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 is asked about the utterly humiliated, soon-to-depart governor of New York:
Governors, Scandals, and Chicken Tetrazouppa Soup
Dateline: August 10. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, sir! Are you ready for soup, sir?”
“Oh, is it soup time? Goody!”
“Here we go, sir. Chicken Tetrazzoupa tonight, sir.”
“Never heard of it. What is it?”
“Your cook said it’s a sort of a Chicken Noodle soup but with mushrooms and mozzarella, sir.”
“Oh. Interesting That’s one of those eye-talian cheeses, right?”
“Hmm… Yes sir, I suppose you could say that, sir.”
“Well. Looking forward to it. Long day.”
“Well, sir, here we go: one bowl of soup, one bowl of crackers, three soft plastic children’s soup spoons and a stack of napkins, sir.”
“Mmm. Can’t wait. Been a heck of a day.”
“Has it, sir? Why, something unusual today, sir?”
“We got part one of the infrastructure bill passed, and I’ve been hankering to give some interviews about it to the press, but nobody wanted to interview me about it.”
“What’s wrong, sir, did the reporters all suddenly take the day off, sir?”
“Huh? No, no. Though that would be nice… but, no, they just didn’t want to talk about infrastructure! Imagine that!”
“Maybe they would’ve been more willing if it actually contained infrastructure, instead a billion dollars of unaffordable social engineering and payoffs to allies, sir.”
“Come on, man! It’s a good bill!”
“Certainly, sir. And Edward D Wood Jr was a great director, sir.”
“Who?”
“So, tell me, sir, if the reporters didn’t want to talk about your spending bill, what did they want to talk about, sir?”
“Huh? Who?”
“You just said that reporters kept asking you about something else today, sir. What was it?”
“Oh, right! It’s all about Albany. Governor Cuomo resigned today.”
“Yes sir. Knew that, sir. All over the news, sir.”
“And they acted like i wanted to talk about it. Everybody’s asking about ‘my take’ on the situation. That’s no fun! I want to talk about spending plans!”
“Well, sir, they say you should speak about what you know, so, I can see that, sir.”
“I know, right? I mean, I can talk about what a disappointment it all was, and how ashamed his father would be to see this, and how frustrated i am that he’ll be out of office so I won’t be able to call him governor anymore.”
“Excuse me, sir? Why is that last one a big deal, sir?”
“Well, he has a brother, and i could never get the two of them straight, you know? Kept mixing them up.”
“How, sir?”
“Well, there’s Chris and Andrew and they both look alike.”
“No they don’t, sir.”
“Well, they’re both on TV a lot.”
“And you can’t remember which is on CNN and which one is the disgraced former governor, sir?”
“Right. All this malarkey and I can’t keep them straight.”
“Well, sir, how about this. Chris is on CNN, and Andrew was in Albany.”
“Huh?”
“Chris is on CNN. Both start with a C. Andrew was the governor at the state capitol in Albany. Both Andrew and Albany start with A, sir.”
“Hey, that’s good! I can remember that!”
“Glad to be of help, sir.”
“It’s just so maddening, you know? I knew their dad, and now I thought these guys would keep the dynasty going, but no. No such luck.”
“Well, sir, Governor Cuomo isn’t planning on leaving right away. As I understand it, he’s planning on staying two more weeks. I wonder why, sir.”
“I heard that it’s because he doesn’t have a house so he wouldn’t have any place to go.”
“Couldn’t he afford a hotel, sir?”
“I suppose.”
“Or couldn’t he afford to go on a trip first, maybe get out of the country for a break, sir?”
“Yeah, that might make sense.”
“Nowadays, the internet is so well populated with information, Governor Cuomo could hop on the bus to the airport, look up a list of countries that don’t have extradition treaties with the United States, and have a place to go by the time he reached the airport, sir!”
“I guess. I do wonder why he’s taking those two weeks, though. Wonder what he plans on doing for two weeks.”
“Well, sir, I have heard that he plans to spend the next two weeks crawling around his offices, taking down all the hidden cameras he installed under desks and side tables, sir. Just a rumor, sir.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“And I’ve heard other rumors that he plans to take those two weeks to walk around all the New York State office buildings, so he can get one last chance to get the phone numbers of all the girls he hadn’t hit on yet.”
“Hey, come on now! That’s a lot of malarkey.”
“I suppose so sir. After all these years, there can’t be any girls in Albany he hasn’t hit on yet, sir.”
“He was a good Democrat for a very long time. Throwing him out like this is terrible.”
“From what I hear, sir, there are millions of New Yorkers who agree with you, sir.”
“They don’t want Cuomo thrown out?”
“No, sir, they don’t want him to resign. He’s kind of leaving on his own terms this way, sir. I think most New Yorkers wanted him fired.”
“Those two weeks really bother me. I can’t help but think he’s doing something while he still has access to the title and the executive mansion.”
“Well, sir, maybe he’s renting a carpet steamer and cleaning up the place for the new tenants.”
“Him? He’d think he’s above that sort of thing.”
“Oh, well, maybe he’s using the free copying machines at the executive mansion to send out resumes. An unemployed governor must really be in demand, you know, sir?”
“My team is all wondering if he cut some deals, you know, to avoid prosecution.”
“Prosecution? For what, sir?”
“I don’t know. But they say there’s a risk of criminal charges.”
“Is hitting on your staffers a crime, sir?”
“Well, nowadays, I guess, maybe.”
“And is forcing your staff to ghost write a book for you on taxpayer time a crime, sir?”
“Well, umm, I wouldn’t know.”
“Hmm… Is cutting a deal with a publisher to get a book advance that has no possible relationship with expected sales any kind of a crime sir?”
“How could that be a crime? He’s just selling a book!”
“Yes sir, but as governor, he has power, theoretically ranging from regulatory issues to property taxes, so a big business in-state, like a publishing house, could easily have reason to try to bribe a governor, if the opportunity arose, sir.”
“I don’t like where this is going. I wish he were just gone.”
“No reason he couldn’t be, sir. And quickly too. There are a lot of countries that don’t have extradition treaties with us.”
“Look, i don’t think they’ve sold all the copies from that first edition yet. Don’t start talking about an extra edition so fast.”
“Sir, I was referring to extradition, sir. The practice of one country turning over a prisoner to another country that’s anxious to prosecute him. Without such a treaty, sir, the criminal can hide out for a very long time.”
“Two weeks. It’s driving us all crazy. He must be planning on releasing some secrets or something.”
“Could it be he’s just going from office to office, collecting all the official governor’s portraits from every wall, so that after he leaves, the employees don’t use them all as target dartboards to throw darts at, sir?”
“Dartboard. That’s what I need down here. I need a dartboard. That would help me get through the rough days.”
“Do they allow you a set of darts down here, sir?”
“No. They’re afraid I’d hurt myself.”
“Well, that probably lets out the possibility of using your stash of old Bernie Sanders yard signs as dartboards, sir.”
“Oh. Right.”
“I actually heard that Cuomo’s just collecting culinary maps of the state, so he can go on a tour of restaurants and sidewalk cafes, and spend his retirement pinching the waitresses and forgetting to add a tip to his credit card receipts.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, never mind, sir. Just thinking about Cuomo and his final days in Albany, sir.”
“I wonder what an unexpected departure from that office is like. It’s scary.”
“Oh, i assume it’s like leaving any job. You clean up the loose ends before you go… finish up any projects in process, you know, sir. I did hear that Cuomo was overheard on the phone with the HR department telling them to pull up all the resumes and head shots that people applying for intern and co-op roles had sent in, and forward them to his bachelor pad.”
“Can he do that?”
“Well, sir, he can’t do most of what he’s done for the past several years, so why should this be any different, sir?”
“Oh. Well, there’s only one thing we all agreed to in today’s meetings.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“We sure hope this thing isn’t catching!”
Copyright 2021-2024 John F Di Leo
Excerpted 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.
If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.
Substack: American Free News Network Substack
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA
1 thought on “Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Vol III – Episode 113: Governors, Scandals, and Chicken Tetrazouppa Soup”