Will irony strike out again?

A friend of mine, Dr. Ralph D. Berenger, sent the news story appearing below to me.  After securing permission to post and edit the story, I wasted no time in publishing this breakthrough.   Here it is in slightly edited form.

ARNOLD EXPLORES WHITE HOUSE BID!!!

(Los Angeles)  Hollywood and Washington are both paying close attention to the swirling rumors—unconfirmed as of Saturday morning—that Arnold Schwarzenegger has a certificate of live birth from Napoleon, North Dakota, dated July 30, 1947.  Governor Schwarzenegger has confirmed that he  cannot release his official birth certificate since the courthouse burned down in 1948, long before computerized record-keeping. According to the certificate, Governor Schwarzenegger was born at a private residence, attended by long-deceased cousins and a midwife, Mrs. Kitzel Schmidt.

According to local lore, Schwarzenegger’s mother, Aurelia, was visiting relatives in the central North Dakota Germanic community (where the Schwarzenegger name is well known) when Arnold was born at the home of a relative, Frederich Dopplebanger. Under nationalization rules at that time, a child born in the USA automatically was a U.S. citizen despite the nationality of his parents.

The California governor has quietly formed a Terminator for U.S. President committee and is awaiting court rulings on whether President Barack Hussein Obama’s certificate of live birth is sufficient to satisfy the natural-born citizen requirement of the U.S. Constitution.

Contacted at the Hotzenplatz’s Cafe on Main Street, Franz Schmidt, a long-time resident, responded that his mother was present when Schwarzenegger entered the world on his cousin’s kitchen table in 1947.  Schmidt added,

“Before she died in 1992, Mother Schmidt used to tell us the story every time a new Schwarzenegger movie came out. She was very proud. I remember her saying in her North Dakota brogue,  ’It was wunnerful, wunnerful, wunnerful’!”

“I hope Arnold wins the presidency.” Schmidt said. “We’d love to have a Presidential Library here. We even have a location—a vacant lot between Munchen’s Elevator and the Ace Hardware. It’s only a block or so from the old Schwarzenegger place, which also burned down in the Fire of 1948.”

“Yeah, sure. That’d be a big deal here,” said Ottmar Phluggenmeister, Napoleon’s mayor. “And it would be swell to have someone in the White House who sounds just like us.”

Schwarzenegger spent only a couple of days in North Dakota before returning with his mother to Graz, Austria, where he grew up before moving back to his birth country and beginning a career as a professional body builder, contractor, and then movie actor and Republican governor.

Phluggenmeister said a lot of memories of the Schwarzenegger birth are blurry and no one is alive today who actually attended the birth.

“But, by golly, he has that certificate of live birth, don’t ya know. That’s good enough!” the mayor beamed.

The aforementioned is a work of fiction, employing the same basic techniques that Dean Swift employed in 1729 in “A Modest Proposal.” Since the piece is well written, I asked for permission to publish it here.

Ralph’s fiction, I boldly predict, will have a long and interesting life on the Internet for several reasons:

1. It is well written. Good writing attracts readers.
2. It deals with a hot topic–Obama’s birth and birth certificate.
3. Many of people those who surf the Internet have no sense of irony whatsoever. I predict that in a week or so, someone will take this story as the starting point for a rant on why Governor Schwarzenegger should or should not run for POTUS in 2012.  The satirical nature of the piece will escape the blogger’s attention.  Over time, the story will be posted and reposted in other blogs and sent in e-mails, each one adding or subtracting something from what I’ve just posted.
4. Ralph will know for sure that his literary endeavor has achieved Internet superstar status when Snopes publishes an entry, declaring that the rumor that Governor Schwarzenegger was born in North Dakota “ist unrichtig!”

Once the Obamacare debate resumes next month, following the fate of Ralph’s literary offering on the Internet will be a welcome relief.