In a better world, Gip Hoppe’s A New War would be an outrageous cartoon. Unfortunately, it’s closer to docudrama. This latest act of guerrilla craziness from the author of Jackie, an American Life is an only slightly heightened depiction of the fatuous, uninformed news circus that’s beamed ’round the clock by cable television. Inspired by the cable-news channels’ coverage of " The War Against Terrorism, " the 80-minute lampoon brings us the puffed, addled, breaking-news coverage of what it labels " America’s new war " — a conflict about which the media know less than nothing. Which doesn’t stop them from tap-dancing all over it.

As explained by a stiffly coiffed male and female anchor broadcasting from " the studios of the Cable News Channel in Atlanta, Georgia, " the American people have just been handed a " shiny, gleaming " new war (which is not to be confused with the old war). About the conflict little is known except that it is being fought " somewhere, " against " an unknown enemy " that dresses differently from us and has weird eating habits. As the coverage continues, trying to whip itself out of less than egg whites, a malapropping President, folksy Secretary of State, and fascist Attorney-General (who perfunctorily suspends the Constitution) plus " Warren ‘Toughie’ Thompson of the Department of Fatherland Security " all address us via satellite. (In perhaps Hoppe’s most inspired riff, the diabolically paranoid Thompson reports that suspicious, olive-skinned persons have been caught sequestering a " liquid of doom " in a tank attached to their vehicle.) And guests ranging from a medal-bedecked military consultant to a Buckley-esque historian to a style reporter modeling a hugging-camouflage " retro ‘war’-drobe " show up at the studio. At regular intervals, the news team revisits a black hole of a photo identified as the " night sky " over the unknown war zone.

A New War starts limply but gathers momentum, and as is true of most Hoppe pieces, parts of it render you more helpless than others. Liberals and " pointy-heads " will find the satire more delectable than will friends of Fox News — which is ably lampooned by a " Point/Counterpoint " segment in which the far right and the moderate right argue over which of them is the more " plain-spoken, " multi-syllabic utterance apparently being for them the root of most evil. Before the pundits agree to shake and make up, war appears to have been declared on the article (both definite and indefinite) and the two are flinging insults like " big-word brain " and " flippy smart-boy tongue " at each other.

Hoppe directs the broad-comic lampoon, in which Caitlin Gibbon and Nathaniel McIntyre play the glib anchors (their names change every time they’re addressed), who consult their unnatural coiffures, fawn over their interviewees, and grasp at profundities as if at straws. Broad-faced, usually big-haired stand-up comic Michael Dorval and brilliantly chameleonic Stephen Russell portray everyone else, from the doddering Secretary of State fretting over his brave bombs to a patriotic C&W singer who offers a song invoking the " Sleeping Giant " that is the nation to " stand up and stomp around. "

But there is genuine criticism wrapped in Hoppe’s flag-draped-tube bashing. Like some missiles, the play has an arc, and where it lands is in America’s own back yard, where narrow simplemindedness is, increasingly, as much at a premium as simpler, " sit under the chestnut tree with banjo and homemade root-beer times. " Hoppe is at his best when he spikes such giddy concoctions with a point. And A New War, making digs at self-interested warmongering, increasing anti-intellectualism, and show-biz news, gets more pointed, as well as funnier, as it goes along.

Of course, you could ask whether any of this is funny given that we are on the brink of a " plump, vine-ripened " new war and that the talking-headed idiocy on view here may soon pale before reality. Hoppe says he wrote the play less in merriment than in anger. But even if the satirist is mad as hell, he’ll have a hard time, in the time-honored television-criticism manner of Network, not taking it anymore. We might as well laugh before we duck and cover.