Our Gang

opponents could now be so desperate to oust me from power so disrespectful, not simply of me, but of the august office of the Presidency, to take those few utterly harmless and totally meaningless words that I spoke that day, and turn them into this monstrous lie!

Gentlemen, I am no newcomer to the ugly game of, politics. I have seen all kinds of chicanery and deceit in my day — falsification, misquotation, distortion, embellishment, ‘and, of course, outright suppression of the truth. Nor am I what you would call a babe-in-the-woods when it comes to the techniques of character assassination. Years ago I looked on in disgust and horror when they crucified Senator Joseph McCatastrophy just because he kept changing his mind as to the number of Communists there were in the State Department. I saw what they did only recently to judge Carswell. I saw what they did to judge Haynsworth. Why, just last month look what they tried to do to Secretary Lard, when he held up that phony piece of pipe before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and said it was from Laos instead of Vietnam. Five miles away — and they’re ready to hang him for it!

But, I must admit, never in my long career of dealing with falsehood have I come upon a lie so treacherous and Machiavellian as this one my enemies are trying to pass off about me… What did I say? Let’s look at the record. I said nothing! Absolutely nothing! I came out for “the rights of the unborn.” I mean if ever there was a line of hokum, that was it. Sheer humbug! And as if it wasn’t clear enough what I was up to, I even tacked on, “as recognized in principles expounded by the United Nations.” By the United Nations. Now what more could I possibly have said to make the whole thing any more inane? Maybe I was supposed to have told them “as recognized in principles expounded by the American Automobile, Association.” Maybe I should have given the whole speech in Pig Latin, and made funny faces while I was at it! Maybe I should have come out to make the statement in a clown’s costume! But I did not do that — because I refuse to talk down to the American public. I refuse to pull my punches. I refuse to believe that the people of this great nation are incapable of recognizing the most outrageous kind of hypocrisy or sniffing out the most blatant contradictions imaginable… And yet this, this is my reward, for my faith in America. The Boy Scouts of America screaming to the TV cameras that Trick E. Dixon favors sexual intercourse. Favors fornication between people!

POLITICAL COACH: Of course, as of now, it’s still only the Boy Scouts, Mr. President.

TRICKY: Today the Boy Scouts (here he sinks down onto the bench before the blackboard, barely restraining a sob) — tomorrow the world!… And what about my wife — what is she going to think? What if she starts to believe it? What about my children? WHAT ABOUT THE VOTERS!

SPIRITUAL COACH: Here, here, Mr. President. I sympathize with your chagrin, particularly as it relates to your fine family. But, frankly, I do not believe that the American people who see you on TV, any more than those who know you at firsthand, are going to be taken in by such a blatant fabrication. If ever a man, in his every word and deed, his every movement and gesture, his glance, his sneer, his very smile, put the lie to such a slanderous accusation as this one, it is you.

TRICKY (visibly moved): Reverend, I thank you for that tribute. Surely I have tried to give no indication whatsoever to the people of this country that I even know what sexual intercourse is. Futhermore, I have instructed my family that they must under no circumstances allow it to appear that any of us have ever in our lives been. infected by desire or lust, or, for that matter, an appetite for anything at all, outside of political power. This may sound immodest of me, but I happen to pride myself on the fact that if it weren’t for my perspiring so on television, the American people would probably have no way in the world of telling that under my clothes I am flesh. And, of course you all know, as a result of a decision I reached here during a lonely vigil in the locker room only a few nights ago, this disorder will very shortly be corrected when I enter Walter Reed Hospital to undergo a secret operation for the surgical removal of the sweat glands from my upper lip. You see, gentlemen, that is how dedicated I am to dissociating myself from anything remotely resembling a human body. But now to accuse me of this! As though to be for the rights of the unborn was prima facie evidence — that is, evidence sufficient to establish a fact, or to raise a presumption of fact… that’s what we lawyers mean by that phrase… as you know, before entering the White House I was a lawyer, and so I know phrases like that… as though that were prima facie evidence that I was also in favor of the process by which the unborn come into existence in the first place. To accuse me, because of a perfectly innocuous statement like that, of encouraging people to have intercourse in order that they should have unborn, in order that those unborn should have these rights — that don’t even exist! And that I wouldn’t care about, even if they did! How could I? Here I am, President of the United States and Leader of the Free World, working and slaving with every fiber of my being, night and day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, for the sole purpose of getting myself reelected — where would I find the time to worry about the rights of anything? Haven’t they any idea what this job is all about? The whole thing is so patently absurd! And yet there are those Boy Scouts, in uniform, marching in the streets of the nation’s capital and those signs:

GO BACK TO CALIFORNIA,

SENSUALIST, WHERE YOU BELONG

POWER TO THE PENIS? NEVER!

REPRESSION — LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT!

SPIRITUAL COACH (solemnly, taking the arm of the shaken President): Mr. President, forgive them, they know not what their signs say.

TRICKY: Oh, Reverend, Reverend, I assure you, under ordinary circumstances I would bend over backwards to forgive them. I like to think that I am the kind of man who can find it in his heart to forgive his worst enemy. Why, not only have I forgiven Alger Hiss, but when I was elected President, I sent him an anonymous telegram expressing my gratitude for all he had done in my behalf. And that man was a perjurer! Listen, I would actually have forgiven Khrushchev himself, yes, right there in that kitchen, if it had been politically expedient to do so. Just look what I’m up to right now: I’m in the very process of forgiving Mao Tse-tung, who by my own estimate has enslaved six hundred million people!

But I am afraid, Reverend, that where these Boy Scouts are concerned, we are fighting for a principle so fundamental to civilized life, that even a man of my magnanimity must rise up and say “No, this time you have gone too far.” Reverend, they are trying to prevent me from winning a second term!

SPIRITUAL COACH: I see… I see… I must confess that I had not thought of it quite that way.

TRICKY: It is not a pleasant way to have to think about it. All of us would prefer to look with charity and respect upon our fellow human beings, whatever their race, creed, color or age, and to treat them according to the tenets of our religious beliefs. Certainly no one in this country wishes to appear more religious than I do. But sometimes, Reverend, people just make being religious impossible, even for someone who stands to gain as much from that posture as I do.

SPIRITUAL COACH: But if such is the case, if these Boy Scouts, for some incomprehensible reason, are out to destroy your political career by casting doubt upon your Sunday school morality, perhaps it would be best for you to go on television and give the people the facts as they really are. As you did when they accused you in the 1952 election of being the recipient of an illegal political fund. The Checkers Speech.

TRICKY (intrigued): You mean give it again?

SPIRITUAL COACH: Well, perhaps not the very same speech.

TRICKY: Why not? It worked.

SPIRITUAL COACH: True. But I wonder, Mr. President, if it addresses directly the issue at hand.

TRICKY: Maybe not. But you know, Reverend, when you’re dealing with wild and reckless charges like these, when you’re in the midst of a crisis such as this one, that could snowball overnight into political disaster, then you sometimes have to do what works, and leave things like the issues themselves for later. Otherwise, I’m afraid there might not be any later.

SPIRITUAL COACH: Well, I’m not a politician, Mr. President, and I must admit that I may be hopelessly naive to believe that The Truth Shall Make Ye Free. But I do think that if instead of giving the Checkers Speech again, instead of itemizing your earnings over the years and telling how much money you owe your parents and so on, you were now to make a similar address, in which you presented to the nation an itemized account of your sexual experiences, giving exact dates from your appointment calendar — when, where, and with whom — you might well feel secure in leaving it to the American people to judge whether or not you are an advocate of fornication.

TRICKY: You mean, go on TV with the appointment books…

SPIRITUAL COACH: Yes, and leaf through them page by page, until at last you come upon an item to read aloud. I would think the long silences will in themselves be the most eloquent part of the broadcast.

TRICKY: What about charts though? What about a graph? You see, I don’t know if people are going to sit around all night in front of their television sets waiting for me to say something. But if we had a graph where we