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New Game Show: Welfare Queen for a Day

HOLLYWOOD -- Based on the recent looting of two Louisiana Walmart stores by food stamp recipients, several game show production companies are suddenly scrambling to resurrect the classic reality show fore-runner, Queen for a Day.

Unconfirmed reports claim Mark Burnett, producer of several highly successful reality shows, including Survivor, The Apprentice and The Voice, has acquired the rights to the original TV show, which aired from 1956 to 1964 on NBC, from television executive Michael Worstman.

Using the classic applause meter, as did many game and hit-parade style shows of the time, Queen for a Day had its own special twist: each contestant had to talk publicly about the recent financial and emotional hard times she had been through. The interview would climax with host Jack Bailey asking the contestant what she needed most and why she wanted to win the title of "Queen for a Day."

"It has the potential to be a runaway hit," said acclaimed millionaire movie director Michael Moore. "With the gap between rich and poor growing ever wider in this country, it will tap into the very heart and soul of this country."

White House officials neither confirm nor deny that they have had any discussions with Burnett regarding the show, though an unnamed source in the Department of Agriculture, which administers the government's food stamp program, claims that contingency plans were recently put in place to be able to issue an unlimited EBT card good for twenty-four hours.

"EBT" stands for Electronic Benefits Transfer, which is an electronic system that allows state welfare departments to issue benefits via a magnetically encoded payment card, used in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The radical right-wing blogosphere has been rife with conspiracy theories that the incidents at separate Walmart stores in Springhill and Mansfield, where EBT cards temporarily showed no limits, resulting in a chaotic shopping spree that cleared the shelves, were, in reality, a secret government trial run for the game show. The USDA, the DHS and the NSA all deny those allegations.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Democrat Party officials are giddy to the point of hypoxia at the prospect of the show's premier in time for the 2014 mid-term elections.

New York and Los Angeles talent agents have reported being deluged with audition tapes paraphrasing Jack Bailey's storied show opening, "How would you like to be a One Percenter for a day?"

While Hollywood Squares alum and welfare-to-millionaire success story Whoopi Goldberg is said to top the list to star as the show's host, conventional wisdom is that heartless conservative veterans Pat Sajak and Chuck Woolery need not apply.

There are even whispers that former President Bill Clinton has expressed interest in becoming the "Bob Barker" of what some are calling the new genre of "Realpolitik" game shows.

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