F.U.N. (p124-p126)

(Setting:  The Head Honcho launches his Food for Undernourished Nations campaign to rescue Vhaicam, a poor Asian country.  Unfortunately, things go awry.)

Politics aside, Vhaicam desperately needed help. The recently formed nation in Southeast Asia had no meaningful social or political infrastructure, and its 500 citizens experienced an unending cycle of calamities, including civil unrest, torrential monsoons, earthquakes, diphtheria, malaria, AIDS, and homosexuality. Creative suffering was their only natural talent. To make matters worse, the Vhaicamese had two peculiar physical features. Their noticeably extended ears and pinkish noses led foreign xenophobes to call them the "Rabbit People". Fortunately, Ismism wasn’t xenophobic. Unless, of course, it had to be.

The Honcho coerced Congress to create an agency called Food for Undernourished Nations. F.U.N.’s mission was to provide the 500 Vhaicamese with the essentials of Western lifestyle, including food, medicine, shelter, clothing, education, VCR's, cable TV, and sofas. Congress funded F.U.N. with $1 million for actual relief to Vhaicam and $999 million for administrative overhead.

The Honcho produced TV ads to get the F.U.N. message out to the voters. These ads featured the Safari Golfer extolling Ismism and narrating vivid video images of the horrible conditions that existed in Vhaicam prior to F.U.N. These stomach churning clips of starving children with distended bellies, maggot infested sores, and gold rings in their left earlobes were an emotionally compelling backdrop for the altruistic beauty of F.U.N. The Honcho's approval rating rose and the media interest in his Bavarian Forest malfeasance waned.

The F.U.N. initiative succeeded brilliantly in feeding the starving Vhaicamese, quelling their civil unrest, abating the monsoons, stopping the floods, quieting the earthquakes, curing diphtheria, malaria, and AIDS, and eradicating homosexuality. Consequently, the Rabbit People doubled in population. With 500 more Vhaicamese mouths to feed, another $1 billion had to be appropriated for the relief effort, most of which went to cover the quadrupled administrative costs.

The increased cost of F.U.N. made the Honcho uneasy. He didn’t want to raise taxes during an election year. Therefore, he rammed a bill through Congress lifting the ceiling on the national debt to an extraordinary number with more digits than could be counted on a normal human's fingers and toes. To keep track of this exploding debt, the Office of Management and Budget hired fifty more employees with degrees in Transcendental Accounting.

The Honcho was also uneasy about the unanticipated population explosion in Vhaicam. He dragged Freeman into his office to explain why it was happening. "How did those rabbit-eared bastards double in population overnight?" he demanded.

"Missionary style, sir."

The Honcho unconsciously snapped a pencil in half. "How did they learn to fornicate missionary style?"

"They learned from missionaries", Freeman answered calmly.

The Honcho snapped another pencil nervously. "Missionaries? That’s not good, is it?"

"It's worse than you think. These were Catholic missionaries who wanted to get in on the F.U.N. They’re arriving in droves to convert the Vhaicamese to Catholicism."

"My God!....Catholic missionaries....That means no birth control!" The Honcho unconsciously snapped his umbrella in two.

"It also means the Vhaicamese need lots of offspring to propagate the Faith and fund the Vatican."

"Shit!" exclaimed the Honcho. "Maybe we shouldn't have been so quick to eradicate homosexuality from Vhaicam." He fretted over this thought for a moment, and then asked, "Does Ismism have any qualms about homosexuality?"

"Absolutely not", replied Freeman. "Unless qualms about homosexuality become expedient."