WASHINGTON—In what is being touted as the most damning government leak since Watergate, an unnamed employee at the Department of Defense has blown the cover off a top-secret military project to carve and launch into orbit a beautiful, 70-foot tall marble bust of actor and filmmaker Danny DeVito playing a child-sized upright bass.
The sub rosa initiative, nearly 15 years in the making, was unveiled to the public by an anonymous whistleblower earlier today. “What began as plans for a counterterrorism missile defense system spiraled into something slightly different but nonetheless beautiful” reported Secretary of Defense James Mattis. “Say what you will, but the bust is gorgeous, if that’s the kind of thing you’re into.”
Many on the left have blasted the project as a waste of public funds. Senator Katherine O’Neil (D-CA) referred to the launch as “yet another example of exorbitant military spending that forsakes the many civilians struggling to get by here at home.” Senate Republicans, however, have touted the bust as a necessary replacement for the melting life-sized ice sculpture of a naked Jonah Hill doing the spread-eagle Da Vinci pose, which has been orbiting alongside the International Space Station since the 2007 release of Superbad.
Advocacy groups have claimed that the launch plans violate the Outer Space Treaty, a 1967 UN agreement governing the launch of weapons of mass destruction into Earth’s orbit. According to Andrea Katz, a representative for the organization “Humans United Against WMDs,” launching a stunning marble bust of such terrific size into low Earth orbit would constitute a legitimate threat to human life, should it crash into a spacecraft or otherwise distract astronauts with its delicate contours and striking verisimilitude. In response, DoD officials have promised to end the initiative and start immediately on a new project to launch two equally beautiful half-sized busts of half-sized Danny DeVitos playing half-sized-child-sized upright basses.
Activists are hopeful that public backlash towards the DoD initiative could spur a domino effect against other intrusive U.S. foreign policies. At press time, the Department of Homeland Security was backtracking on a private contract to send a vocally asexual Bob Saget robot to build schools in Iraq.
— C. Cohen