After E-Mail and E-Commerce, Could E-Gregious Be Far Behind?

Attn: Bill Clinton

CC: All members of Congress

From: AOL (Governmental Interactive Dovetailing Division)

Hey guys!! All of us at GIDDY were having a little cybersummit around some pizza bones & Cokes and got to thinking about making the U.S. of A. a neat offer. It’ll sound a little offbeat, but don’t get your pixels in a twist until you get to the end of this proposal.

We think maybe the time has come to merge the United States and AOL, to create America.com!!!

Still with me? Outstanding! Give me a couple nanoseconds to show you why this could be HUGE for the country.

For starters, the United States would share our corporate home page. This means that the government of the U.S. would have WORLDWIDE access to our vast subscriber audience and of course be able to take advantage of our full range of Internet services, including live chat, sports, shopping and entertainment.

Sound good? Well wait!! AT NO EXTRA CHARGE TO THE GOVERNMENT, we would be willing to run banner ads across all of our pages. You could use them to promote upcoming legislation, get the word out about hog farm waste containment, explain why campaign finance reform is actually a CIA plot or send flowers on your wife’s birthday, all within the America.com site!

And don’t forget we’re an international company, so that you can transact a lot of your worldwide business, right from the America.com task bar. Trying to nail down a campaign contribution from the Chinese Air Force? You can do it all with a few simple clicks of your mouse. We think the country’s gonna love this, but we’re going to make the deal just a little sweeter for the average guy on Windows 95.

We’d be willing to give each and every citizen nine free mailboxes, live chat and free tech support 24-7!!!

I won’t pretend this won’t boost our portfolio a bit. When you consider the stock value of little cyberspace antiques stores and funeral supply companies that never have made it into the black for an hour, this can’t lose. The merger of the largest, most innovative Internet company with the world’s largest, most productive economy is going to take the NASDAQ through the stratosphere.

Still, when you consider the benefits to the country, we think this is a classic win/win situation.

The United States will want to be the first out of the block with this. You’d be pretty embarrassed if France or Indonesia beat us to it first. Our marketing guys are betting that within just a couple years, we’ll have England.com, Vietnam.com, Guam.com--the possibilities are staggering.

Sure, there will be griping from technophobes who will claim that we’ve crossed the line. They’ll moan about pledging allegiance to America.com. They’ll grumble about the revisions required to “America the Beautiful” and “God Bless America.” They’ll whine about having to include a mousepad on the Great Seal and switching the stars on the flag to file folder icons.

But these are the same kind of people who complained about the Wright brothers, Alexander Bell, Gutenberg and those two guys who invented “South Park.”

So whaddaya think? You guys should go talk among yourselves and get back to us. I wouldn’t take too long, though. The chancellor of Germany is on the other line.