Tricky is dressed in the football uniform he wore during his four years on the bench at Prissier College. It is still as spanking new as the day it was issued to him some forty years ago, despite the fact that when he finds himself at night so perplexed and anguished by the burdens of the Presidency as to be unable to fall off to sleep, he frequently rises from his bed and steals down through the White House to the blast-proof underground locker room (built under his direction to specifications furnished by the Baltimore Colts and the Atomic Energy Commission) and “suits up,” as though for “the big game” against Prissier’s “traditional rival.” And invariably, as during the Cambodian incursion and the Kent State killings, simply to don shoulder guards, cleats and helmet, to draw the snug football pants up over his leather athletic supporter and then to turn his back to the mirror and catch a peek over his big shoulders at the number on his back, is enough to restore his faith in the course of action he has taken in behalf of two hundred million Americans. Indeed, even in the midst of the most incredible international blunders and domestic catastrophes, he has till now, with the aid of his football uniform, and a good war movie, been able to live up to his own description of the true leader in Six Hundred Crises as “cool, confident and decisive.”
“What is essential in such situations,” he wrote there, summarizing what he had learned about leadership from the riots inspired by his 1958 visit, as Vice President, to Caracas, “is not so much ‘bravery’ in the face of danger as the ability to think ‘selflessly’ — to blank out any thought of personal fear by concentrating completely on how to meet the danger.”
But tonight not even barking signals at the fulllength mirror and pretending to fade back, arm cocked, to spot a downfield receiver (while being charged by the opposing line) has he been able to blank out thoughts of personal fear; and as for thinking “selflessly,” he has not been making much headway in that department either. Having run plays before the mirror for two full hours — having completed eighty-seven out of one hundred attempted forward passes for a total of two thousand six hundred and ten yards gained in the air in one night (a White House record) — he is nonetheless unable to concentrate on how to meet the danger before him, and so has decided to awaken his closest advisers and summon them to the underground locker room for what is known in football parlance as a “skull session.” At the door to the White House, each has been issued a uniform by a Secret Service agent, disguised, but for a shoulder holster, as an ordinary locker room attendant in sweat pants, sneakers and T-shirt stenciled “Property of the White House.” Now, seated on benches before the big blackboard, the “coaches” listen carefully as Tricky, with his helmet in his hands, describes to them the crisis he is having trouble being entirely selfless about.
TRICKY: I don’t understand it. How can these youngsters be saying what they are saying about me? How can they be chanting those slogans, waving those signs — about me? Gentlemen, by all reports they are growing more surly and audacious by the hour. By morning we may have on our hands the most incredible upheaval in history: a revolution by the Boy Scouts of America! (In an attempt to calm himself, and become confident and decisive, he puts on his helmet)
Now it was one thing when those Vietnam soreheads came down here to the Capitol to turn their medals in. Everyone knew they were just a bunch of malcontents who had lost arms and legs and so on, and so had nothing better to do with their time than hobble around feeling sorry for themselves. Of course they couldn’t be objective about the war — half of them were in wheelchairs because of it. But what we have now isn’t just a mob of ingrates — these are the Boy Scouts! And don’t you think for one moment that the American people are going to sit idly by when a Boy Scout, an Eagle Scout, climbs to the top of the Capitol steps and calls the President of the United States “a dirty old man.” Let there be no mistake about it, if we do not deal with these angry Scouts as coolly and confidently and decisively as I dealt with Khrushchev in that kitchen, by tomorrow I will be the first President in American history to be even more hated and despised than Lyin’ B. Johnson. Gentlemen, you can go to war without Congressional consent, you can ruin the economy and trample on the Bill of Rights, but you just do not violate the moral code of the Boy Scouts of America and expect to be reelected to the highest office in the land!
And yet when I made that speech at San Dementia, it all seemed so… so perfectly and, if I may say so, so brilliantly, innocuous. Five minutes later I didn’t even remember what it was I’d endorsed. That my political 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 measured the hours in which I have engaged in the ordinary human activities of scheming, plotting, smearing and so on, against those I’ve spent having intercourse — well, it could be pretty impressive. And I could use a pointer! At the risk of seeming immodest, I think I can hold my own with any schoolmaster in the country in using a pointer and charts, though of course by training I’m a lawyer, you know… And I’ll borrow a dog!
Well, how does it sound to the rest of you?
POLITICAL COACH: Speaking frankly, Mr. Pres ident, I think we are barking up the wrong tree with this whole idea of using the truth or the dog. We’ve used the dog, of course, and with some success, and though I don’t have my file with me, I’m sure we’ve used the truth some time or other in the past, too. Off the top of my head I can’t remember exactly when, but if you like I’ll have my secretary look — it up in the morning. However, right now it seems to me that, given the hysteria of those Scouts, and the kind of coverage they’re getting, if you were to go on television and say that you have had intercourse only once in your entire life, maybe as some kind of initiation rite when you were in the Navycrossing the equator maybe — and that the whole thing had lasted less than sixty seconds, and you had hated it from beginning to end, and that you had to be held down throughout, and so on, even that would be enough to make you appear guilty of the charges the Boy Scouts are bringing against you.
TRICKY (reflecting): Of course, if you’re going to rule out the dog and truth and so on, maybe the best approach is for me to go on TV and deny the whole thing. Say I’ve never had intercourse.
POLITICAL COACH (shaking his head): Have you seen that mob, Mr. President? They wouldn’t believe you, not at this point.
TRICKY: Suppose I spoke from HEW, with the Surgeon General at my side, and he read a medical report stating that I am not now, nor have I ever been in the past, capable of performing coitus.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Mr. President, at the risk of being politically naive again, you are the father of two children… that is, if that means anything, in this context…
POLITICAL COACH: Politically naive, hell — that was good thinking, Reverend.
TRICKY: But why can’t we just say they were adopted?
POLITICAL COACH: No, no, that doesn’t really solve the problem. Even if we are able to establish you as not only sterile, but one hundred percent impotent, even if we were able to get the American public to believe that these children who resemble you so were adopted — and, mind you, I think we could do both, if it came down to it — you are still going to be compromised, it would seem to me, by appearing to have taken into your home the offspring of somebody else’s sexual intercourse. You are still going to be locked into this fornication issue.
LEGAL COACH: Absolutely. Open and shut case of guilt by association. If I were the judge, I’d throw the book at you. And another objection. If he goes on TV and says he’s impotent, most of the people out there aren’t even going to know what he’s talking about. I don’t doubt that half of them are going to think that he means he’s queer.
POLITICAL COACH: Wait a minute! Wait one minute! How about it, Mr. President?
TRICKY: How about what?
POLITICAL COACH: Going on TV and saying you’re queer. Would you do it?
TRICKY: Oh, I’ll do it, all right, if you think it’ll work.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Oh, but surely, Mr. President —
TRICKY: Reverend, we are talking about my political career! With all due respect, we happen now to be listening to a man whose business is politics, just the way yours is religion, and if he says that in a situation like this one the truth and the dog and so on are not going to get us anywhere, then I must assume he knows what he is talking about. After all, one of. the signs of a great leader is his willingness to listen to all sides of an issue without being blinded by his own prejudices and preconceptions. Now I am a Quaker, as you well know, and consequently it is only natural that I should be prejudiced in behalf of the advice given to me by a spiritual person like yourself. But I cannot run from the facts, just so as to be a better Quaker in your eyes and in mine. We are dealing with a mob of youngsters whose minds have been poisoned with a terrible lie. We are going to have to find a way to restore them to their senses while simultaneously restoring to the office of the Presidency its dignity and prestige. And if in order to accomplish those two important tasks I have to go on TV and say I am a homosexual, then I will do it. I had the courage to call Alger Hiss a Communist. I had the courage to call Khrushchev a bully. I assure you, I have the courage now to call myself a queer! The problem is not my courage to say this or say that; it never has been. The problem, as always, is one of credibility. Will they believe me?
General, will they buy it over at the Pentagon? That should certainly be a good test case.
MILITARY COACH (considering): They might, sir. They very well might.
TRICKY: Would it help if I batted my eyes more, when I talk?
MILITARY COACH: No, no, I think they feel you bat your eyes enough already, sir. Any more and it might not go over too well with some of the old timers.
TRICKY: I take it from what you say that you would positively rule out my wearing a dress. Something simple. A basic black, say.
MILITARY COACH: Not necessary, sir.
TRICKY: How about earrings?
MILITARY COACH: No, I think you’re fine as you are, sir.
TRICKY: The point is I don’t want to come off as just a sissy. Five o’clock ‘shadow and all, I really have to watch myself in that department.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Mr. President, if I may, in. your eagerness to do the right thing for the nation, I. think you may be overlooking a small technical point. Homosexuals have intercourse also.
TRICKY (stunned): They do?. How?
(Here the Spiritual Coach takes Tricky by the handmuch as he might comfort one in bereavementand, leaning forward, discreetly whispers the answer into the President’s ear)
TRICKY (recoiling): Why, that’s awful! That’s disgusting! You’re making that up!
SPIRITUAL COACH: Would that I were, Mr. President.
TRICKY: But — but — (Here he leans forward to whisper into the Reverend’s ear)
SPIRITUAL COACH: I suppose they don’t care about that, Mr. President.
TRICKY (outraged): But that’s bestial! That’s monstrous! This is America! And I’m the President of America! And — and — (turning in bewilderment to the other coaches) listen, do you people realize what’s going on in this country? Do you know what he just told me?
POLITICAL COACH: I think we do, Mr. President.
TRICKY: But that’s grotesque! Uccchhy! It makes my lip crawl!
POLITICAL COACH: To be sure, Mr. President. But nonetheless in terms of the problem that is facing us, it happens to be neither here nor there. The point is this: homosexuals, regardless of whatever else they may do, are in no way involved in the sort of sexual activity that produces fetuses — and that is still what these Boy Scouts are up in arms about. Consequently, if you were to go on TV and say you were a homosexual, in the minds of most Americans you would have cleared yourself of the charge the Boy Scouts are making, that you are a heterosexual activist. You’ll be entirely in the clear.
TRICKY: I see.. I see… Okay — I’ll do it! There — that’s the way to be in a crisis: decisive! Just as I wrote in my book, summarizing what I learned during General Poppapower’s heart attacks, “Decisive action relieves the tension which builds up in a crisis. When the situation requires that an individual restrain himself from acting decisively over a long period, this can be the most wearing of all crises.”
You see, it isn’t even what you decide — it’s that you decide. Otherwise there’s that darn tension; too much, and, I tell you, a person could probably crack up. And I for one will not crack up while I am President of the United States. I want that to be perfectly clear. If you read my book, you’ll see that my entire career has been devoted to not cracking up, as much as to anything. And I don’t intend to start now. Cool, confident and decisive. I’ll do it — I’ll say I’m a queer!
LEGAL COACH: I wouldn’t if I were you, Mr. President.
TRICKY: You wouldn’t?
LEGAL COACH: Nope, not if I were the President of the United States. Why should you? At the time of the Checkers Speech, when you were only a candidate for the Vice Presidency, of course it. was necessary to explain and apologize and be humble and tell them how much money you owed your Mommy and Daddy and that you had a doggie and so on. Look, I wouldn’t have objected back then if you had gotten down on your hands and knees on television, and demeaned and debased yourself in whatever way was most natural to you, in order to come to power. But now you are in power. Now you are the President. And who are those kids in the street, leveling these outlandish charges at you? They’re kids, in a street. I don’t care what kind of uniforms they wear, they are still not adults in houses. And that makes all the difference in the world.
TRICKY: Your suggestion then is what?
LEGAL COACH: No less than any other citizen in this country, Mr. President, you still have recourse to the law. I say use it. I say round ‘em up, put ‘em in the clink, and throw the key away.
MILITARY COACH: Objection! Enough mollycoddling of the enemy. Let’s get it over with once and for all. Shoot ‘em!
TRICKY (considering) : Interesting idea. I mean that is just about as decisive as you can get, isn’t it? But may I ask, General, shoot ‘em after we round ‘em up, or before? This of course is the problem we always have, isn’t it?
MILITARY COACH: After, sir, and we are running the same old risk.
LEGAL COACH: On the other hand, General, be fore and don’t think you aren’t running a risk too. Before, and I can tell you now, sure as we’re sitting here, you are going to get those civil rights nuts down on your neck, and I tell you they are a great big pain in the ass to everybody involved, and can tie up my staff for days at a time.
MILITARY COACH: Granted, they are a nuisance. But after, and you are going to get yourself mired down with these Boy Scouts just the way we are mired down in Southeast Asia. After, and you are sacrificing what is fundamental to the success of any attack: the element of surprise. Common sense tells us that even the enemy is not so stupid as to stand around waiting to be shot, but if he has had sufficient warning that he is about to be killed, will take some kind of cowardly and, often enough, vicious means of protecting his life, such as fighting back. Now I, of course, abhor that kind of deviousness as much as anyone; nonetheless we must face up to it: these people haven’t the slightest sense of fair play, and many of them will not even stand still waiting around to be jailed, let alone killed.
And what about the moral issue? I have a conscience to live with, gentlemen, I have a tradition to uphold, I am responsible to something more important than dollars and cents. And I tell you, I will not mollycoddle the enemy at the risk of American lives, unless of course I am ordered to do so. Mr. President, I must speak from my heart, I would be remiss as a General of the United States Army if I did not. Mr. President, if on the day you took office we had, with your permission, lined up and shot every single Vietnamese we could find, by so doing we would have saved fifteen thousand American lives. Instead, sir, following the course of action that you have ordered as Commander-in-Chief, and shooting and blowing them up piecemeal, catch as catch can, ten here, twenty there, and so on, we have suffered severe losses of both men and materials.
Admittedly, by doggedly pursuing your strategy, we are now beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel. And I have every hope that we will be able to help you make good on your promise to the American people, that by Election Day 1972, and according to your own secret timetable, you will have accomplished the complete withdrawal of the Vietnamese people from Vietnam.
My point, sir, is that we have ways of accomplishing such withdrawals in a matter of hours. I beg of you, Mr. President, let us not repeat the errors of Vietnam in our own backyard.
LEGAL COACH: Of course, Mr. President, I can not fault the General on his tactical wisdom, and believe me, I am not for a moment worried about taking on these civil-rights nuts. It’s just that if we shoot these Scouts in the street before we round ‘em up and jail ‘em, it is, as I said, going to create an awful lot of unnecessary busywork for my staff, many of them first-rate young men whom I can employ at far more useful and worthwhile tasks. However, before or after, Mr. President, whichever you choose, you can count on my support. But for you to go on TV and make a confession, or an apology, or any kind of explanation for yourself whatsoever, well, to my mind, nothing could more seriously undermine your moral and political authority, or constitute a graver threat to the cause of law and order. I will even go so far as to say that if you appear in any way to give ground on this issue — or any issue for that matter — you will be opening the floodgates to anarchy, socialism, communism, welfarism, defeatism, pacifism, perversion, pornography, prostitution, mob rule, drug addiction, free love, alcoholism, and desecration of the flag. You’ll see a rise just in jaywalking that will stagger the imagination. Now I don’t mean to throw a scare into anyone, but the fact is a vast criminal element in this country is waiting for just a single sign of weakness in our leader, so as to make its move. Anything at all that might suggest to them that Trick E. Dixon is not totally in control, of himself and the nation, and I hate to tell you what would follow.
TRICKY (interrupting): That’s exactly why I’m having my sweat glands removed, to show how in control I am.
LEGAL COACH (continuing): Now, as you know, there is bound to be a certain amount of blood shed, when we go ahead and kill these young people, whether we do it before or after. This blood is something we seem always to run into with the killings, one of those facts of death we have to live with. Reverend, I see you shaking your head. Are you suggesting that it is possible to kill people, even youngsters like this, without spilling blood? If so, I’d like to hear about it.
SPIRITUAL COACH (anguished): Well.. what about gas.. poison gas… Something like that? Surely enough blood has been shed in our century.
MILITARY COACH: The only trouble with gas, Reverend, if I may speak here on the basis of my own firsthand experience — the trouble with gas is that unfortunately we don’t have these Scouts in a big open space. If we had them, say, smack in the middle of a desert somewhere, sure, spray ‘em and it’s over with.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Couldn’t we get them to a desert then?
LEGAL COACH: How? (Wary) Are you suggesting bussing them there?
SPIRITUAL COACH: Well, yes, busses would do it, I suppose.
TRICKY: No, I’m afraid they wouldn’t, Reverend. I have thought this matter through and I have made my decision: this administration will not bus children from Washington, D.C., all the way to the state of Arizona to poison them. That is a matter in whieh the federal government simply. will not intervene. This is a free country, and certainly one of your fundamental freedoms here is choosing the place where you want your child to be killed.
SPIRITUAL COACH: And there’s simply no way you can poison them right here?
MILITARY COACH: Much too dangerous, Reverend. Start out gassing these kids, and next thing, you get a wind or something, and you have poisoned some perfectly innocent adult miles away.
LEGAL COACH: Of course, you’re going to get some guilty adults too, you know, if you let it spread far enough.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Gentlemen, please! I stand utterly opposed to any course of action wherein the welfare of ‘a single innocent adult is even remotely threatened. I don’t care how many guilty adults you get in the process.
MILITARY COACH: All right with me, Reverend. I’d rather shoot ‘em anyway. I have always maintained that it gives the individual soldier a stronger sense of participation and accomplishment to pull the trigger and see the results with his own eyes.
SPIRITUAL COACH (to Legal Coach): And you?
LEGAL COACH: Fine with me. So long as we all realize beforehand that there is going to be this blood, and sure as we are sitting here, the media are going to exploit it to the hilt. I don’t have any doubt whatsoever, given the kind of people who pull the strings in the press and TV, that they are going to blow this whole thing out of proportion, and, for instance, are not going to have a word to say about the restraint that’s been displayed by our not using poison gas, or bussing. I mean, we could subject these kids to what is virtually a cross-country bus trip, a long hot grueling drive out to Arizona, without food, water, toilet facilities and so on, prior to killing them, and yet, as we all know, with the exception of the Reverend here, not a single member of the administration has spoken in support of such a proposal. But will you hear about that on TV? I think not.
TRICKY: Oh, no. They never tell that side of the story. It’s not sensational enough for them, not enough gore. Not enough violence to suit their taste. No, it’s never what we didn’t do, it’s always what we’ve done. That, unfortunately, is what these people consider newsworthy.
LEGAL COACH: Luckily, Mr. President, the people of this country are still by and large passive and indifferent enough not to get all stirred up by this kind of irresponsible sensationalism on the part of the media.
TRICKY: Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’ve never lost my faith in the wonderful indifference of the American people. Just because they happen to see a little Boy Scout blood on TV… Boy Scout blood on TV? (His lip is suddenly drenched with perspiration) They’ll impeach me! They’ll —
LEGAL COACH: Nothing of the sort, Mr. President, nothing of the sort. It’s only another crisis, you have nothing to worry about. Come on nowcool, confident and decisive. Come on, repeat it after me, you know how to behave in a crisis: cool, confident and decisive.
TRICKY: Cool, confident and decisive. Cool, confident confident and decisive. Cool, confident and decisive. Cool, confident and decisive.
LEGAL COACH: Feel better now? Crisis over?
TRICKY: I think so, yes.
LEGAL COACH: You see, you mustn’t be frightened of Boy Scouts, Mr. President. Of course they’re going to bleed a little and there may even be this hue and cry about it on TV, but when the country sees this sign that one of them was carrying before the bleeding began (extracts from his briefcase a sign reading DIXON FAVOR SEFFING — The Reverend gasps), I think our worries are going to be over. Let the newspapers run all the photos of Boy Scout corpses they want — we’ll just run a photo of this sign, and of the five thousand replicas that I have asked the Government Printing Office to run off by morning. We’ll see who gets the support of the nation then.
TRICKY: Look! I’ve stopped sweating!
LEGAL COACH: See? You’ve weathered another crisis, Mr. President.
TRICKY: Wow! That makes six hundred and one! (Congratulations all around, from everyone except the Highbrow Coach, who speaks now for the first time.)
HIGHBROW COACH: Gentlemen, I wonder if I may take a somewhat different approach to the problem that we have been assembled here to solve. All the while I have been listening to your suggestions, I have simultaneously been bringing to bear upon the problem all my brainpower, wisdom, academic credentials, cunning, opportunism, love of power and so on, and the result is this list that I am holding in my hand, of the names of five individuals and/or organizations upon whom I think we can safely — if I may use the vernacular for a moment — pin the rap.
LEGAL COACH (his interest suddenly aroused, after initial suspiciousness of “the Professor”): The rap?
HIGHBROW COACH: “The rap.”
LEGAL COACH: Which rap?
HIGHBROW COACH: You name it. Inciting to riot. Tampering with the morals of minors. If you prefer, corrupting the youth of the nation.
POLITICAL COACH: “Corrupting the youth.” Hey, that’s got a real campaign ring to it!
HIGHBROW COACH: And a certain historical resonance, I would think.
SPIRITUAL COACH: At the risk of sounding “square,” may I put in a good word for “tampering with the morals of minors”? I’ve always found it to have tremendous appeal. It seems there is something in the word “tampering” that particularly infuriates people.
LEGAL COACH: That may be, Reverend, but in my book you still can’t beat “inciting to riot” for scaring the hell out of the public.
TRICKY: And you, General? You look distressed again.
MILITARY COACH: I am distressed again! I am distressed every time the Professor opens his mouth! What is this business of bringing charges? Oh, mind you, they’re good charges and I don’t have anything against them personally, but the last thing I remember we were talking about shooting the bastards.
HIGHBROW COACH: General, despite your low opinion of intellectuals, I happen to have the highest regard for Army officers such as yourself, particularly in their devotion to their men and to their country. I wonder if once you have heard me read my list, you won’t agree that to charge any of these five self-avowed enemies of America with the crime, to fix the responsibility for the uprising of the Boy Scouts on any one of them, will simultaneously absolve the Boy Scouts themselves of any real guilt, while totally discrediting the charges they have made against the President. The Scouts will retreat in panic…
MILITARY COACH: But without our firing a shot!
HIGHBROW COACH: The country isn’t going away, General.
TRICKY: Sounds interesting, Professor. But why only one of the five? That strikes me as highly unusual.
HIGHBROW COACH: Well, perhaps, but I was just wondering if we haven’t gone the route with the conspiracy business.
TRICKY: Oh, but it’s so much fun when you get to choose two or three. Each person picks his favorites — and then all the wheeling and dealing, until we come up with the conspiracy that suits everybody.
LEGAL COACH: And, of course, Mr. President, to put in a word here in behalf of the cause of justice, the more choice you’re allowed, the greater the chance of catching the right culprit. My feeling is that just to stay on the safe side, each of us should choose a minimum of three.
SPIRITUAL COACH: I know I’m outside my baili wick again, but if it is going to improve the chances for justice being done, why can’t we choose all five?
MILITARY COACH: Mr. President, I am growing more and more exasperated by the moment. Here we sit, in the comfort and spendor of this fully equipped underground locker room, in full football regalia, deliberating over the niceties of justice, while, with every passing moment, those Boy Scouts are readying themselves for battle against my men. I think it is high time we reminded the Professor that he is no longer up there in his ivory tower, where you can talk yourself blue in the face about this one’s rights and that one’s rights and how many rights fit on the head of a pin. There is an angry mob of Boy Scouts out there, Eagle Scouts among them, and they are growing angrier and more threatening by the moment. I say shoot ‘em and shoot ‘em now!
TRICKY: General, you are a brave soldier and a loyal American. But, I must say, I sense in your remarks a certain disregard for fundamental constitutional liberties such as I have pledged myself to uphold in my oath of office.
MILITARY COACH: Mr. President, I have the highest regard for the Constitution. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have devoted my life to fighting to defend it. But the fact of the matter is, we are playing with a time bomb. Right now it is still only the Boy Scouts. By morning, and I can guarantee you this, their ranks are going to be infiltrated by dissolute Brownies and Cub Scouts looking for adventure. Now it’s one thing to ask my men to mow down Eagle Scouts; it is another for them to have to deal with little boys and girls half that size. Those kids can run like the dickens, and they’re small. As a result, what right now would still be a routine street massacre, will be converted into dangerous house-to-house fighting, in which we are bound to sustain heavy losses by way of our soldiers shooting mistakenly at each other.
TRICKY: I think you know, General, that nobody wants to save the lives of our boys — by that I mean, of course, our men — any more than I do. But I repeat: I will not do so by trampling upon the Constitution. I campaigned for this office as a strict constructionist where the Constitution of this country is concerned, and if I were now to take the course that you suggest and acted to prevent this group from voting in open and honest elections on the Professor’s list, then the American people would have every right to throw me out of office tomorrow.
And let me make one thing perfectly clear: nobody is ever going to do that again. They have thrown me out of office enough in my lifetime! I will not be cast in the role of a loser — of a war, or of anything. And if that means bringing the full firepower of our Armed Forces to bear upon every, last Brownie and Cub Scout in America, then that is what we are going to do. Because the President of the United States and Leader of the Free World can ill afford to be humiliated by anyone, let alone by third- and fourth-graders who have nothing better to do than engage the United States Army in treacherous house-to-house combat. I don’t care if we have to go, into the nursery schools. I don’t care if our men have to fight their way through barricades constructed of lanyards and hula hoops and bubble gum, under a steady barrage of toys being grossly misused as weapons — I, as Commander-in-Chief, will not run from the battle. Not when my prestige is at stake! If I have to call in air strikes over the playgrounds, I will do it! Let’s see them try to bring down B-52’s with their bats and their balls! Let’s see them try to flee from my helicopters on those little tricycles of theirs! No, this mighty giant of a nation of which I am, by extension, the mighty giant of a President, will not have its nose tweaked by a bunch of little brats who should be at home with their homework in the first place!
(All applaud)
Now, as to the voting. Since I am a decisive man, as you can see from my book Six Hundred Crises, I am now going to decide how many of these five enemies of America each of you will be allowed to choose to charge with the crime. Of course, we still have to decide which of the three crimes that the Professor mentioned we’re going to use, but in that it is getting on to morning, perhaps we can put that off to a later date. In the meantime, we will come to a decision as to who is guilty. (Impish endearing smile) That’s the best part, anyway!
Now (back to serious business), we will proceed in the following manner: the Professor will read his list, and each person present will select as many as he wants, up to three… No, two… No, three… Uh-oh, my lip’s sweating — uh-oh, I think I’m having another crisis! Two! Two! Say two!
POLITICAL COACH: Good going, Mr. President you’ve weathered it!
TRICKY: Wow! That makes six hundred and two crises! Wait’ll I tell the girls what Daddy did!
LEGAL COACH: Mr. President, in that we are to be allowed only two of the candidates from the Professor’s list, may I ask if we can each add two names of our own, should we think we have more that warrant suspicion?
TRICKY:, Well, let me ask you a question. Is this a deal you want to make?
LEGAL COACH: Well, if you want to think of it that way, that’s okay with me.
TRICKY: I’d prefer to. Otherwise it might seem that I was changing my mind because I’m indecisive. But if it’s just a matter of a payoff for something or other you’ll deliver in the future, I think everybody here will understand.
LEGAL COACH: Suits Me.
TRICKY: There we are then. Two from the Professor’s list and two of your own choice.
HIGHBROW COACH: To the list then, gentlemen. is Hanoi. z: The Berrigans. 3: The Black Panthers. 4: Jane Fonda. 5: Curt Flood.
ALL: Curt Flood?
HIGHBROW COACH: Curt… Flood.
SPIRITUAL COACH: But — isn’t he a baseball player?
TRICKY: Was a baseball player. Any questions about baseball players, just ask me, Reverend. Was the center fielder for the Washington Senators. But then he up and ran away. Skipped the country.
HIGHBROW COACH: He did indeed, Mr. President. Curt Flood, born January 18, 1938, in Houston, Texas, bats right, throws right, entered big league baseball in 1956 with Cincinnati, played from ‘58 to ‘69 with the St. Louis Cardinals, presently under contract at a salary of $110,000 a year to the Washington Senators, on the morning of April 27, 1971, with the baseball season not even a month old, boarded a Pan Am flight bound from New York to Barcelona, giving no explanation for his hasty departure other than “personal problems.” Though Flood is known to have purchased a ticket for Barcelona, he apparently disembarked in Lisbonwearing a brown leather jacket, bellbottomed trousers and sunglasses — there to make connections with a flight for his final European destination… The question, gentlemen, is obvious: why, a week to the day before the uprising of the Boy Scouts in Washington, D.C., why did Mr. Curt Flood of the Washington baseball team find it necessary to leave the country in so precipitous and dramatic a fashion?
TRICKY: Oh, I think I can answer that one, Professor, knowing sports as I do inside and out. Poor Flood was in a slump, and a bad one. In his first twenty times at bat this year, he’d had only three hits, and two of those were bunts. Fact is, Williams had benched him. He’d sat out six starts in a row against right-handed pitching. Now I may be the highest elected official in the land, but I still don’t think I’m going to second-guess Ted Williams when he benches a hitter. No, sirree. On the other hand, you can well imagine the effect being benched had upon a one-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year star player like Flood.
HIGHBROW COACH: With all due respect, sir, for your knowledge of the game, which far exceeds my own, this “slump,”as you call it, might it not have been just the right “cover” for a baseball player planning to leave the country in a hurry, just the right alibi?
LEGAL COACH: If I get your drift, Professor, are you suggesting that Ted Williams, the manager of the Senators, is implicated in this as well? That benching Flood was part of some overall plan?
POLITICAL COACH: Now hold — on. Before we carry this any further, I want to say that I think we are skating on very thin ice here, when we are dealing with a baseball figure of Ted Williams’ stature. Despised as he was by many sportswriters in his time — and I’m sure we could call upon these people for assistance, if we should want them — my gut reaction is that it is in the best interests of this administration to maintain a hands-off policy on all Hall of Famers.
TRICKY: And what a Hall of Famer! I wonder how many of you know Ted Williams’ record. It certainly is a record for all Americans to be proud of, and I’d like to share it with you. Just listen and tell me if you don’t agree. Lifetime batting average, 344. That makes him fifth in the history of the game. Lifetime slugging average, 634. That makes him second only to Babe Ruth himself! In doubles, fourteenth with 525; in home runs fifth with 521; in extra base hits seventh with 1,117; and in all-important RBI’s, and I really can’t say enough about RBI’s and how important they are to the national pastime, in RBI’s, also seventh with 1,839. And that isn’t all. Led the league in hitting in 1941 with an average of — just listen to this — .4°6! In ‘42 again, with.356; in ‘47 with.343; in ‘48 with — 369 — (Suddenly angry) And they said Jack Charisma was the one who had the memory for facts! They said Charisma was the one who had the grasp of the issues. Oh, how they loved to downgrade Dixon! No wonder I had a crisis in that campaign! They were always picking on me! My beard! My nose! My tactics! Well, just let me say one thing as regards my so-called “tactics”: if in any of the averages I have just quoted to you, I have altered Ted Williams’ record by so much as one hundredth of one percentage point, I will submit my resignation to Congress tomorrow. Now that would be an unprecedented act in American history, but I would do it, if I had dared to play party politics with the American public on a matter as serious as this one. (All applaud)’
POLITICAL COACH: Mr. President, that was a most impressive recitation of the facts and has only served to strengthen my conviction that it would be utterly foolhardy to bring a slugger like Williams under federal indictment.
TRICKY: Good thinking. Good sharp political thinking. Of course, with Flood himself, we have a very different situation. To be sure, he batted over.300 for the Cards in ‘61, ‘63, ‘64, ‘65, ‘67 and ‘68, but never once did he lead the league in hitting or home runs, as Williams did, and his slugging average is almost half what Williams’ was at the end of his career.
Of course, in 1964, Flood did lead the National League in base hits with 211, and something like that could stir up a certain amount of sympathy. Now let me make one thing perfectly clear: I am not saying that he is anywhere near the all-time leader in that department, George Sisler, who got 257 hits in the year 1920, but a fact is a fact, and we are going to have to confront it. Those 211 base hits could mean trouble.
HIGHBROW COACH: Mr. President, under ordinary circumstances I too might be leery of bringing a charge as drastic as whichever one we come up with, against a man who, as you so wisely remind us, led the National League in total base hits with 211. But Curt Flood is something more than your run-of-the-mill hitting star of yesteryear: he is a bona fide troublemaker, and was in hot water right up to his neck even before I put him on my list. That is why I put him on my list: for not only has he jumped a hundred-thousand-dollar contract and skipped the country only a month into the season, but he of course is the man who in 1970 refused to be traded by the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies, claiming that the trade denied him his basic rights to negotiate a contract for his services on the open market. Subsequently, he hired as his attorney none other than Lyin’ B. Johnson’s appointee to the Supreme Court…
POLITICAL COACH (hopefully): Abe Fortas!
HIGHBROW COACH: No, no, but almost as good. Arthur Goldberg. G-o-l-d-b-e-r-g. And these two instituted a suit against baseball on constitutional grounds, asserting that organized baseball was in violation of the Antitrust Laws, and that the owners, by trading players from one team to another without their permission, treated them like pieces of property, which was both illegal and immoral.
Now, impugning the sacred name of baseball in this way did not go over very well with a good many loyal Americans, including the Commissioner of Baseball himself, and in the eyes of many, sportswriters and fellow players, as well as fans throughout the country, Flood, and his mouthpiece Goldberg, appeared to be out to destroy the game beloved by millions. Flood, in a book he has written on the subject, even quotes himself as saying in conversation, ‘Somebody needs to go up against the system. I’m ready.” And, gentlemen, that is only one of the selfincriminating statements that is scattered throughout that manifesto. Of course, as if all that he has said and done isn’t compromising enoughincluding hiring a Mr. Goldberg to represent him in this attack upon the most American of American sports — Flood is a black man.
LEGAL COACH: Where is he now, Algeria? That would sew it up for us, if he was in Algeria.
HIGHBROW COACH: To the contrary, had he fled to Algeria — which he has not — they would already be selling posters of him at bat in a beret, and ads to “Free Flood” would be appearing daily in The New York Times, signed by movie stars and Jean-Paul Sartre. There’d be marches and pickets and probably one of those mule trains camping on the White House Lawn.
TRICKY: Oh, those mule trains! Those marches! Really, I can’t stand those things. It never fail severy time they start marching on Washington, I’m the one who has to leave town. Now does that make any sense to you? I’m the President, I live here, and still I’m the one who has to pack his bags and get on a helicopter and go when these marchers start pouring in from all over the country! Honestly, I’ve got this big beautiful house, and I spend half my life living out of suitcases. Can you imagine what it’s like for a President, on practically five minutes’ notice, to try to pack everything he needs in his briefcase, while outside the window the propellers are going and everybody is screaming “Hurry, hurry, let’s get out of here, before they go crazy and send a delegation to the door!” Oh, it’s just awful. One time I forgot my jersey, one time I forgot my cleats, one time I even forgot to pack my ball — and really, the whole weekend was just ruined. And those marchers couldn’t care less!
HIGHBROW COACH: Well, you won’t have to leave town this time, Mr. President. Because this fugitive has not fled to Algeria to set himself up as some kind of ersatz revolutionary leader in exile; nor has he fled to Africa to live among his own kind, as he might have done if he were looking to build a following. No, there isn’t going to be much sympathy in this country, I can assure you, for a handsome and muscular young black man like Mr. Curt Flood, who, from all indications, has decided to make his homegentlemen, it couldn’t be better — in Copenhagen.
SPIRITUAL COACH: No!
HIGHBROW COACH: Yes, Reverend, Copenhagen. The Mecca toward which the filth peddlers of the world go down on their knees morning and night. The pornography capital of the world.
POLITICAL COACH: WOW! (Ecstatic) And that’s not all they’ve got in Denmark to compromise Mr. Flood, is it?
HIGHBROW COACH: Very fast on your feet, young man… The word is miscegenation. Not that we have to come right out with it, any more than we mean to say, in so many words, that he is a known smut addict.
SPIRITUAL COACH: No, please, you mustn’t. Where a baseball star is involved, we are inevitably going to be dealing with young impressionable minds, boys eight, nine, ten years of age — If they were to hear such words…
POLITICAL COACH: I agree, Reverend. It’ll be better by far to do it by “implication.”
LEGAL COACH: Fine with me. What about you, Mr. President? Think you can manage that? A hint here, a slur there, instead of coming right out with it?
TRICKY: Well, if it’s a matter of making the Reverend feel at ease about the wonderful young Little Leaguers of this country, I sure am going to try.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, gentlemen.
TRICKY: You see, Reverend, there’s that restraint again, there’s that sense of proportion and moderation that according to the newspapers I’m not supposed to have. After all, here is a black man engaging in just about the wickedest act any American can imagine, and with the women of Denmark, who are among the whitest in the entire world, and yet instead of coming right out with it, and thus exposing our Little Leaguers to a highly dangerous and tempting idea, we are going to smear him by insinuation and innuendo.
SPIRITUAL COACH: I’m deeply indebted, Mr. President.
POLITICAL COACH: We thought that went without saying, Reverend.
HIGHBROW COACH: Good enough, gentlemen. I shall now proceed to read the list one more time, so that you may decide how you wish to cast your votes. 1: Hanoi. 2: The Berrigans —
POLITICAL COACH: May I interrupt here? I wonder if I can take a moment to make a case for the innocence of the Berrigan brothers.
LEGAL COACH (outraged): The innocence of the Berrigan brothers?
POLITICAL COACH (backpeddling): Of this charge! Of this charge!
LEGAL COACH: But we haven’t even decided yet upon the exact nature of the charge — so how can they be innocent? Where is your evidence? Where is your proof?
POLITICAL COACH: Well, I don’t have any.
LEGAL COACH: Then, maybe, young man, you oughtn’t to go around calling people innocent until you do!
POLITICAL COACH: I grant you that — but what I am fearful of is this: if we do try to pin still another crime on those priests, we are going to produce a sympathetic reaction toward them such as you ordinarily don’t get until after an assassination. I should tell you that at this very moment a Hollywood movie is in the early stages of planning, in which Fathers Phil and Dan Berrigan are to be portrayed by Bing Crosby and an actor, as yet unnamed, who will be made up to resemble the late, great Barry Fitzgerald. Now these Hollywood producers, gentlemen, no matter how they may dress or wear their hair, are not hippies or left-wing fanatics by any stretch of the imagination. Underneath those anti-establishment muttonchops they are hardheaded business men with a product to market and an audience to exploit, and they can spot a trend developing a long way off. According to my informants, the movie being planned deals sympathetically with two priests who decide to blow up West Point, after Army defeats Notre Dame before seventy million television fans in the big football game of the year. There’ll be nuns and songs and so on, and who knows but that a picture like this could turn the whole damn country Communist overnight.
MILITARY COACH: Two hundred million Reds on American soil? Not if I have anything to say about it.
POLITICAL COACH: Easier said than done, General. Shoot two hundred million Americans — if that’s what you have in mind — shoot one hundred million Americans, and I’m afraid you’re going to give the Democrats just the kind of issue they can play politics with in the ‘72 elections.
MILITARY COACH: The level to which political life in this country has sunk! Now if the military were running this show…
POLITICAL COACH: Granted. Granted. But you do not build a utopian society overnight, General. And that is why I wish to caution you, one and all, against voting for the Berrigans. I know how tempting it is, especially after what we went through to track them down, but I am afraid that this is another one of those instances when we are going to have to display our characteristic restraint and moderation. Certainly the last thing in the world we want is Bing Crosby in a collar crooning to Debbie Reynolds in her habit about b-b-b-blowing things up. Not even Lenin could have devised a more sure-fire method of converting the American working class into bombthrowing revolutionaries.
HIGHBROW COACH: Ingenious analysis. Nonetheless, I think you misread Hollywood’s intentions. If the Berrigans were to get the chair, to be sure Hollywood would immediately go into full-scale production of some kind of musical about them, along the line of Going My Way. But that is only an argument against killing them. Keep them in jail, and you will be surprised how quickly the public and the movie moguls will forget they exist.
LEGAL COACH: I agree. Bury them alive. Always better.
SPIRITUAL COACH: And more merciful, too. That way, you see, it’s not capital punishment.
HIGHBROW COACH: To move on then. Number two was the Berrigans.
SPIRITUAL COACH: What was one again? Harvard?
HIGHBROW COACH: Hanoi.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Ah, yes. I knew it was some thing beginning with an H.
MILITARY COACH (angrily) : And what about something else beginning with an “H”? What about Haiphong! How can you have Hanoi without Haiphong? That’s like Quemoy without Matsu!
TRICKY: Quemoy and Matsu! Does that bring back memories! Quemoy and Matsu!… What ever happened to them?
POLITICAL COACH: Oh, they’re still out there, Mr. President, if we should ever need them.
TRICKY: Well, that’s wonderful. Where were they again — exactly? Wait, let me guess, let’s see if I can remember… Indonesia!
POLITICAL COACH: No, Sir.
TRICKY: Am I warm? The Philippines! No?… Near Hawaii?… No? Oh, I give up.
POLITICAL COACH: In the Formosa Straights, Mr. President. Between Taiwan and Mainland China.
TRICKY: No kidding. Hey, listen, whatever happened to what’s-his-name? The Chinaman.
POLITICAL COACH: Which Chinaman, Mr. President? There are six hundred million Chinamen.
TRICKY: I know, enslaved and so on. But I’m thinking of, you know, the one with the wife. Oh, it’s one of those names they have…
HIGHBROW COACH: Chiang Kai-shek, Mr. President.
TRICKY: Right, Professor! Shek. Little Shek, with the glasses. (Fondly) The Old Dixon… (Chuckling) Well! Enough wandering down memory lane. Forgive me, gentlemen. Where were we? So far we have Moscow and the Berrigans.
HIGHBROW COACH: Hanoi and the Berrigans, Mr. President.
TRICKY: Of course! See what you did with that Quemoy and Matsu? I was still back there in the fifties. Look at me, my lip is covered with goose flesh.
HIGHBROW COACH: To proceed. Number 3:
The Black Panthers. No dispute there. Good. Number 4: Jane Fonda, the movie actress and antiwar activist. Number 5: Curt Flood, the baseball player. Any questions, before we proceed to the vote. Reverend?
SPIRITUAL COACH: Jane Fonda. Has she ever appeared nude in a film?
HIGHBROW COACH: I can’t honestly say
remember seeing her pudenda on the screen, Reverend, but I think I can vouch for her breasts.
SPIRITUAL COACH: With aureole or without?
HIGHBROW COACH: I believe with.
SPIRITUAL COACH: And her buttocks?
HIGHBROW COACH: Yes, I believe we’ve seen her buttocks. Indeed, they constitute a large part of her appeal.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Thank you.
HIGHBROW COACH: Any other questions?
POLITICAL COACH: Well, about the Black Panthers — do you really think that the American people will believe that the Black Panthers are behind the Boy Scouts? That really does require quite a bit of imagination.
TRICKY: Now I take exception there. I don’t want to influence the voting, but I do want to say this: let’s not underestimate the imagination of the American people. This may seem like old-fashioned patriotism such as isn’t in fashion any more, but I have the highest regard for their imagination and I always have. Why, I actually think the American people can be made to believe anything. These people, after all, have their fantasies and fears and superstitions, just like anybody else, and you are not going to put anything over on them by simply addressing yourself to the real problems and pretending that the others don’t exist just because they are imaginary.
HIGHBROW COACH: I agree wholeheartedly, Mr. President. May we proceed to the voting?
TRICKY: By all means… Of course, gentlemen, these are going to be free elections. I want it to be perfectly clear beforehand that I wouldn’t have it otherwise, unless there were some reason to believe that the vote might go the wrong way. And I am proud to say I don’t think that’s possible here in this locker room with men of your caliber. You may vote for any two candidates on the list, and you may, in the interest of justice, add any two names of your own choosing. I will write down the votes cast for each candidate and tabulate them on this sheet of paper.
Now you’ll see that this is an ordinary sheet of lined yellow paper such as you might find on any legal pad. I was a lawyer, you know, before I became President, so you can be pretty sure that I know the correct manner in which to use this kind of paper. In fact, I should like you now to examine the paper to be sure nothing has been written on it and that it contains no code markings or secret notations other than the usual watermark.
HIGHBROW COACH: I’m sure we all can trust your description of the piece of paper, Mr. President.
TRICKY: I appreciate your confidence, Professor, but I would still prefer that the four of you examine the paper thoroughly beforehand, so that afterwards there cannot be any doubt as to the one hundred percent honesty of this electoral procedure. (He hands the paper around to each) Good! Now for a free election! Suppose we begin with you, Reverend.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Well, really, I’m in a tizzy. I mean, I know for sure that I want to vote for Jane Fonda — but after her I just can’t make up my mind. Curt Flood is so tempting.
HIGHBROW COACH: Vote for both then.
TRICKY: Or suppose you think it through a little longer and we’ll come back to you. General? 74.
MILITARY COACH (belligerently): Hanoi and Haiphong!
TRICKY: In other words, that’s your write-in vote, Haiphong.
MILITARY COACH: Mine, and every loyal American’s, Mr. President!
TRICKY: Fair enough. (Records vote) Next.
POLITICAL COACH: I’ll take Hanoi, too.
TRICKY: With or without Haiphong?
POLITICAL COACH: I think I like it just by itself.
TRICKY: And, anything else?
POLITICAL COACH: No, thank you, Mr. President — I stick.
TRICKY: Okay, time to hear the voice of Justice.
LEGAL COACH: The Berrigans, the Panthers, Curt Flood.
TRICKY: Slowly, please, slowly. I want to be sure to get it right. The Berrigans… The Panthers… Curt Flood… But that’s three. You’re allowed only two.
LEGAL COACH: I understand that, Mr. President. But in that my predecessors have each used only one from the Professor’s list of five, it did not seem to me a violation of the spirit of the law, if I took up some of the slack. I am a great believer, as I think you are, sir, in the spirit of the law, if not the letter.
TRICKY: Well, okay, if that’s the reason: Do you want now to add any names of your own?
LEGAL COACH:
As a matter of fact, Mr. President, I do.
TRICKY: One or two?
LEGAL COACH: As a matter of fact, Mr. President, five.
TRICKY: Five? But you were the one who made up the rule about only two.
LEGAL COACH: And I stand by it, Mr. President or would, under the circumstances such as existed at the time I suggested it. But I am dealing at this moment with what I can only call “a clear and present danger.” I am afraid, Mr. President, that if I were to submit only two of these five names that I have just this minute come up with, this administration would be in the most serious clear and present danger you can imagine of appearing to be out of its mind. If, on the other hand, the five names are submitted together, thus suggesting some kind of plot, a charge that might otherwise have appeared, at best, to be an opportunistic and vicious attack on two individuals we don’t happen to like, will take on an air of the plausible in the mind of the nation, such as it is.
Surely, Mr. President, you will permit me at least to read the names of the five. This is, after all, a free country where even the man in the street can say what’s on his mind, provided it isn’t so provocative that it might lead somebody in another state, who doesn’t even hear it, to riot. It would be a sad irony indeed, if the man who is this nation’s bulwark against those very riots that such freedom of speech tends to inspire, was to be denied his rights under the First Amendment.
TRICKY: It would, it would. And you can rest assured that so long as I am President that particular sad irony — if I understand it correctly — is not going to happen.
LEGAL COACH: Thank you, Mr. President. Now try not to think of the five individually, but rather as a kind of secret gang, protected, as much as anything, by the seeming disparateness of individual personality and profession. I: the folk singer, Joan Baez: the Mayor of New York, John Lancelot. 3: the dead rock musician, Jimi Hendrix. 4: the TV star, Johnny Carson…
ALL: Johnny Carson?
LEGAL COACH (smiling): Who better to be acquitted? It’s always best, you see, to have one acquitted, especially if he appears to have been unjustly accused in the first place. It provides the jury with a means of funneling all their uncertainty in one direction, makes them feel they’ve been fair about the whole thing. Makes the convictions themselves look better all around. And, of course, freeing Johnny Carson, you’ll be freeing the most popular man in America (besides yourself, Mr. President). Why,’ we can even, midway through the trial, have the President step in and make a statement in Carson’s behalf. Exactly as he did about Manson, only the other way around this time. Imagine, the whole country crying “Free Johnny!” and the President going on TV and casting serious doubt on the charges raised against this great entertainer.
TRICKY: And then when he’s free, I could have a press conference! Wouldn’t that be something? I could say, “H-e-e-e-re’s Johnny,” and he could come out from behind the curtain and do his cute little golf stroke! He could make jokes about being in jail with the other conspirators. Maybe he could even wear a ball and chain and a striped suit!
POLITICAL COACH: Fantastic! And we could do it on prime time the night before the election. While Musty is boring their pants off about how honest the pine trees are in Maine, we’ll be on TV with Johnny Carson!
LEGAL COACH: And that’s not all, gentlemen. You have not yet heard the name of the fifth conspirator.
POLITICAL COACH: Merv Griffin!
LEGAL COACH: No, not Merv Griffin… Jacqueline Charisma Colossus.
(Stunned silence)
Daring, yes. Absurd? I think not. Consider first, gentlemen, that like the other four conspirators, her Christian name too begins with a “J”. Now you cannot imagine the mileage we can get out of a seemingly nonsensical fact like that. Overnight the newspapers and the TV commentators are going to begin calling them “The Five J’s,” thereby linking them together in the public mind as though they were the Dionne quintuplets, or the New York Knicks. Just by that ruse alone, we will have moved halfway toward a conviction. Inevitably there will be speculation we’ll see to that about the relationship between Mrs. Colossus and Mayor Lancelot. Isn’t it about time that we turned those looks of his to our advantage instead of his? Then too there is the former First Lady’s bitterness toward her own country, as manifested in her decision to marry a foreigner and live in a foreign country.
POLITICAL COACH: Well, it isn’t exactly as though she’s living in Peking or Hanoi, you know.
LEGAL COACH: I’ve considered that, and I think that the wisest course to follow is not to mention the name of the country itself. We’ll just keep saying foreign — suggesting intrigue and despots and shady operations — and hope that nobody will remember it’s only Greece.
POLITICAL COACH: Jackie and Lancelot — I’ve got to admit, we’re going to get the headlines on this one. But why Jimi Hendrix, if he’s dead?
LEGAL COACH: Because we haven’t had a rock performer yet. And personally I think the parents of the country are ready to hang one of those bastards. We’ll start cautiously, however, with a dead one. And if we don’t pick up any flak there, we’ll get ourselves a live one in time for, the election… And, of course, last but not least, his name begins with a “J.”
TRICKY: I must say, from the sound of it, you certainly appear to have thought this through in all its ramifications in only about five minutes. The political advantages to be gained by associating Lancelot and the Charisma name with rock singers and folk singers seem to be inestimable. And indicting and then freeing Johnny Carson is probably just about the most fantastic opportunity for self-aggrandizement I’ve come upon since Hiss.
LEGAL COACH: Thank you, Mr. President.
TRICKY: But — and this is a very big but — there is the rule, of your own devising, that we all agreed to earlier. Yes, I know you see this as “a clear and present danger” to the party — but I happen to see it as nothing short of a tremendous boon.
Consequently, I am not going to allow you to submit these five names. But — and here is an even bigger but — but, because the five are inextricably linked by their first initial, I am going to ask you rather to submit them as though they were one. And to indicate that they are to be tabulated as one and not five, I am going to place a large bracket there in the margin, like so… See? I want all of you to see. I have just done exactly as I said I would. Please take a good long look so that afterwards there is no cause to question the honesty of these proceedings. (All examine the bracket and agree it is a bracket, just as the President said) Now then, Professor. Your vote.
HIGHBROW COACH: I cast my vote for Curt Flood and Curt Flood alone. Not only is his a fresh name to a country that is growing pretty weary of the Berrigans and the Panthers — and, with all due respect, is sick to death of Jacqueline Charisma — but on top of that he is, as I said earlier, someone we can slander and vilify without any danger of turning him into a hero or a martyr. In the argot of baseball, he is a natural.
TRICKY: Very good. (Records the vote) And, Reverend? Have you reached a final decision? You can’t say I haven’t given you time to make a wise choice.
SPIRITUAL COACH: No, I can’t. Only I’m afraid that having listened to everything that’s been said, I’m really more confused now than when I began. I mean I’m still very much for Jane Fonda. She is still far and away my first choice. but once I get beyond her — well, I just can’t make up my mind. And it really would be terrible to do the wrong thing, wouldn’t it, given the gravity and seriousness of what we’re about…? (To the General) Excuse me, but who did you vote for again?
MILITARY COACH: Hanoi and Haiphong.
SPIRITUAL COACH (to Political Coach): And you?
POLITICAL COACH: Hanoi, without Haiphong.
SPIRITUAL COACH (to Legal Coach): And you have the five-in-one-and what were the others?
LEGAL COACH: Berrigans, Panthers and Flood.
SPIRITUAL COACH (throwing his hands up): Oh, this is just impossible! Each one sounds better than the one before! Oh — the heck with it! Eeny, meeny, miney, moe… Okay! Jane Fonda and Curt Flood! Done!
TRICKY: (Records the Reverend’s vote) Now that all the ballots have been cast, gentlemen, I am going once again to pass this sheet of paper among you so that you may be certain that your votes have been correctly tabulated. Even the President of the United States, you know, is capable of making a clerical error, and if he has, he certainly hopes that he can be a big enough man to admit it. (He passes the paper among them)
LEGAL COACH: Jimi Hendrix, Mr. President the first name is spelled J-i-m-i, not J-i-m-m-y, as you’ve written it here.
TRICKY: Well, let’s correct it then, because that is just the sort of error, inadvertently made, that tends to be totally misconstrued by the press. Now I never claimed to know how to spell the names of every colored person in this country, but I will tell you this much: where someone’s name is concerned, colored or not, he has a constitutional right to have it spelled correctly on any indictment that is handed down on him, no matter how absurd or outrageous the charges themselves. And so long as I am President, I am going to make every effort to see that this is done. Now, J-i-m what?
LEGAL COACH: I.
TRICKY: J-i-m-i. There. And I’ll initial the change, just to make clear exactly who is responsible for both the error and the correction. There! Now I only wish that the wonderful colored people of this country could have seen the scrupulosity with which I attended to a matter seemingly so picayune as this one. Oh sure, the media would still find something to carp about, you can bank on that. But I am certain, if I know the great majority of good, hard-working colored people in this country, that the time I just took from my pressing duties as President of the United States and Leader of the Free World to correct a single letter in one of their names would not have gone unnoticed and unappreciated. Call me a dreamer; call me a believer in humanity; call me, as the song has it, a’cockeyed optimist; and be sure to call me a big man too, for admitting to my error; but I am sure that they would understand just how difficult a problem this is for us to solve, given the kinds of ways they spell those names of theirs, and I think they would have that wonderful wisdom, such as comes to people who work in menial occupations, to realize that a job of these proportions is not going to be completed overnight, and that consequently we are not about to be bullied into spelling their names correctly by marches or demonstrations or mule trains parked on the White House lawn. We will spell them right but in our own sweet time, and according to our own secret timetable, on earth as it is in Heaven.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Amen.
TRICKY And, my friends, on that sanctimonious note, I am going to call this conference to a close. At ten A.M., we shall meet to settle upon the exact nature of the crime. In the meantime, I will remain here in the locker room, in uniform…
SPIRITUAL COACH: Mr. President, it is nearly dawn. You must get some rest. You must take your helmet off and go to bed.
TRICKY: I couldn’t sleep now, Reverend, if I tried. Not with a smear campaign of this magnitude before me.
SPIRITUAL COACH: But a man has only so much to give…
TRICKY: When it comes to something like this, Reverend, I have to say, immodest as it may sound, I am indefatigable. No, I will remain in uniform, helmet and all, and with the aid of the ballots you have cast here in this free election, I will hammer out, in the lonely vigil of the night, the conspiracy that seems to me most beneficial to my career. I only hope and pray that I am equal to the task. Good night, gentlemen, and thank you.
ALL: Good night, Mr. President. (They rise to leave)
TRICKY: And don’t forget to hand in your uniforms at the door. I won’t mention names, but I understand that last time one of you tried to smuggle his out, under his street clothes, in order to show off at home to his wife and children. Of course, I understand the temptation. How many times have I wanted to address the nation in my shoulder guards! I’ve never told this to a soul, but strictly between us, at the time of the Cambodian incursion, I did go on nationwide TV, unbeknownst to everyone, wearing my regulation National Football League athletic supporter.
I just couldn’t help myself. I’d seen Patton and I’d invaded Cambodia, and I guess the whole thing went to my head. Of course, not a word beyond these four walls: if any of my critics found out, well, you know how they like to jump on Dixon. All I have to do is wear a football player’s jockstrap on TV while making a foreign policy speech and the morning papers would have me pegged as a psychopath. Down here in the secret underground locker room it’s one thing — up there in the real world, banker’s gray!
ALL: You can trust us with your secrets, Mr. President.
TRICKY (moved): I know I can… All right, then. It remains only for each of you, as he passes from the room, to slap me on the behind the way the pros do coming out of the huddle. And don’t forget to say, “Way to go, Tricky D, way to go!”