CHICAGO — In a rare act of bipartisanship, members of Congress from both political parties have agreed to ignore Chicago’s growing epidemic of violence, a course of action made all the more easily due to the Constitution’s limit on Federal powers.
“It’s a challenge for us to agree on anything these days,” said House Speaker John Boehner. “But when it comes to Chicago’s soaring murder rate, we’re pretty damn thankful that there’s no way we can get involved.”
Boehner then held up a copy of his pocket Constitution, adding with a grin: “We just don’t have the power.”
According to official city police reports, 2012 saw more residents of Chicago killed than U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan, a country in which the US is currently engaged in a war. Upon learning this, residents of the Windy City were shocked to discover that their local police were busy keeping a tally of the number of deaths in Afghanistan rather than catching criminals.
Congressional leaders from across the country reveled in their bipartisan display of apathy, with Representative Corrine Brown of Florida expressing his full commitment to avoiding the topic of Chicago altogether. “I barely acknowledge Reps. Mike Quigley (D, II), Danny Davis (D, Il), and Luis Gutierrez (D, Il) when I see them,” proclaimed Brown. “That’s how seriously I’m taking this.”
Rep. Joe Heck (R, NE) took a more humanitarian stance to the issue of ignoring Chicago’s plague of violence. “Look, we represent the American people, and the majority of Americans don’t care that Chicago has a homicide rate quadruple that of New York.
“Will someone get me a cup of coffee?” he added.
Waxing poetically, Speaker Boehner recalled a time when Congress was sort of interested in Chicago’s growing violence – a time he referred to as the Eighteen Hundreds.’
“Oh, and there was also that time when Jesse Jackson, Jr. – a Democrat currently facing charges of corruption – had this plan that he wanted share with us addressing the actual root of violence and gangs,” remembered Boehner. “He was going to tell us all about it after he finished showing us some new hats he’d just purchased. But then he lost interest once the Feds started knocking. Typical liberal.”
Asked if there was any way Congress could assist Chicago directly without violating its powers under the Constitution, Rep. Brown Charles Rangel paused to think.
“I could see people caring about Chicago, but only if a grandmother died in some unspeakably horrible way,” he said. “And she’d need to be really old, like 80 or 90. Yes, if a 90 year-old grandmother walking home from the corner store in her slightly worn housecoat with curlers in her hair were to be brutally gang-raped, that might do it.”
“Oh, and she’d totally have to be white.”