These kids today. . .

The very best humor is the kind that you could mistake for truth because it hits so close to home. The People's Cube excels at this:

A lesson in instant gratification went bad when a New York high-school freshman's remark about assassinating President Bush earned him a visit from the Secret Service, prompting a loud outcry from the educational community. "I don't know where this President is taking our country if a student can no longer openly express his idealistic aspirations and make a difference," says English teacher who oversaw the publication of the student magazine that printed the boy's statement. The comment about shooting the president to become "a national hero" appeared under a section titled, "How long does it take to live?" in which students answered questions of how they would spend their last 24 hours alive before attempting to assassinate George Bush.

"It was a normal training exercise in instant gratification," the school principal told us in his office at the Educational Complex in the Chelsea area of Manhattan. "It is part of the curriculum aimed at purging the students' minds of all traces of the bourgeois concept of delayed rewards, and teaching them about the importance of instant gratification. Let us not forget that the epitome of instant gratification is the act of martyrdom by a Palestinian suicide bomber who only needs to push a button once to get a free one-way ticket to Paradise. As responsible educators, we don't want to put any wrong ideas in our student's heads about the possibility of them surviving such a heroic act."

"Isn't killing Bush a good thing?" argue Irving's schoolmates in their friend's defense. "Isn't Bush a capitalist criminal that stole oil from the Middle East and unleashed global warming on Iraq, leaving the impoverished locals to blow themselves up from heat and exhaustion? Well, who would we rather believe - you or our professionally trained teachers?"

The consensus among the students and the faculty is that the "controversial" kill-Bush remark was "not a big deal" and that the simple-minded 14-year-old honestly and correctly reiterated the meaning of what they had learned in class: (1) this country is not worth living in or dying for, (2) Bush is the worst president, which is why (3) he must be killed, and (4) killing anyone is OK if it serves the Greater Good™.

Go read the rest.