The shock and awe over President Barack Obama’s coolly swatting a fly during a TV interview today has resounded throughout the mainstream media, resulting in a major change to the format of future Presidential debates: questions will be replaced by tests of insect-swatting prowess.

In an unprecedented news conference, the presidents of all major media outlets (except Fox): David Westin of ABC News, Phil Griffin of MSNBC, Steve Capus of NBC News, Sean McManus of CBS News, and Jonathan Klein of CNN announced in a joint communique: “Now more than ever, Americans want a hip President, and there is nothing more hip than swatting a fly in media res. In fact, President Obama himself, speaking with great humility about his performance, said, ‘That was pretty impressive, wasn’t it? I got the sucker.’”(*)

The communique continued: “As distractions, such as Iran and North Korea, mount, it is more important than ever that Americans focus on those qualities of a President that make American great, yet we know that words can be misleading. After all, we misuse them every day. Therefore, we are moving from words to action.  Future Presidential debates will consist of presenting candidates with progressively more difficult and elusive insects to swat, starting with gnats, moving to flies and ending in Killer Bees. The candidates—and the insects—will succeed or fail on their own merits.”

President Obama reacted positively, observing, “I’m hip, I’m cool, I swat flies. I am everything I ever wanted to be—kind of like Mastercard, as it were—and everything every American has wanted to be.”

Economists polled applauded the action, explaining that it would produce a stimulus for entomologists “the likes of which the world has never seen.”

(*) Actual quote from Obama: not satire.