[Said in a normal voice by means of explanation.]

(The following memo was recently leaked from the Pentagon.)

[Read in the clipped, over-enunciated, sarcastic tones of a pissed, high-ranking general.]

To: Major Meredith Oglethorpe, Army Intelligence

From: General Hadrian Q. Halifax III,

Dear Major Oglethorpe:

I have been watching.

Major, I have been watching … television. And, as you can imagine, I am not at all pleased by what I have seen. In fact, I have been gravely disappointed, shocked, flummoxed, and stupefied in a mere matter of months by the goings on available to me via my home cable service. Surely, I do not have to elaborate on the cause of my disquiet. But just so that there are no tragic misunderstandings between us, allow me the indulgence. Major, I am talking about the show, Survivor. And in watching Survivor, I have been forced to ask myself how it is possible for one man to screw a pooch with the thoroughness and dedication that you have shown in your handling of this assignment!

Two years ago when I came to you with this project, you assured me…you practically got down on your knees and promised me that you were the man to bring this great vision to life. And I, for reasons that now seem to have been bordering on dementia, left in your profoundly incapable hands the most brilliant eugenics scheme in the history of mankind — a scheme with international implications; a scheme left in our hands by our brave President Reagan that held such depth, such promise that I shudder still to think of it — a scheme to control America’s population through television to a previously unheard of extent! I explained to you at that time President Reagan’s plan to use the lure of television to select the population for physical fitness, endurance, intelligence, wiles, and social facility, to put the resulting people in a contest against each other, and to laud the winners as celebrities beyond celebrities. With a large cash prize, we were assured in creating the nation’s most eligible bachelors. They would quickly breed, and we would track and similarly manipulate their children in the creation of a master race!

This was the plan that you assured me you could carry out. Two years have been spent developing it and covering our role in the matter. We even went so far as to introduce it in Sweden so that we would not be suspect. Initially, things seemed to progress quite well.

So imagine my surprise when the first winner of our beautiful contest, was a homosexual!

Tell me man, how are we supposed to build a master race with an individual who can’t even legally adopt much less show tendencies for reproduction? Millions of dollars and man hours have gone down the tubes for this screw up! What? Did you simply not consider the possibility? Has the Army been so engaged in Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, that you forgot that homosexuals existed?

Hoping that this was just a minor miscalculation, I have waited through the second round of our "grand scheme", the results of which were just announced last week. Good God, man! It’s a girl! Of course, I would have contacted you before now, but you see, I have spent the last few days having Mrs. Reagan tear me so many new assholes, that I now can take a shit in three separate counties at one time! The First Lady claims she can’t even bring herself to tell the President for fear he will die and then proceed to roll over in his grave!

And despite my assurances about the level of your incompetence, don’t think the implication here has slipped past the old bag — that gay men and women represent the superior elements of our population! While this would explain much … it is not an acceptable result!

Now, I don’t know what they call a situation like this in Army Intelligence — and I use the name as a mere formality — but in the NSA we call this a solid gold invitation for me to kick your ass! As much I appreciate your fervent and heartfelt offer, this is not going to happen! I tell is what is going to happen, I’m going give you one last chance to get a red-blooded, God Fearing, straight, white American male in that winner’s circle or I’m going to have you shipped to some godforsaken place where they’ve never even dreamed of penicillin — and there, we’re going to have our own game of Survivor, just you, me, and an Apache Attack Helicopter!

Hoping I have made myself perfectly clear, I remain:

General Hadrian Q. Halifax III, Director of Domestic Operations, NSA