Thursday, June 18, 2009

Broken News: US dominates world in outrage manufacturing capacity

WASHINGTON—While virtually all economic indicators continue to trend downward and forecasts for the world economy remain pessimistic about the length and breadth of a global recession, currency exchange rates, and imports/exports, stock markets were buoyed today by a new report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The report indicated that, despite US industrial manufacturing declining for the 5th straight quarter, the United States' outrage manufacturing capacity had risen for the 2nd quarter in a row by an astonishing 19.4%.

The growth was led largely by gains within the Interminable Whining About Bullshit, Half-Baked Conspiracy Theories, Fear of Foreign Devils, Mexicans Gonna Take Our Jobs, and Unsubstantiated Fears About Political Theories One Doesn’t Understand sectors. These recent gains, along with improvements made in the 4th quarter of 2008, allowed the United States to push past a declining France on the International Outrage Index.

“This truly shows the breadth and depth of the ingenuity of the American people,” observed lead statistician for the BEA, Adam Samuelsson. “Where other countries simply take our outrage and modify or improve upon it, we alone truly know how to innovate, create, and lead the world in manufacturing phony indignation over perceived slights and unsubstantiated persecution. Eat it, France! The US is back on top baby!”

Initial forecasts from the end of 2008 had been predicting a decline in US outrage for the 2009 fiscal year, mostly attributable to the fact that former president George W. Bush would be leaving office in mid January. This very event is believed to have caused the drastic decline in French enmity production towards the United States, long considered to be their strongest asset.

“I don’t think these analysts fully took into account the ability of the right wing sectors of this country to manufacture deluded hatred towards President Obama,” observed Dr. Harold Gerund, a statistician for the Princeton School of Mathematics. “These heroic Americans were able to step into a void of indignation and anger and furiously invent new shit to get livid about, basically within days of the inauguration. Add to that the inability of the left wing to get past their loathing of the departing Bush Administration despite the fact that the Democrats now control the White House and Congress. Luckily for the Outrage Index, there were still horrible new secrets and a crippling economic meltdown to fuel continued Bush hatred. Truly this country has been blessed with its utter inability to confront the world in an adult manner.”

Indeed the new Obama Administration has been able to simultaneously kick right wing industrial-strength outrage manufacturing into overdrive after a period of dormant inactivity while tamping down rival foreign outrage that would normally be directed at America.

In fact some countries are even coming to like America and its new President, a fact that has even further infuriated right wing outrage already brimming over with crippling paranoia from baseless fears of socialism, Obama’s Muslim heritage and/or birth certificate, UK-style health care, the liberal media, liberal fascism, terrorist appeasement, gay marriage, and Democratic Senators swooping into their cornfields and eating their sorghum.

“That’s the beauty of America,” said Samuelsson. “Not only are we able to get crazy mad about things we misheard or imagined, but we’re also able to crank up different sectors of our outrage capacity depending on whether foreign governments like us too much or too little. A diversified economy is a healthy economy.”

While some are quick to applaud the positive trends and our rediscovered dominance in developing and formulating ire, others are quick to point out that if the Middle East were to ever modernize its outrage manufacturing, we would not be able to keep up.

“God help us if they ever move their anger out of the Stone Age,” observed Samuel Grasscock of the Center for the Study of Pissed-off Arabs. “Imagine if they ever move their hatreds beyond a general hatred of the West and perceived persecution of their culture and religion? Imagine if they ever decided to get meta, like by getting outraged over the fact the we treat their outrage as some general, formless hatred of the West and freedom. Then we’d really be in for a manufacturing outrage gap.”

He then paused before yelling, “WHICH I AM VERY NERVOUS AND ANGRY ABOUT!!!”

When pressed for comment on the ways in which their petty complaints, delusional grievances, and deranged conspiracies were driving America’s upward manufacturing capacity trends, various movement leaders of right and left factions all seemed to be unanimously outraged that their outrage wasn’t being treated as a reasoned, rational response to a world gone mad.

Analysts are predicting that this outrage alone could result in a 2% bump for the next quarter.

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