An Early Decision

Having rendered herself unemployable in the entertainment industry thanks to her bold foreign policy positions, former comedienne Roseanne Barr is now thinking of entering politics and running for president.

Ms. Barr's vision of the presidency should definitely resonate with limited government types -- according to her, the office involves giving a speech, and "then you don't really have to do anything else." I imagine that, should she actually win the office, the country would probably be deeply grateful to her if she did just that. However, at least one of her first initiatives would probably be somewhat intrusive. She favors mandatory surgery on every male planetwide so that all men will indeed be equal, whether or not they were created that way.

Given just who exactly is proposing this idea, a non-surgical alternative -- repeated viewing of, say, the portrait that would adorn government offices during a Barr administration -- comes to mind. I can safely say that viewing such a portrait, combined with explicit instructions to imagine its subject in certain well-defined situations, is very likely to produce the exact same results as those outlined in Ms. Barr's plan without resorting to expensive surgery. Potential side effects, though, include the probable need for widespread long-term psychiatric care and an immediate and very steep decline in the world's birth rate.