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 are sharing approximately every other story from Evening Soup with Basement Joe, and are now sampling Volume Three’s ninety chapters. In today’s episode, President Buckstop has to talk about a certain New York governor…
Governors, Passes, and Manhattan Chowder with Shellfish and Bacon
Dateline: August 3. Begin Transcript:
“Hey, boss! You down there?”
“Of course I’m down here! Who’s calling?”
“At this hour? It’s your cook, obviously! Who else would it be?”
“Oh, do you have soup for me?”
“If I didn’t, I sure wouldn’t be hobbling down this blasted staircase, boss!”
“Oh, goody! I’m hungry!”
“Well, keep your shoes on, boss, I’ll be a minute. Gotta make sure I don’t spill the tray while I’m stumbling down the stairs.”
“You can turn the light on, if that would help…”
“I DID turn the light on, boss! I’m not stupid. The problem is my knee, not the lighting.”
“Oh. Well, take your time then. Don’t spill my soup.”
“Okay. There. Finally. You know, sometimes I think that staircase gets steeper every week, boss.”
“I haven’t done anything to it! Honest!”
“Well, there’s a switch. For once, I believe you.”
“Huh?”
“Okay, so here’s tonight’s soup, sir. It’s a Manhattan Soup with Shellfish and Bacon.”
“Mmm! That sounds good! Have I had it before?”
“Well, it’s the first time I’ve made it, anyway. It’s similar to Manhattan Clam Chowder, but with shrimp and bacon as well as clams. The shop had some langostino lobsters and oysters on sale, so I tweaked the recipe a bit. I think it really turned out well, boss!”
“What are… uhh… what did you say before ‘lobsters’, back there?”
“Oh, they’re a type of shellfish too, very popular. Not actually lobster, but the meat is similar… Much smaller than your standard lobster, boss.”
“Does it creep around a fish tank like a lobster does?”
“That’s nothing, boss. It creeps around the fish tank like Andrew Cuomo creeps around a secretarial pool.”
“Oh, don’t talk about Governor Cuomo again.”
“Again? I don’t think I’ve ever talked with you about Governor Cuomo before, sir. Not sure I’ve ever talked with anyone about Governor Cuomo before.”
“Oh, not you. I mean in general. Today.”
“I’ve never even met Governor Cuomo, sir. Though if I had, he’d probably have made a pass at me.”
“Come on, man! He wasn’t THAT bad.”
“Boss, a girl can tell about some guys. You can just look at a guy like that once, and you know he’s a creep.”
“It can’t be that simple.”
“Boss, it is. Believe me. This is the kind of guy who drives down the highway, passes you, then slows up so that you pass him, just so he can get a closer look at you through the window.”
“Huh?”
“Boss, this creep would join the high school football team just to get practice completing passes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Boss, this guy is such a sleaze, aspiring Hollywood producers hire him by the hour to give them advanced lessons.”
“Now cut that out!”
“Boss, there’s no reason to defend him. The independent report came out, and totally threw him under the bus. The eleven women accusing him are totally credible, sir. Everybody says so.”
“Those sorts of cases are often a matter of misunderstanding…”
“Come on, boss. Not this many. There’s no question about it, sir.”
“Look, I already said he should resign. What more do you want from me?”
“Me? Oh, nothing. Just thinking it’s interesting sir, that’s all.”
“Why? Why is it interesting?”
“Because certain politicians get these kinds of allegations all the time, and some get totally attacked in the media, and others don’t. It’s the strangest thing, boss.”
“Well, I can’t imagine why that would be.”
“Oh, can’t you, boss?”
“You know, I’d really rather talk about the infrastructure bill.”
“What infrastructure bill, boss?”
“Oh, any of them.”
“They don’t have a lot of infrastructure in them, you know. Darned little, in fact.”
“Well, now, it depends on how you define infrastructure.”
“I’ll bet it does, sir.”
“Come on, man!”
“Well, how DO you define infrastructure, boss?”
“Well, uh, you know…. things like roads and bridges, and utilities, and sewers, and pipes and power cable and dams.”
“Have you read any of the new infrastructure bills, sir?”
“Well, uhh, I have people for that…”
“Not a lot of roads and bridges in there, sir. Not a lot of pipes and power cable, sir.”
“Oh.”
“But oddly enough, there are a lot of dams, sir.”
“There are?”
“Yup, my son was reading a summary of it online today, and I never heard so many damns in ten minutes before, sir.”
“Well, come on, man… there’s more to it than that!”
“Oh yes. My son told me when he finished reading it. He said there are no bridges or roads to speak of, sir; it’s all just sewers and damns, sir, just sewers and damns.”
Copyright 2021-2024 John F Di Leo
Excerpted with permission from “Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volume Three: How Is This Not Over Yet?”, 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.
His newest nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” was just released on July 1, and is also available, in both paperback and Kindle eBook, exclusively on Amazon.
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