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…
Note: We continue from Volume Two, as Joe Buckstop’s soup aide, young Rhett Snapper, attempts a conversation with the old man about money, jobs, donations, and George Floyd:
Employment, Campaign Finance, George Floyd, and Puerto Rican Salami Soup
Dateline May 25. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, sir! Another Tuesday done. How’s it going, sir?”
“Oh, I don’t know… Did you bring me soup?”
“Yes sir, we have something especially interesting tonight, sir.”
“I’m worried already.”
“It’s called Puerto Rican Salami Soup, sir. Salami and olives and noodles… and I don’t know what else. The aroma’s amazing, sir.”
“All right, put it down. It’s not like I can order anything else.”
“Well, give it a chance, sir. Your cook works awfully hard to give you a variety, sir…”
“You’re her biggest cheerleader. I don’t know what the big deal is. So she makes soup. It’s her job.”
“Have you ever cooked, sir?”
“Huh?”
“Have you ever done any cooking, sir? Using pots and pans, doing the grocery shopping, slicing and dicing ingredients on a kitchen counter… using the oven and the range… all that stuff, sir?”
“Well, sure. Of course I have.”
“Recently, sir?”
“Well, no…”
“How long since you cooked, sir? I don’t mean making a sandwich, but actually opening up a cookbook and following a recipe? Fifty years, sir, if ever, right?”
“Well, I don’t know… I was in the senate, and I used to eat on the train, so…”
“So, the answer is Never, sir, right?”
“Well, I don’t know about that…”
“Have you ever opened a cookbook in your life, sir?”
“Have you ever opened a lawbook?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Well, I was a lawyer, so I used lawbooks. Cooks use cookbooks. I wouldn’t expect you to use a lawbook, since you’re not a lawyer, so you shouldn’t expect me to use a cookbook.”
“You think only professional cooks use cookbooks, sir? How do you think regular people who aren’t cooks eat, sir?”
“Well, they go to restaurants. Or fast food.”
“I see, sir. Look, sir, don’t ever go into publishing. Keep your day job.”
“Huh?”
“Cookbooks are always among the top five bestselling genres in publishing, sir.”
“Why? There can’t be that many cooks, are there?”
“Oh boy.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know, sir. Look, I’m just saying, you should thank your cook for how nice she is to you, trying so hard to bring some variety into your life in the only way she can. I think she feels sorry for you, sir, stuck down in this basement for over a year, and she’s taken it on herself to give you some kind of variety by giving you a different soup every day, sir.”
“Oh.”
“Even if you don’t appreciate the result, sir, you should appreciate the effort, and tell her so, sir.”
“Oh.”
“So, what did you do today, sir, besides failing to appreciate your staff, sir?”
“Hey. I appreciate my staff.”
“I don’t mean your high and mighty cabinet secretaries and media wizards, sir, I mean the regular folks who don’t get the accolades in the press, sir. People who work hard for a living, do their jobs, and pass their whole lives unnoticed. I mean them, sir.”
“Oh. Well, we don’t have anyone like that here.”
“I see sir. May I have a few of your crackers, sir?”
“Huh? Why?”
“Well, I’m beginning to be drawn to them, upon realizing that I’m chopped liver, sir…”
“Huh?”
“Never mind, sir. What did you do today, sir? Anything to share about your day, sir?”
“Well, no… just an average day… met with my staff, had a couple zoom calls, shook hands with that fella George, uh, something.”
“George Floyd, sir?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“He’s dead, sir.”
“Oh, right. His family. His, uh, friends or something.”
“Yes, I did hear about that. Are they enjoying their millions, sir?”
“Millions of what?”
“Millions of dollars, sir.”
“Huh? They didn’t seem rich to me… Guess the staff was right, don’t judge a book by its cover.”
“That’s true, sir.”
“Whether they look rich or poor, it never hurts to hit them up for a campaign donation…”
“Oh. Well, sir, that’s not what I was expecting you to say.”
“Huh?”
“I know. My mistake, sir.”
“Any idea how they made their money?”
“They didn’t, sir.”
“Huh?”
“The race hustlers in Minnesota shook down the state in a wrongful death suit, sir. Got $27 million out of the state, sir. You know, for the family and the lawyers and the hustlers who arranged it all.”
“Oh.”
“So I don’t know if they have anything left to give to your campaign, but hey, ill-gotten gains have to go somewhere; they may as well end up in a campaign chest, sir.”
“Huh? What do you mean, ill-gotten? A man died!”
“Sure. Drug addicts die every day, sir. It’s tragic, but I don’t see why the taxpayers should reward their families by making them millionaires.”
“He was killed by a policeman!”
“Oh, come on, sir, it’s just you and me, here. No cameras, no press. You know he wasn’t killed by a policeman.”
“He wasn’t?”
“Of course not, sir. And virtually everybody else knows it too.”
“They do?”
“Yes sir.”
‘”Well then, what do you think he died of, smarty pants?”
“A fentanyl overdose, sir.”
“Oh, come on, man! Where did you get an idea like that?”
“From the toxicology report, sir.”
“Huh?”
“He ingested enough fentanyl to kill a hippo, sir.”
“He did?”
“He was a dead man before the police even arrived. There was nothing they could’ve done, sir.”
“Well then, why’d that guy kneel on his neck?”
“Standard procedure for a druggie acting berserk, sir. Holding him down so he couldn’t flail around and injure people, sir. While waiting for an ambulance, sir.”
“But he repeatedly shouted ‘I can’t breathe!'”
“Yes, sir, and did you ever ask yourself how a man who can’t breathe manages to shout the words ‘I can’t breathe’, repeatedly, sir? Try it yourself sometime. Try talking without air coming out, sir. It can’t be done. If someone’s choking, sir, he can’t talk. ”
“Are you saying he made it up?”
“No, sir, He was in pain. Severe pain. Massive pressure in his heart and lungs, caused by a massive fentanyl overdose. With a side of Covid.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know he had Covid either, sir?”
“What Covid? George Floyd?”
“Yes sir, he’d had vestiges of the virus, sir. Combine a drug overdose and the symptoms of severe pressure that he probably already had going in, before he took in the fentanyl, and it’s no wonder he was such a goner, sir.”
“You’re making all this up, you no-good lying dog-faced pony soldier!”
“I’m not a creative enough guy to make up a thing like that, sir. Review the toxicology report yourself, sir. It’s on the internet.”
“The what?”
“The internet, sir. The web, sir.”
“The what?”
“You can google it, sir.”
“OHHH, I see.”
“So hey, sir, if you manage to get a donation from the Floyds, sir, do I get a finder’s fee, sir?”
“Huh?”
“You know, sir, for giving you the lead? I’m the one who told you they had money.”
“Uh, well,”
“I’m just kidding, sir. I’m not really looking for a cut, sir.”
“Oh.”
“Besides, sir, I don’t think they’re the kind of people who write checks. People with ‘found money’ are notorious for having the oddest ways of throwing it away or losing it, sir.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know about that.”
“You don’t have any experience with ‘found money’ yourself, sir?”
“Oh, no, I’ve never had much money. I grew up in Scranton, you know… little town in Pennsylvania, I don’t know if you knew that, but I’m from Scranton. My dad sold cars.”
“Yes sir, I had heard, sir.”
“Yup, no experience with wealth or anything. Just worked in the senate, took the commuter train every day for 35 years, so I didn’t have to buy a car… saved some money that way…”
“Oh, I’ll bet you did, sir.”
“So no, I don’t know much about money. Just that when you’re in politics and you run into someone with money, you always ask them for a donation!”
“Unless they’re not US citizens, of course.”
“Huh?”
‘Well, you know, only US citizens can donate to a federal political campaign, sir. FEC regulations, sir.”
“Damn Republicans and their campaign finance bills.”
“That was a Democrat bill, sir.”
“Huh?”
“Republicans usually oppose that sort of thing because they suspect it would only be enforced against them, and Democrats usually suppose that sort of thing.. for the same reason, sir.”
“How do you know all this, kid?”
“Rhett, sir. My name is Rhett.”
“Huh?”
“Not Kid.”
“Oh, yeah, right.”
“You grow up around here, sir, you pick up stuff, that’s all. I had some political science classes, sir, and campaign finance laws are among the things they talk about, sir.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not a money guy, either, sir. We all work in my family, from as soon as we’re old enough. But we study and we pay attention, and who knows, maybe someday some of us will make it, sir. That’s the hope!”
“Yeah.”
“Kind of like in your family, huh, sir?”
“Huh?”
“Well, you know, sir, you were just in the Senate all those years. a flat government salary… but your brother did pretty well, didn’t he?”
‘Well, yeah…”
“And your sons did really well, didn’t they?”
“Well, yeah, sure…”
“China, Ukraine, Burma, Costa Rica, a lot of countries have been really good to your family, haven’t they, sir?”
“Well, some of the others in the family get around a bit more than I do, you know, I’m usually glued to Washington DC here, you know…”
“Oh, certainly, sir. Golden handcuffs, you might say.”
“What’s that?”
“Keeping you here in DC, sir. So busy here on the coast, you haven’t been able to be a world traveler like your brother and your son, right, sir?”
“Well, yeah. i have meetings, you know. Committees, things like that.”
“Of course, sir.”
“But it’s not like I abandoned my family… I didn’t neglect them… I took them with me on trips when I could…”
“Certainly, sir. I’m sure you did, sir.”
“You bet I did. Family comes first, you know.”
“Certainly, sir. You were always there to make that first introduction, and then, I suppose, the rest was up to them, sir?”
“Well, yeah, sure… uhh, yeah…”
“That’s what I figured, sir.”
“Hey, umm, something tells me I’m forgetting something…”
“Your crackers, sir.”
“What?”
“Your crackers, sir. They’re over here, sir. They were just behind this stack of video games, sir.”
“Oh, right. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it, sir.”
Copyright 2021-2024 John F Di Leo
Excerpted with permission from Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volume Two, 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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