By Natasha Julius and Tim Willette
The McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum is a fine attempt at civic virtue, but we think they left out a few exhibits.
1. Write Your Congressman! User is invited to write letter which via elaborate rope & pulley system is delivered to congressman’s desk, but it works only if sack of money is placed on scale/chute.
1a. More money allows user to write congressional bill.
2. Speak Out! User is invited to air grievance (unamplified) in a room filled with blaring televisions, radios, & loudspeakers.
3. Mr. Potato Head of State. Build a candidate for office from die-cut parts which user can test in the Focus Group Analyzer. (Deposit required)
4. Free Speech Sanitizer. User writes frank and honest piece expressing views on controversial issue; article is thoroughly vetted for possible legal exposure and reader sensitivity by virtual editorial board. Article runs as sunny human-interest piece in sunny McCormick-Tribune Freedom paper.
5. Be Your Own Big Brother! User logs into e-mail and gets to see which random strings of words betray subconscious terrorist leanings in their friends and family. “Liberation” button allows user to scan his or her “sent mail” box for signs of hidden liberal-pinko-whackjob-evil-doer tendencies. “Vigilance” button helpfully composes indexed report of unwitting subversive activity and forwards a copy to local FBI branch office.
6. Stretch Armstrong Williams. For a fee user can shape famous columnist into whatever form s/he likes.
7. Loose Lips Sink Ships! Animatronic display featuring Dennis Hastert and the Cheers guys making prank phone calls to The New York Times, and then writing prank legislation to shut them down.
8. Free Speech Made Easy. Display featuring a Dieblod voting machine, where free speech is reduced to two choices, both of which are wrong and one of which won’t count anyway.
9. You Might Be A Terrorist If . . . Narrated by Jeff Foxworthy. Guest appearances by Larry the Cable Guy telling Homeland Security to “Git ‘er done!” and Jeremy Piven advising Guantanamo detainees to hug it out.
10. Freedom Field Trip. Board the bus for the Tribune Company’s Freedom Center printing plant, where new employees can be observed taking their urine tests.
11. Freedom Photo Gallery.
– Col. McCormick w/Joe McCarthy (McCarthy, left)
– Col. McCormick w/Tsar Nicholas II (Nicholas, left)
– Rev. Sun Moon w/George H.W. Bush (Bush, left)
– Rupert Murdoch w/Rev. Pat Robertson (Robertson, kneeling)
12. Corporate Speech Rules! Watch the Chicago Tribune editorial board earnestly hash out the issues in a true display of democracy in action before editorial page editor Bruce Dold retreats to his office to prepare the endorsement of the Republican candidate for president as decreed by corporate by-laws.
13. Jailbait! Participate in an improvisational skit built around the words “prosecutor,” “subpoena,” “national security,” “partisan gunslinger,” and “Robert Novak.”
Posted on July 1, 2006