Politics

Spine Desk Screens 96 Officials For Comment On March; Scans Come Back Clean Of Spines

June Hardaway ran the newsroom's first full-caucus spinal screening. The equipment is fine. She checked the equipment first.

The Spine Desk asked ninety-six elected officials one question with one available answer: four hundred masked white nationalists marched on the capital; would you care to condemn them, by name, using nouns. The desk then imaged the results.

Sixty-one offices produced a statement condemning hate in all its forms, a phrasing calibrated to include no forms. Fourteen condemned division. Nine condemned the timing. Six condemned the heat. One senator, reached in a hallway, condemned hallways.

"I have reviewed the imaging twice. Where the vertebrae should be, there is a soft tissue described in the literature as polling." June Hardaway

The Index

The Spine Index rates each statement on load-bearing capacity: whether it can support one proper noun without collapsing. The phrase hate in all its forms scored zero, as it is engineered to be agreed with by the marchers themselves, several of whom, being anonymous, may already have issued it.

Consider a composite example the desk has named Senator Bradford Hemsworth. His office released the following: the senator believes extremism has no place in our discourse, wherever it may occur. The desk notes that the march occurred somewhere specific, on a date, with a name, none of which appear in a statement addressed to wherever. Asked whether the statement referred to the march, the office said the statement speaks for itself. The desk re-read the statement. It does not speak at all.

Diane Polk reviewed the desk's clinical language and approved the term cartilaginous, noting that cartilage at least holds ears on. She asked that the comparison not be extended to jellyfish, which have functioning nervous systems and respond to stimuli.

The desk will rescan quarterly. Officials who develop a spine between screenings are encouraged to use it in public, where the imaging is free.

Clinical note: One official condemned the march by name, unprompted, on camera. The scan showed a complete spine. The desk has preserved the film as a reference standard and would like more films.