Anthrax, schmanthrax

Tired of reading about anthrax? Well, sure you are! Welcome, then, to this space—a truly peaceful space that will allow you to escape into a happy-go-lucky, anthrax-free, Neon Babylon rainbow world from this point on, until the very bucolic and mildly humorous conclusion of the column.

Not! No, but really, I don’t think you should freak out for one more minute about the possibility that you may one day open an envelope that’s loaded with sinister spores that are just waiting for the opportunity to fly up your nose and kill you. Here’s why.

If the clowns who are whippin’ up these Thrax-o-grams really had a big-ass pile of the stuff—you know, like a Tony Montana-type pile of absolutely killer aerosolized anthrax—and if they really wanted to kill a whole bunch of us slack-jawed, lust-crazed, porno-peeping, bourbon-swilling infidels, well … THEY WOULD HAVE. You know? They would have.

But they didn’t. They didn’t because THEY COULDn’t.

If they REALLY had a few kilos of highly refined, super-dangerous anthrax, they would have gotten together with some of their favorite chums from nearby secret terrorist cells, sat down around a large round table in their hazmat suits with stacks of address lists, envelopes, stamps and about 10,000 of those wacky “you die now” letters. And, of course, “the stuff.” They would have had themselves a cozy little all-night envelope-stuffing party, and then, three to five days later, the bioterror war would have begun for real in thousands of unsuspecting American households.

Many would have opened these envelopes without fail, completely unaware that contained within was the most dastardly mischief imaginable. The unlucky recipients would have ignorantly futzed around with this strange powder to the point where it would be guaranteed that they would have inhaled thousands and thousands of spores. And the clumsy handling of the anthrax dust would further guarantee that the rest of the dwelling would be contaminated.

Result? Deaths in the thousands. Panic from coast to coast. The most mind-boggling story since … well, since 9-11 itself. Even MORE mind-boggling than 9-11.

But it didn’t happen. And it’s not gonna happen. Why not? Because these dipsticks, whoever they are, don’t have the stuff!

What they do have is a tiny little stash. So they figured out how to get the maximum bang for their buck. They sent poisoned envelopes to ABC and NBC and CBS and Tom Daschle and World Tabloid Headquarters. They knew our media would run amok with the story, and they could guess that America would then freak just a tad. And sure enough, you’ve got people in Boise buying gas masks and people in Topeka opening their mail with tongs.

So I say … relax. They couldn’t get us, so they had our own media get us.

Mission accomplished.