ReadMe Bets Entire Budget on Landslide Mondale Election Victory
It’s not the 70s anymore. Hippies are out. Snorting cocaine in a yuppie penthouse is in. ReadMe is playing it fast and loose, strutting down Wall Street with slick backed hair, a new suit, and a son named ReadMe Jr. with a distant look in his eyes and a baseball game tonight. It’s 1984, and ReadMe is just getting started.
The markets are roaring. The lines are going up and then down a little and then up more. Telephones are getting slammed down at an unprecedented rate. ReadMe needs to move fast.
After countless sleepless nights drinking fine brandy and ignoring calls from the wife, ReadMe finds its goldmine: Walter Mondale, former vice president, presidential candidate, and veritable sex magnet. A financial opportunity like no other. Betting on presidential elections is risky, but ReadMe eats risk for breakfast, alongside three hard boiled eggs and a cup of black coffee.
ReadMe lives large and lives fast, but is also a publication of science. Theories must be tested. Minnesota: Americana in the North; a hub of whatever happens in Minnesota, the perfect testing ground. ReadMe transfers the funds from the million dollar budget of the Oweek issue into a vast Minnesota polling initiative. The results trickle in. They’re conclusive: a decisive victory for Walter Mondale.
It’s November 6th, 1984. ReadMe is symbolically sitting alone in a giant glass office. It’s time for the money to roll in. Soon ReadMe won’t just be the premier CMU satire magazine, but a titan of the financial world, an unparalleled economic behemoth. ReadMe smiles, not with joy exactly, but with a quiet understanding of what’s to come: Success, money, the affirmation ReadMe’s distant father never gave. Walter Mondale, you beautiful bastard. Nothing could possibly go wrong.