U.S. Declares Victory in Cold War as Bush Shellacs Gorbachev in Potato Sack Race
December 7, 1991
ZURICH—The United States has emerged as the undisputed winner of the Cold War after American President George H. W. Bush trounced Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in a potato sack race on Wednesday.
The race, which reached an estimated 400 million television sets around the world, was agreed to at a bilateral conference held in November last year. The two countries pledged to abide by the results of the contest in settling all disputes between the world’s superpowers and determining the balance of power in the coming millennium.
“Well gosh darn it, I’m just about as pleased as punch,” a breathless, ruddy-cheeked Bush told reporters following the race. “I don’t even know if I’ll take the sack off. Maybe this will just be my pants from now on. What do you think, a president who wears a potato sack instead of pants? I’m not joking.”
The Shady Dealer also spoke with Gorbachev, but was unable to transcribe his exact remarks, owing to the sudden resignation of its in-house Russian translator, who cited this paper’s involvement in the ivory trade in an open letter explaining her decision. However, using a combination of facial expression analysis and context clues, The Dealer was able to approximate his response as follows: “I was simply no match for the sprightly virility of Mr. Bush. His body is endowed with the limitless vitality of capitalism and democracy, while mine is hopelessly encumbered by the sluggishness and dysfunction of the communist system. O, what shame, what shame upon me and upon my nation! Plus my birthmark looks weird!”
Upon his return to Washington, George Bush was treated to a surprise pizza party attended by all 250 million Americans, who said that the president had earned it after all those months of rigorous training and dieting. Gorbachev, meanwhile, announced in a fax to the world’s newspaper writers that, in accordance with the result of the race, he would be immediately dissolving his country into a bunch of new, smaller countries and telling those new, smaller countries to knock it off with the whole communism thing.
