Get Political: Digging Deep

Mort Bisby was just out of medical school, planning to become a mortician, when the news came. His father Herb, a successful habadasher, had decided to enter politics. This required Mort to sacrifice his goal to run the family business. However, this setback did not end Mort's love of the human cadaver, and he intended to someday be an undertaker (something he still kept as a hobby).

With the death of Senator Herb Bisby in 2001, Mort found himself swept up by the vacuum of state party politics.. This was a problem for Mort, a bachelor who preferred scalpel precision over political uncertainty. Yet Mort listened to his advisors and soon found himself infected by political ambition.

In truth, the man had no solid position on anything. But he learned to say what people wanted to hear. This allowed himself to be pro-choice in front of one group, and pro-life in front of another. He could talk about incarcerating first-time marijuana users one day, and favor legalization the next.

He counted on people having short memories. And it usually worked.

Rose-Marie Mary-Jane Collier-Jackson-Jones-Bisby was several years younger than her husband. She was a thin woman; bony some would say. But that was a trait shared by their children; AnneMarie Stephanie, John-Claude Adam, and T.J. Ahmal. The five members of the Bisby Family appeared in most of Mort's campaign posters. That was until a few people with longer attention spans noticed something was wrong.

The picture in the 2007 "Bisby for President" poster showed the three Bisby children had not aged at all from the "Bisby for Senate" 2002 poster. And when exactly did Mort Bisby marry this "sunken-eye beauty" as the press called her. And what about her intense fear of fire?

"The children were adopted," the Senator Bisby replied., explaining that they were malnourished in their native land. "As for my marriage. Well, it was in a private ceremony in..." Here Bisby had to stop, take out a calculator, and seconds later, reply, '1985'."

That quieted most of his critics. That was until ace Piker Press reporter (and night janitor) Dan Mulhollen found the truth.

In 1944, Bisby's grandfather, Ulrich Von Frankenbisby had to leave Germany, to escape both the Gestapo, and a torch-carrying mob. Aided by OSS agents, he was able to enter the United States to work on the top secret Project Stepford. He retired a few years later, shortened his name, and settled in Utah where he set up the family business.

Years later, ten year old Mort found his grandfather's records one night while looking for drawing paper. Old Ulrich's experiments fascinated the boy. In his teen years, he realized the great potential present in a re-animated family. Instead of relying on luck to have a loving wife and obedient children, he could simply build one.

The "Bisby for President" campaign was over. Soon, Mort started on a downward spiral of junk food and off-brand colas. His wife, however took the disappointment with her usual stony-faced cynicism. "It is America who has lost," she said. "Was my husband's playing God with me and the children that much worse than politicians who claim that God told them to run? Does my being made from the parts of seven women make me any less real than than a candidate's wife who pretends to be happy while secretly wishing for a divorce? I think not."

Within a week, the media had moved on to another politician's scandalous past.