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:
Joe Buckstop, 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, April 2. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, boss, would you like some soup?”
“Oh, hell, when wouldn’t I like some soup? It’s about the only thing left in the world that’s any good…”
“Well, sir, sorry to hear it’s that bad, but… I think you’ll like this one, sir. Seafood Soup.”
“Seafood again?”
“Well, sir, it’s Friday, sir.”
“So?”
“So it’s a Friday in Lent, sir.”
“So?”
“So, it’s THE Friday in Lent, you might say, sir. It’s Good Friday, sir.”
“So?”
“Well, so, you’re not allowed to eat meat on Fridays in Lent, sir, remember? You tell everyone you’re a Catholic, sir.”
“Oh. Right. Forgot about that. Yeah.”
“So, the chef looked for a special seafood soup today and she said this was a winner. Fish, shrimp, onions, carrots, celery, corn… I saw the recipe on the counter while I picked up the tray, sir… longer list of ingredients than usual, sir. Looks terrific!”
“So I can eat this today, huh?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well then, put it down and let me eat it!”
“Yes sir. Here it is, sir. Bowl, crackers, spoon, extra napkins…”
“Oh? Why extra napkins?”
“Remember that incident with dessert last night, sir?”
“No.”
“Your face was so covered in whipped cream from your strawberry fool that it looked like you were caught in the middle of shaving, sir.”
“Oh. Right.”
“So, go ahead and enjoy your soup, sir. Excuse me a moment, I just got a text, sir.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a message on my cellphone, sir. A message that comes in like a phone call, but it’s just text, sir.”
“Oh.”
“Wow! Great news! My sister got a job!”
“Oh? Good for her. What’s she doing?”
“She’s a dancer, sir, and she got a job in a musical. She’s flying to Australia next week, sir!”
“Australia? Why Australia?”
“Well, sir, because they’re open, sir.”
“Open?”
“Since the American theatre industry was forced to close down a year ago, most performers have been out of work. Movies and TV series have been able to keep filming – they don’t have live audiences – but the theatre business has been completely shuttered.”
“It has?”
“Well, of course, sir! They make actors wear masks even though they’re 30 feet from the audience… You ever try to sing with a stupid mask over your face, sir? It can’t be done. They insist that audience members sit six feet apart so you can only sell a tenth as many seats, or less… It’s impossible to run a business that way, sir. It just can’t be done. You can’t produce a play with only 40 people in the audience, sir.”
“Well, how many do you usually get? I never had more than 20 or 30 people in my audiences last year, and I won an election…”
“No you didn’t, sir.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I mean, you weren’t in a position of having to sell tickets, sir. Singers and dancers and actors need to sell tickets, it’s how they make their living. You could never charge enough for your tickets for an audience of 30 people to employ the cast of a Broadway show or a professional band or orchestra or opera or stand up comic, sir.”
“Well, how many tickets do you usually sell?”
“Haven’t you ever been to a theatre or concert, sir?”
“I don’t know. I can’t really remember much from day to day anymore…”
“Well, sir, a professional show usually has to sell hundreds of tickets, several times a week, just to break even, sir. And depending on the hall, often it’s thousands. The big theatres in major cities hold thousands of people, sir.”
“Wow! They must all be millionaires!”
“No, sir, that’s just to get by, sir. Entertainment is an expensive business, sir.”
“Why?”
“Well, there’s the rent and upkeep of the hall, sir. And the air conditioning or heating of the place, sir. And the band or orchestra if it’s a musical, sir. And lights and sets and costumes are all expensive, sir. And then there are ticket takers and props crews and ushers and the publicity folks and the printers. And absolutely everything costs a third more than it needs to because of taxes, sir.
And that’s all in addition to the actors, singers, dancers, directors and choreographers who everybody knows about, sir.”
“Wow. I had no idea.”
“Of course not, sir.”
“Can’t you do it without all that?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be a show, without all that, sir.”
“Oh.”
“And they’ve all been unemployed, sir, all of them, for a whole year, now, because of your lockdowns, sir.”
“Huh? My lockdowns? I didn’t do anything…”
“I’m sorry, sir, I mean OUR lockdowns, sir. Our party. Our governors and mayors and talking heads and bureaucrats and other fools who just put hundreds of thousands of people out of work one day without giving a damn about their livelihood… they just said it’s not safe anymore and destroyed their way of earning a living.”
“Oh.”
“We all thought it would be just a couple weeks, sir, to slow the spread, they said. But here we are a year later, and unless you can get work on TV or in the movies, you’re stuck doing zoom shows just to stay in practice, not making any money, living on unemployment and praying for stupid stimulus payments. It’s horrible, sir. A horrible life.”
“Well, can’t they do something else?”
“Sir, do you remember studying to become a lawyer, then running for office, sir? It’s all you wanted to do, all you’ve done, right?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Well, sir, imagine after training for that one thing, you were suddenly told it was gone, it was shuttered, not that you can’t get hired for it because you’re not as good as some other lawyer or candidate, but told that the very career you trained for has been destroyed. What would you do?”
“Uh… learn to code?”
“Do you know what that means, sir”
“Uh, yeah, sure. I remember when I was a little boy in Scranton… I don’t know if I ever told you, but I grew up in Scranton…”
“Never would’ve guessed, sir.”
“Well, when I was a little boy in Scranton, I sent away for a decoder ring… it was for drinking enough chocolate milk, I think, or something like that… and I got this decoder ring, and I used it to work out secret messages…”
“Um, sir, that didn’t happen to you.”
“What?”
“You imagined that anecdote, sir. That’s one of Jean Shepherd’s stories.”
“What?”
“From A Christmas Story, sir. You’re remembering a scene from a movie, sir. Ralphie did that, not you, sir.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry, sir, we’re all used to it by now, sir. You’ve just imagined another anecdote that you heard from someone else, sir.”
“Have I done that before?”
“All the time, sir. All the time.”
“Oh.”
“So anyway, sir, With theaters shuttered for a year, my sister just got a job as an assistant choreographer and featured dancer in a musical that’s opening in Australia now that they’re opening up again. She’s not wasting another day sitting around, sir.”
“Why not? Sitting around is nice. It’s restful. As long as your bills are paid, who cares?”
“Well, sir, that’s not exactly the American way, is it, sir?”
“Huh?”
“Well, sir, she wants to earn her living, sir. To make something of herself, sir. To be the best that she can be. So she’s flying to Australia to work, sir. I’m so proud of her… she didn’t even want to tell any of us she had applied for it until she got the gig confirmed. So proud!”
“Oh. Well then, congratulations, I guess.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Won’t you all miss her?”
“Well, sure, but you wish the best for your family. I wish she could be working onstage here, but it’s not allowed. We’ve banned all these millions of people from earning a living, sir. For a whole year, sir. Factories could put up dividers and barriers and require masks… offices could have their employees work remotely… we’ve allowed lots of exceptions for lots of industries, sir, but live entertainment has been almost completely shut down, sir. It’s horrible. It’s like how we always heard the communist countries were, years ago, sir, during the cold war. It’s just awful, sir.”
“Oh.”
“So anyway, my sister leaves next week, and I’m just so happy for her, sir.”
“Well, that’s good, anyway. Funny, Australia was just mentioned in one of our meetings today, too.”
“Oh? Why, sir?”
“I don’t know. Australia’s people were warning our people about something China is doing. I can’t keep it all straight, son.”
“You mean China’s incursions into Philippine waters, sir?”
“Huh?”
“You know, sir, how the PRC has been sailing military ships all over the South China Sea and into the territorial waters of lots of other countries lately, sir? How they’re building manmade islands and claiming possession of other countries waters in violation of international law, sir?”
“Hmm.. No. Wasn’t that. They didn’t talk about that today…”
“Well, sir, might it have been how China has been flying their air force planes into Taiwanese airspace, threatening Taiwan and possibly trying to provoke them, sir?”
“What would that have to do with Australia?”
“Well, Australia has been one of the countries talking about it in the world press, sir. Warning the West about the threats, and trying to work with other powers to respond, you know, to warn China against illegal or warmongering action, sir.”
“How do you know all about this stuff, son?”
“Law school, sir. We were talking about territorial waters and international law just before the quarter break, sir. China comes up a lot, since they’re basically the biggest rogue nation on earth right now, sir.”
“Huh? Not as big as Russia!”
“Russia, sir? Heh. Russia isn’t a tenth the problem China is, sir.”
“No?”
“No, sir.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t remember anybody talking about this today. Don’t think that’s what they were talking about… ”
“Hmm… let’s see now, sir… what else have I heard in the news about Australia…”
“The axes. That’s it. Now I remember. They kept talking about the axes.”
“What axes, sir?”
“I don’t remember. They said the Australians were talking about some axes. They said the Chinese were hiding their axes. Something about burying their axes in the mountains.”
“The mountains, sir? This doesn’t make any sense, sir.”
“That’s all I remember. Axes? Or maybe Axis? Did they bury the axis under a mountain?”
“Umm… sir… do you think they might have said H-6, sir?”
“H-6? How’s that?”
“H-6, sir…. Could they have said the Chinese are building hangars to hold the H-6 under the mountains, sir? So that they’d be shielded both from intelligence and from a first strike, sir? Were they talking about the H-6? That could sound like ‘axes’ to a person who wasn’t paying attention, sir…”
“What was that?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“Oh. What were we talking about?”
“Could they have been talking about China building lots of secret hangars, deeply fortified underground structures for the H-6, sir?”
“Yeah, that sounds right. Hiding their H-6 under a mountain. Yeah. That’s what they said. I remember now. The Australians were worried that the Chinese are putting their H-6 hangers under a mountain. What’s the big deal?”
“What do you mean…. What’s the big deal, sir???”
“Well, yeah. We have hangars, shouldn’t they have hangars, son?”
“Well, of course they can have hangars, but it’s the planes we’re talking about, sir!”
“Planes? What planes? We’re talking about hangers, right?”
“Well, yes.. sir… hangars for planes, sir… air force planes, sir!”
“No, hangers are for shirts.”
“Shirts, sir?”
“Well, yeah, sure. All my shirts are on hangers. If you fold them and put them on a shelf, they get creases. And wrinkles too.”
“Sir, we’re talking about hangars for the H-6 airplane, sir.”
“It’s a plane?”
“Yes sir. It’s not a shirt, sir. It’s a plane.”
“Oh. Well, we have planes. We protect our planes. Passenger planes, cargo planes. Don’t we protect our planes? Why shouldn’t they?”
“The H-6 is a bomber, sir.”
“Oh.”
“It can carry nuclear weapons, sir.”
“Oh.”
“We’re talking about mid to long range planes with a nuclear payload, sir. Designed to be able to threaten nearby countries, the kind of countries that are close enough to reach quickly, but far enough away that you might not be afraid of nuking, for fear of the nuclear fallout coming back to your own land. It’s exactly the fear that a country like Australia would be wise to be worried about, sir!!!”
“Well, what’s the big deal? It’s not like they’re at war.”
“Now, sir. NOW they’re not at war, sir. But they COULD be at war with anyone, any day, sir. You MUST know that, sir. They must talk about this in intelligence briefings, sir, don’t they?”
“They do?”
“Well, of course, sir. The whole world knows that China is on a war footing, sir, and that they’ve been ramping up the way that the Third Reich did in the 1930s, like, way beyond anything defensive, just totally threatening, sir. Don’t they talk about that in your meetings all the time, sir?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t usually listen.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Well, those meetings are held in a really nice room, with really comfy chairs. It’s just such a good place for a nap…”
“A nap, sir?”
“Yup. These big, comfy, leather office chairs… and the sun shines a nice sunbeam right through the window…. and it’s just so soothing, and, oh, you know, you could just drop right off…. mmm….”
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, II, and III), are available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
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