"Chestnuts roasting in an open fire" is an earworm from "The Christmas Song" (1944) written and performed by Mel Tormé. And today, in this joyous (?) holiday season of 2018, this blogger stumbled on an old chestnut (August 2015) written well before The Wall became a Yuge National Issue, thanks to the Horse's A$$ in the Oval Office. Re-reading this satirical essay by Andy Borowitz brought a smile at the dreary end of December 2018. If this is a (fair & balanced) demonstration of gallows humor, so be it.
[x New Yorker]
Nation With Crumbling Bridges And Roads Excited To Build Giant Wall
By Andrew (Andy) Borowitz
TagCrowd Cloud of the following piece of writing
As America’s bridges, roads, and other infrastructure dangerously deteriorate from decades of neglect, there is a mounting sense of urgency that it is time to build a giant wall.
Across the US, whose rail system is a rickety antique plagued by deadly accidents, Americans are increasingly recognizing that building a wall with Mexico, and possibly another one with Canada, should be the country's top priority.
Harland Dorrinson, the executive director of a Washington-based think tank called the Center for Responsible Immigration, believes that most Americans favor the building of border walls over extravagant pet projects like structurally sound freeway overpasses.
"The estimated cost of a border wall with Mexico is five billion dollars," he said. "We could easily blow the same amount of money on infrastructure repairs and have nothing to show for it but functioning highways."
Congress has dragged its feet on infrastructure spending in recent years, but Dorrinson senses growing support in Washington for building a giant border wall. "Even if for some reason we don't get the Mexicans to pay for it, five billion is a steal," he said.
While some think that America’s declining infrastructure is a national-security threat, Dorrinson strongly disagrees. "If immigrants somehow get over the wall, the condition of our bridges and roads will keep them from getting very far," he said. ###
[Andrew (Andy) Borowitz is the creator the Borowitz Report, a Web site that is a lot funnier than the stuff posted by Matt Drudge and his ilk. Borowitz is a comedian and writer whose work appears regularly in The New Yorker. He is the first winner of the National Press Club's humor award and has won seven Dot-Comedy Awards for his web site. His most recent book (and Amazon's Best Kindle Single of the Year) is An Unexpected Twist (2012). Borowitz received a BA, magna cum laude (English) from Harvard University (MA).]
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