Proof of Life?

Where is Mitch McConnell, the right-wing US Republican Senator and Trump enabler?  This is the question currently vexing America’s media and political class. The ancient legislator – often described as looking like a startled turtle that has just been evicted from its shell – hasn’t been seen or heard from since being rushed to hospital following an apparent heart attack several weeks ago. “Various people, including at least one fellow Republican Senator claim to have spoken to him on the phone and his family has released some highly dubious ‘proof-of-life’ photos of him in hospital,” says Ernie Calker, Political Correspondent of the Schenectady Prime Mover Gazette and Electric Trader.  “But look, with modern AI, that sort of thing can easily be faked so as to make it look as if McConnell is still alive when he’s actually currently residing in a chest freezer in his garage. Those photos, in particular, are highly suspect – he has three arms in one of them!” But, assuming that the Senator actually has turned up his toes, why is everyone, from his family to the White House, so reluctant to admit it?  “Personally, I think that they are stalling in the hope that they can, in some way, resurrect him in order to keep up the Republican numbers in the Senate,” muses Calker.  “But just what form such a resurrection could take is the question, though.”

According to an expert consulted by the Gazette, conventional medical attempts to revive the Senator have most likely already been exhausted. “In reality, there are only so many times you can put thirty thousand volts through someone’s heart without response before you have to concede that they are stone cold dead,” says Dr Ivan Lubritch, an expert in radical emergency medical techniques.  “So, it is clear that unconventional measures will have to be employed.” In Lubritch’s opinion, it is possible that McConnell’s political masters might have gone down the Frankenstein route and tried massive multiple organ transplants to get him going again. The sourcing of the organs, however, would be crucial, as rejection could be a strong possibility.   “They’ve doubtless learned from that fiasco with the late right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh – there was an attempt to bring him back from the dead through simultaneous multiple organ transplants shortly after his demise,” reveals the medic.  “The only fresh organs they could come up with at short notice were from a recently deceased young black man.  Limbaugh survived the operation and even revived, but he just seemed to know that he had the organs of a black person inside of him and rejected them in spectacular fashion – he literally exploded!”

With medical options seemingly ruled out, what other avenues might the Republican establishment be exploring to try and revive McConnell? “Well, there’s always that old favourite, the Voodoo route,” says Calker.  “Now, strictly speaking, this wouldn’t bring him back to life, but rather see him raised from the dead as a zombie.  Which could have its advantages, from a political point of view, as a zombie McConnell would be completely compliant to the orders of his master.  Just the sort of Republican congressman that Trump likes.” Calker is dismissive of those who might worry about the idea of a zombie McConnell, fearing that he’d start rampaging through congress, cracking open colleagues’ heads and feasting on their brains, (although, some would argue, he’d probably starve if relied solely upon congress for his diet).  “It’s only movie zombies that do that sort of stuff – traditional zombies created through Haitian Voodoo rites are compliant, slow-moving and rarely violent,” observes the reporter.  “So, who knows, perhaps even now there are a bunch of Voodoo priests dancing around his hospital room, performing all sorts of arcane occult rites.  After all, if we’re to believe Trump and Vance, the US is already infested with pet-eating Haitians, so by the law of averages, some of them would have to be well versed in Voodoo.”

Others suspect that Republicans might be planning a far more radical way of resurrecting Mitch McConnell so that he can once again take his seat in Congress. “Personally, I think that they are going to go for the puppet option,” opines John Torford, Washington Correspondent of British tabloid the Daily Norks.  “That’s right, they’re going to turn McConnell’s dead body into a life size puppet.  That’s why the delay and all the secrecy – they have to embalm him first, then replace his skeleton with a jointed metal framework, then work on attaching the strings, so that he can be manipulated like a puppet in a sixties Gerry Anderson TV series. In the first instance, he’ll only need to be convincing enough to provide some kind of ‘proof-of-life’ video.” According to the journalist, this wouldn’t be the first time that a prominent public figure had been kept ‘alive’ through puppetry. “Previous attempts have been somewhat less sophisticated,” he reveals. “They apparently kept the Queen Mother going for several years as a simple puppet, with a stick up her arse operating her head and mouth, and a couple of sticks operating her hands, Muppet-style – she was always seen standing behind a balcony so they didn’t have to worry about making her walk.”

Of course, the obvious question is: ‘Why haven’t they done the same thing with Senator Graham instead of announcing his death? Couldn’t Republicans have kept his demise covered up also, until they figured out a way to bring him back from the dead?’  “It’s a fair question,” concedes Calker  “But there’s an obvious answer: Graham’s death was sudden, coming out of the blue, without a lengthy hospital stay to use as cover.” Torford agrees.  “The same sort of thing happened with Princess Diana – there was just so much press attention surrounding her sudden death in a car crash that the authorities were forced to admit that she was dead almost immediately,” he claims.  “Believe me, if they’d had the chance of engineering a long hospital stay, then she’d still be with us today, jerkily wandering around on walkabouts, an embalmed smile permanently on her face, but posing no threat of embarrassment to the Royal Family as she’d at last be completely under official control.” Torford is confident that sometime soon we’ll be seeing a ‘proof-of-life’ video of Senator McConnell, jerkily strutting around his hospital room, prior to a return to Congress. “Despite the jerky movements, it will a hundred per cent more convincing than those photos they released,” he says. “Then it’ll just be a case of finding a way to keep his puppeteers hidden in the Senate and figure out a way to get him to walk through the doors without his strings breaking on the frame.”