US Orders Alabama to Grow Up

By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker

13 February 15

The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."

week of turmoil in Alabama culminated on Friday with the United States ordering the Southern state to grow up.

After a week in which Alabama exhibited various displays of childishness—including kicking, screaming, stamping its feet, and threatening to hold its breath—the United States decided to take the extraordinary action of telling the hundred-and-ninety-five-year-old state to act its age.

But any hopes that the United States’ order would be heeded were dashed when Alabama put its fingers in its ears and emitted a stream of monosyllabic nonsense sounds, claiming that the order had been rendered inaudible.

That action may have only served to provoke the United States, which issued a subsequent statement characterizing the nation’s twenty-second state as nothing but a big crybaby.

While the United States clearly hoped that that final statement would cause Alabama to think long and hard about what it had done, the state’s official response—”I know you are but what am I?”—was not encouraging, officials said.