The orange menace knots his power tie. When finished he looks down to inspect the result. Its tip grazes a knee, sways and grazes the other knee, and so on back and forth between his knees, just as the tip of a perfectly deployed tie ought. He tapes the tie-tail, rendered too short to reach the keeper loop, firmly into place. Then he inspects himself in the full-length mirror. He likes what he sees. The orange menace grins, and a relief of orange putty, the shape of a walnut, forms on the pediment atop his scrofulous lappet.
Tag Archives: Election 2016
Mr. Leftright
On a beautiful day such as today, when the sun cheers the bright winter sky, I will generally go outside. Today however I am staying inside. Whether to go out or stay in used to be a difficult decision, until I realized that the outside and the inside are the same, that whatever differences there may be, they are of no consequence. Perhaps tomorrow I will go out, or perhaps tomorrow I will stay in. I will regret my decision, either way, as I always regret my decision, whether I stay inside or I go outside.
The President’s Spokesperson Speaks
They call me Betty but that is not my name. It’s one of the things they call me. There are many things that they call me but these things are only words. Words do not have literal meaning. That is a mistake made by the media—taking our words literally. When we use words it is the spirit of the words that matter not the literal meaning of the words. Everyone has a spirit of the word in his own head and that is the meaning for that person, or a meaning that is true for that person, which makes it true, just as my name is not Betty but people call me that, although I don’t recognize it as my name. I deny that my name is Betty. Betty is a word and a word is a sound in the mind. I am not Betty.
Rasah Lapin
When I runned for Vice President gosh you know our Heavenly Father was there with me running beside me like you know in that inspirational poster with the footprints in the sand on the beach where sometimes there is only one pair of footprints and that is like you know God carrying you. Because golly you know sometimes he carried me on the beach and so like there was only you know one set of footprints in the sand. It was God’s will that I runned for Vice President in 2008 and jeez we went in a wrong direction there as a country for eight years but it was God’s will that Mr. Crusher won I saw it. Everything is God’s will you know like that I runned and it was His will that I won but I didn’t won but it was God’s will and it wasn’t God’s will you know the last eight years of a wrong direction but now it is God’s will done praise God.
The Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the President
I make a nice cup of tea, which is what one does in the evening. I am sitting in my favourite chair, which is what one does when drinking a nice cup of tea in the evening. Mr Crusher does not drink tea, nor does he drink coffee. On many things we agree, but the taking of a nice cup of tea in the evening, sitting in one’s favourite chair, is not among them. I mention this for its narrative utility, human interest being the fuel of a story, but also because tea time is when I talk to the President-elect. My tea time, not his. He does something else when we talk in the evening, whatever it happens to be. I have never asked, and he has never told. I have my theories.
Yes, Mr. President, Yes
Geld Times journalist, Barry Leed, has spent the day on a metal bench in the Crusher Tower lobby. The waiting’s been in vain, not just for him but for the pool of journalists that engulfs him. There has been no sign of the orange menace, nor of his chief strategist, Shive White. The few insiders who do arrive emerge from limousines and are hurried to the elevator, like a leaf floating on a current. A door opens and they appear, another opens and they are gone.
To boil a frog
I was in an Upper Manhattan bar with Herbert J. Gans, around the time he was writing The War Against The Poor, and once again we were discussing media bias. Journalism would be better without objectivity, I argued. Better to be truthful than objective. Report the facts, and never be afraid to declare and defend a position. I had the best arguments that day.
Journalism, Essays, Broadcasting, Books 