I absolutely love this Slate parody of the anonymous op-ed in the NY Times from a senior administration official at the White House. In this version, a member of a group that’s in the middle of robbing a bank portrays himself as a hero for turning on the gang’s leader — while continuing to take the money.
“Machine Gun” Bill McGuire, the leader of the gang of hardened criminals currently robbing the First National Bank, is facing a test to his leadership unlike any faced by a modern American bank robber. It’s not just that the building is surrounded by police officers. Or that he’s running out of hostages to bargain with. Or even that the sentries he posted in the loading dock don’t seem to be responding over their walkie-talkies anymore. The dilemma—which he does not fully grasp—is that many of the senior henchmen inside his own gang are working diligently from within the bank to paint ourselves as heroes in the press while continuing to stuff our duffel bags with as much money as we can grab.
I would know. I am one of them. To be clear, ours is not the popular “police department” of the government, the one that enforces the laws against robbing banks. We want the robbery to succeed and think that the part where we made the bank clerks hand over all the money in their drawers at gunpoint was a step in the right direction.