When outreach exceeds one's grasp

The Oval Office. Charles Bolden, NASA administrator, is meeting with the President

Obama: Charles, I saw you on Al-Jazeera the other day. Good work! You did an excellent job explaining how we plan to use NASA for Muslim outreach. By the way, how was this idea received in your focus groups?

Bolden: Well, initially, very well. There was support for the policy across a wide spectrum. Then, when everybody figured out that we weren’t talking about putting Islamic terrorists on a rocket and firing it off toward the sun, the enthusiasm died down quite a bit. I think people are having a hard time grasping what the relevance of NASA is to our efforts to build up Muslim self-esteem.

Obama: Huh. Go figure. Some folks have a strange inability to understand simple logic.

Bolden: To proceed from point A to point 3.

Obama: Exactly. Anyhow, I think this policy needs to be nudged along. I wasn’t planning on having NASA do any more space missions…

Bolden: Hey, not my job, right?

Obama: Right. But we may find it useful to make an exception in this case. I’m thinking we build another space station - add some minarets, a gold dome, maybe install a foot bath or two – put a few Muslim astronauts on it and then send the thing into orbit.

Bolden: An excellent idea, Mr. President. But there’s one small problem; if anything goes wrong, the Muslims on the ground will say that we conspired to put their space-dwelling co-religionists at risk. You know how suspicious those people are. Er, with good reason, of course.

Obama: Of course. So, no Islamanauts, eh? Well, what do you say that we keep the design of the space station, and send up our own guys? We can stock the ship with food that’s strictly halal. That ought to be a hit with the Muslim world.

Bolden: Sounds fine to me. What could possibly go wrong?

* * *

The space-station monitoring unit in Houston. Employees are rushing frantically to and fro in response to the unexpected approach of the return vehicle from space station Mohammed I.

Ground Control: Mohammed I, Mohammed I…this is the Houston monitoring unit…The return vehicle has detached from the station…What is going on? Over.

Commander: Houston, this is Commander Wingate. The return vehicle has detached from Mohammed I because we’re all, you know, returning. Over.

Ground control: You haven’t been authorized to return, Commander. Over.

Commander: Well, that’s just too damn bad, sonny! This is an emergency. Over.

Ground control: Commander, I don’t understand. What is the nature of the emergency? Over.

Commander: We’re all willing to put our lives on the line to serve our country, but we’ll be damned if we’re going to do it on a steady diet of falafel and lentil soup. Over and OUT!