Opinion: Time for a California telethon. Operators are standing by.

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What’s left? What else can California do to yank itself back from the brink, before it hits bottom and finds itself looking up to ... Mississippi?

The governor’s telling us our wallets are empty, our credit cards maxed out. What gets thrown out of the sledge next? Prisoners, released early across California? Sick people, cut off from their meds and their doctors?

A listener to KPCC radio pointed out that this is just another kind of disaster, so why not ask for help?

Sounds to me like ... telethon time.

Save a state! Call 1-800-please-please-please-please-please.

Over the Fourth of July holiday, cable and broadcast channels across the nation would be enlisted to air the marathon telethon as an act of compassion. The world would uplink to the spectacle of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, sweating as the hours pass, pulling at his tie and urging the tote board to go up, up, up, to rescue California from its budget earthquake/brushfire/tsunami.

His celebrity friends could take a turn helping to pump up the pledge numbers. Americans by the millions, who’ve been infuriated by California’s tanned and prosperous ‘tude over the years, would get the immense pleasure of calling up to drop some condescending change into our begging bowl. Perhaps even President Obama could call in the nation’s support, promising to make every federal agency, at home and around the world, in every cafeteria and PX and break room, check the coin returns in their vending machines and donate every last penny they find.

Everyone might find some reason to save California, from artists eager to keep museums open to oil company executives anxious to keep the nation’s biggest car culture rolling. Children could call and pledge their pennies to save Mickey Mouse’s home state. Nigerian businessmen might email confidentially to let California in on hundreds of millions of dollars lying unclaimed in a dead dictator’s account, if only we’d send our check for $25,000 to cover expenses.

And as the last, desperate hours and minutes tick away, the Gay Men’s Chorus and the choir of Rick Warren’s Saddleback church could join voices to sing the moving telethon theme, ‘’You’ll Never Surf Alone.’’

How much can I put you down for?