EXCLUSIVE!!!

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but there's a massive news story that the mainstream media is totally ignoring. Wonder why President Obama's speech at the Tucson memorial received so much applause? Sure, it was okay. It was interesting. But was it really as good as all that?

No, it wasn't. In fact, the audience applauded because our choice was either clap or die.

See, I was there, so what I say is indisputable fact. I was too far away from Obama to see him, so like most people I watched him on the Jumbotron. And there at the bottom, mixed in with the captions for the hearing impaired, were commands that we all had to follow!

Every minute or two another order would pop up, typed in by some anonymous flunkee fascist. Sometimes he'd write "[Applause]," and sometimes he'd write "[Laughter]." Naturally we all had to comply, because these orders came straight from the Socialist in Chief. Don't feel like laughing? I bet Anne Boleyn didn't either!

I expected something like this -- in fact, that's why I went -- but this level of arrogance shocked me. I thought we still had a few weeks of democracy left!

Roman, some of you are thinking, you clearly had a choice. In fact, my brother-in-law saw my hands shaking, and suggested that maybe these bracketed words were documenting what was happening rather than telling us what to do. But, I ask, how were we to know? We were terror victims ourselves! In fact, I was so traumatized by the end that when the caption read "[Music]" I scarcely had the wits to comply.

Thank God I'd brought my ocarina along or I probably wouldn't be here today. And my brother-in-law, the guy who blithely told me to shut the hell up? I'm sure it'll come as no surprise to say I haven't seen him since.