Sometimes, a guy just wants to have fun.
This past week, President Biden announced that after a two-year sabbatical because of the pandemic, Burning Man will officially return in 2022. The nine-day event will be held on the White House lawn beginning August 28. When asked how 70,000 people were going to fit onto the lawn’s eighteen acres, Biden responded, “That’s a good question.”
Biden’s announcement was met with criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Fighting back tears, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, “The president has indicated that I won’t be invited to attend Burning Man next year. Joe said that only cool people would be allowed to attend. I may not be cool people, but I am the freaking Senate Majority Leader.”
Conservative talk show host Clay Travis opined that this was an underhanded way for the administration to promote Satanism. “Everybody knows that Burning Man is a satanic cult,” he said. “Just when you can’t imagine things getting worse, we discover that we are going to have tens of thousands of people doing devil dances on the South Lawn.”
Though he offered few details, the President did say that he had signed an Executive Order commanding several television networks—including The Food Channel and Comedy Central—to bid for the right to provide live coverage of the event. Chuckling, Biden added, “Hopefully we can extort enough from one of the networks to repair the damage that will be done to the White House ground.”
Housing advocates were encouraged by the announcement. “If the President can cram 70,000 people onto the White House grounds,” said one advocate, “surely he can find permanent space for the city’s 5,000 homeless people in the same space.”
The Food and Drug Administration issued a statement saying that, because of the pandemic, an emergency use permit would be required before it could sign off on the event. And the Environmental Protection Agency said that an environmental impact statement would be necessary. When asked to comment on these announcements, an anonymous janitor in the White House said, “Whatever.”