I have heard a lot of conspiracy theories about prominent people: that they are actually evil space lizards or controlled by same, that they are all Illuminati or Masons, that they are somehow demon-possessed or in the pay of warring alien races. This is clearly foolish and probably schizophrenic.

I have an alternate theory. I believe that in the early 1980s, shortly before he died, Andy Kaufman had himself cloned. The Kaufman clones grew quickly and were dispersed into the community, and there were thousands of them. Today, almost every prominent person in politics, entertainment, the arts, academia, the military, and media is an exact copy of Andy Kaufman.

This explains a number of things. How many times in the last few years have you heard someone say “This is insane! It’s like an Andy Kaufman routine!”? How many rumors have there been that Andy isn’t actually dead, but faked it and is in disguise? How many times have you looked at someone on TV or read something in the paper and though “Are daily events just riffing on Andy, or what?”

Locally we had a school board member named Steve Rocco who caused yet another set of Andy-lives rumors last month. The so-called “Borat” phenomenon is clearly Latka. The Turkmenbashi, Santorum, almost all bloggers, Zacarias Moussaoui, the list of Kaufman projects just goes on and on. How much of American public discourse now resembles 1970s pro wrestling? Nearly all of it!

There’s only one way to find out. I propose mandatory Andy DNA testing. How else will we know how much of our society is being controlled by his one last, best perfect performance?

And think about it. You could be an Andy too, and not know it yet.