Political Satire: Having trouble surviving these times? You’re not alone. Join us in columnist John F. Di Leo’s exploration of an alternate universe, where we imagine the impossible:
An aging, corrupt old fool somehow becomes president in his basement, and every night, an aide has to bring him his soup and discuss the events of the day as he prepares to receive his nightly meds…
Dateline, February 4. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, boss! How would you like a nice hot bowl of soup?”
“Can’t wait. What do we have tonight?”
“Some kind of a New Orleans gumbo. Smells good.”
“Terrific, thanks! I can’t wait. Missed you last night. Was it your day off?”
“Oh, no, sir. I was in jail.”
“JAIL??? What happened? Can I help? I’d be happy to pardon you… what did you do?”
“Gee, thank you, sir. And wow… offering to pardon me before you even know what I did is awfully nice of you… and somewhat disconcerting, when you think about it…”
“Well, what happened? Tell me about it…. it’s so darned boring in this basement…”
“Actually, sir, it’s really not a big deal. I was at a mixer at my old college, and some people brought up a political issue, so we all started talking about that issue, and things got rather animated, and…”
“You hit somebody?”
“What? Oh, goodness no, of course not. I didn’t hit anyone.”
“Well then, what did you do?”
“Well, I agreed with someone, and I used a term that apparently isn’t politically correct at the moment. I thought it was, boss; they call themselves that sometimes, But I guess not.”
“Omigosh. For goodness sakes, son, you should know you can’t use the N word!”
“Oh, no, boss, it wasn’t that! It was the T word.”
“The T word? I don’t know any T word. At least, not any that get you in trouble… Unless… let me think…”
“No, boss, don’t think about it. Not worth it. The subject of cross-dressing came up, and I used the T word, and somebody was offended, and reported us all – the whole group of us – twenty of us – claiming that the whole mixer was guilty of ‘hate speech’ or something. These colleges these days. They have all these ‘hate crime’ rules, and sometimes they get it into their heads that they’re really actual statutes, instead of just stupid student group bylaws.”
“Oh, now I get it. You were talking about…”
“Don’t say it, sir! This basement could be bugged. And since you’ve appointed a few of them, you probably wouldn’t want them to hear you using the term.”
“What term?”
“The one that got me in trouble last night and caused a long unscheduled meeting between our whole group and the dean.”
“Oh. I’m so glad I don’t know any of them.”
“Sure you do, sir! You’ve appointed a couple. You know, like that fat old guy in the long curly grey wig and the dress from Pennsylvania.”
“Who?”
“You know, the guy who used to be a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry and then he became state health guru, and now you’ve put him in HHS.”
“THAT’S A GUY???”
“Well, sure. I thought you knew.”
“Dammit, son, I wish people would tell me these things.”
“Oh, sir, I think you’ll be appointing a lot of them to various committees. You’re gonna have to remember to avoid that word too.”
“Gosh darn it. If this weren’t such good soup, I’d throw it against the wall. There’s nothing worse than a man pretending to be a woman.”
“Oh? I didn’t know you had such a firm position on the matter.”
“Well, sure, son. You’ve seen me in action. You think I want to cop a feel on the way out of a cabinet meeting or sniff somebody’s hair at a state fair, only to discover it’s another guy???
“Mmm… I see what you mean.”
“Well, so how long was this fight at school?”
“Oh, the discussion was only a few sentences, but the punishment, having to meet with the dean last night and again today, missing all my appointments in between, and so forth… it adds up. Frankly, it cost me a full day.”
“Wow. That’s just not fair. Nobody can guard their own tongue well enough to avoid EVER saying something offensive. I mean talking from experience…”
“You sure are, sir!”
“Eh? What’s that? Oh yes…. talking from experience, I’d say it’s impossible not to occasionally slip and say an embarrassing comment. People need to learn to be less sensitive.”
“Wow, boss, that’s not exactly a popular opinion in your administration. Don’t let your staff hear you say that!”
“I wonder if we could write an Executive Order banning overreactions to hate speech…”
“In YOUR administration, sir? You’d never get it through. You’d be a minority of one if you proposed that, sir.”
“Hmm… well then, maybe I should try. You know the old saying, Only Nixon could go to China…”
“That’s true, sir. But you could make a lot of enemies, sir. Most of your appointees got where they are based on “hate crime” peddling like this, sir.”
“You don’t understand, son. This is personal to me. I really, really, really don’t ever want to be caught fondling a guy in a dress. Again.”
copyright 2021 John F Di Leo
Excerpted with permission from “Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volume One,” from Free State West Publishing, available in paperback or eBook exclusively on Amazon.
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II) are available only on Amazon
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