already tucked in by then."

The sad thing is, I didn't realize the article was a satire until the second to last paragraph, wherein former President Clinton attests that he always used to answer the red phone in case it was a "booty call." And I'm not the only one — the comments section is full of readers who also thought the article was legit until halfway through. How tragically comic that so many citizens find the notion of President Bush letting the machine pick up in face of nuclear disaster plausible.