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 from the late summer of his first year in office, President Buckstop’s soup aide, Russell Rhoades, tries (without much success) to discuss the Middle East.
Israel, Prime Ministers, and Mallow Soup
Dateline: August 28. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, sir! You ready for your soup, sir?”
“Huh? What’s that? Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Russell Rhoades, sir, with your soup tray, sir.”
“Your what?”
“Soup tray, sir. I’m here with your soup tray, sir.”
“No thanks. I don’t like souffle.”
“Not souffle, sir. Soup tray, sir. A tray of soup. I have your evening soup, sir.”
“Oh, why didn’t you say so?”
“I did, sir.”
“Oh? Well, bring it on in, don’t waste time; I’m hungry!”
“Of course you are, sir. Here you go; Mallow Soup, tonight, sir. It’s an Israeli soup, made from a plant called mallow. The cook said it tastes like spinach, sir.”
“So what’s in it?”
“Mallow, onions, garlic, lemon.”
“Hmm. Are there crackers?”
“Of course, sir. Here you go, sir – soup, crackers, napkins and spoons, sir. Hmm… I hear that Israel might be on your mind this weekend, sir, right?”
“Huh? Oh no. Not at all. Nothing’s on my mind.”
“Understood, sir. But you have some meetings about Israel this weekend, right, sir?”
“Me? Nahhh… I’m staying in as much as I can. Got a really tough boss to beat in Final Fantasy. Gonna focus on that this weekend.”
“Don’t you have some work to do for the country this weekend, sir?”
“The country? What country? I don’t really spend much time in the country. Never have. Lived in cities, small towns, not the country. Grew up in Scranton, then moved to Delaware. Miss Scranton. Really miss Scranton. Great place to grow up. Did you know I was from Scranton?”
“You’ve mentioned it once or twice, sir.”
“Great place to grow up. I remember when the interstate came through, and we kids would run and play in the newly dug highway trenches and see if we could catch worms for going fishing…”
“Umm, sir, I really don’t think that…”
“And then I got a job working on the highway myself, when I was older, you know, all us kids got jobs working on laying down pavement and then installing the rebar and then installing the concrete, and… uhh…”
“Sir, you moved away from Scranton when you were ten, sir.”
“I did?”
“You really couldn’t possibly have had a job pouring concrete as a ten year old, sir.”
“What if I was a really, really smart ten year old?”
“Really, really smart ten year olds don’t usually flunk out of third grade, sir.”
“Oh. Well, I did do something in Scranton… what was it now…”
“Sir, you moved to Delaware during the Truman administration. The interstate program was started under Eisenhower, and it didn’t really get going until you were in your twenties, sir.”
“Well, maybe I got started on it early?”
“Sir, you wouldn’t have had a job pouring concrete at nine, sir. It’s really just not possible.”
“Oh. What were we talking about?”
“Well, sir, I was going to talk with you about the middle east, sir, if I could.”
“Oh, you don’t want to do that.”
“Well, sir, actually, if you don’t mind, I would. I understand you probably can’t talk for a long time about it, but maybe until you get tired, sir?”
“HEY!”
“Yes sir? What is it, sir?”
“This soup is GREEN!”
“Well, yes, sir, it’s a leaf soup, sir. It’s made from the leaves of the mallow plant. I did tell you that it was like spinach, didn’t I?”
“But you didn’t tell me it was leaves!”
“What do you think spinach is, sir?”
“Huh? Well, spinach… uhhh… spinach is that stuff in a can… it’s the stuff that Popeye eats to get strong!”
“It’s a leaf, sir. A green leaf. That’s why they describe mallow soup that way; because even if you don’t know what mallow is, they figure everybody knows what spinach is.”
“Well; guess I showed them, huh?”
“Yes sir. Well, anyway, sir, I thought it might be a good time to talk about the mideast, sir. Living here, I’m a bit confused by it; I have some friends who live there, but of course they all have their own biases, you know, sir…”
“Oh, right. Biases. Can’t have those. That’s bad. I’m closing them all down.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Closing down all the biases. Army, navy, air force…”
“You mean, bases, I think, sir, not biases.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have asked to talk about this with you after all, sir.”
“No, it’s fine, I like to talk. Always used to, anyway. Lately, nobody wants to talk with me.”
“I understand that, sir.”
“Even at press conferences. They don’t want me to take more than a couple of questions. That’s no fun!”
“Perhaps they’re afraid you’ll answer wrong and embarrass yourself, sir.’
“Oh, I’m too old to be embarrassed.”
“Perhaps so, sir, but it does reflect on the whole country, sir. When it’s you doing it, sir, I mean, sir.”
“So what did you want to talk about?”
“The mideast, sir, actually.”
“I don’t blame you. I have questions about that too. like, where is it, really?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Like, is it Asia, or Africa, or Europe, or North America? Where is it, really?”
“Well, sir, it’s umm, it’s called the mideast because it straddles a section between continents, sir.”
“Is it close to the midwest?”
“The midwest, sir? Do you mean the American midwest, with Illinois and Wisconsin and Iowa and Minnesota, sir? That’s the midwest, sir.”
“So is the mideast over there too, or is it somewhere else?
“It’s on the other side of the world, sir!”
“Yeah, that’s how I feel sometimes too, son.”
“The reason I thought you might have something to talk about, sir, is that you just met with the new prime minister of Israel, and I was wondering if you could talk about what you spoke about, sir?”
“Oh, right! That’s right! The new prime minister. That’s right. I met him, didn’t I? Or, he met me. Something like that.”
“You met in your office, sir. I saw the pictures, sir.”
“You did?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well, where was I?”
“In your office, sir.”
“Oh, right. But I don’t remember what we talked about. I was so tired.”
“Well, perhaps something about him being new to his position, perhaps, because he’s only been there a matter of weeks, sir… Although we don’t know how long he’ll be in the post, of course.”
“Well, he’s in there now. So, ten, fifteen, twenty years or so, I guess?”
“Sir, haven’t you been paying attention to what’s going on in Israel? They not only picked a new prime minister, they picked the next two!”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know, sir. Well, the thing is, the new guy only has two years in the gig, and then there’s another new guy who’s supposed to succeed him after two years, sir.”
“Well, that’s handy isn’t it?”
“No, sir, I would say it’s not handy at all, sir. You see, sir, the current guy only steps down in favor of his replacement if the government doesn’t fall. And there are a lot of rumors that the coalition will fall before then. So being second in this particular government is kind of an empty prize, you know?”
“Does everybody get out of the way?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“When the government falls. Does everybody get out of the way?”
“I have no response to that.”
“This new prime minister, he had a lot of ideas. He said he couldn’t get into them in detail yet, but he wanted to work closely with me in the future on making stuff happen.”
“Did he give you an idea of what those projects would be, sir?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I nodded off somewhere around then.”
“I beg your pardon, sir???”
“Well, you’ve gotta remember, it was all about land, and walls, and elections, and charities, and businesses, and military… well, it was really, really boring. So I figured I could nap through that stuff.”
“But sir, your meeting was filmed live, sir. There’s footage of you sitting in an office with a fellow prime minister, sir… and you’re sleeping!”
“Well, it was really dull! You would’ve fallen asleep too.”
“Sir, considering how badly your last few weeks of foreign policy have gone, don’t you think it would be advisable to give a good deal more attention to the mideast, instead of just having a policy of hoping for good luck, sir. As the saying goes, sir, ‘hope is not a strategy,’ sir.”
“They told me that it would help if I kept in mind that Israel is about the size of New Jersey. I try to remember that, but still, you know how long it would take to move New Jersey across the country? I figure this must be even worse, because Israel has that big sea in the middle.”
“I don’t know where you’re going with this, sir. Are you going into work tomorrow, sir?”
“Oh, sure. Always. If I don’t sleep through it again, anyway. Sleep through more and more days nowadays. It sure is easier that way.”
“It’s only easier on you, sir. Not on anyone else.”
“Hey, could you help me with some young people slang?”
“Why, sir?”
“Well, you’re young, maybe you’ll know something I don’t.”
“Can’t hurt to try, sir. Go ahead.”
“Well, some of the folks around here have been caught looking at me, or just looking over towards me a little, and saying this one thing that I don’t quite get, sir. They whisper something, then giggle.”
“What are they saying, sir?”
“I first noticed it right after my meeting with that prime minister. They’re saying, ‘Napping is his superpower.'”
“Oh my.”
“Is it about my suede shoes?
“Oh… sure. May as well be.”
“I think I’ll concentrate on that boss now.”
“You do that, sir. Good luck with the boss.”
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 president of the Ethnic American Council in the 1980s and chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party in the 1990s, he has been a regular contributor to the American Free News Network since July of 2023. 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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