Philip Roth - Our Gang

HIGHBROW COACH: Well, you won’t have to leave town this time, Mr. President. Because this fugitive has not fled to Algeria to set himself up as some kind of ersatz revolutionary leader in exile; nor has he fled to Africa to live among his own kind, as he might have done if he were looking to build a following. No, there isn’t going to be much sympathy in this country, I can assure you, for a handsome and muscular young black man like Mr. Curt Flood, who, from all indications, has decided to make his homegentlemen, it couldn’t be better — in Copenhagen.

SPIRITUAL COACH: No!

HIGHBROW COACH: Yes, Reverend, Copenhagen. The Mecca toward which the filth peddlers of the world go down on their knees morning and night. The pornography capital of the world.

POLITICAL COACH: WOW! ( Ecstatic ) And that’s not all they’ve got in Denmark to compromise Mr. Flood, is it?

HIGHBROW COACH: Very fast on your feet, young man… The word is miscegenation. Not that we have to come right out with it, any more than we mean to say, in so many words, that he is a known smut addict.

SPIRITUAL COACH: No, please, you mustn’t. Where a baseball star is involved, we are inevitably going to be dealing with young impressionable minds, boys eight, nine, ten years of age — If they were to hear such words…

POLITICAL COACH: I agree, Reverend. It’ll be better by far to do it by “implication.”

LEGAL COACH: Fine with me. What about you, Mr. President? Think you can manage that? A hint here, a slur there, instead of coming right out with it?

TRICKY: Well, if it’s a matter of making the Reverend feel at ease about the wonderful young Little Leaguers of this country, I sure am going to try.

SPIRITUAL COACH: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, gentlemen.

TRICKY: You see, Reverend, there’s that restraint again, there’s that sense of proportion and moderation that according to the newspapers I’m not supposed to have. After all, here is a black man engaging in just about the wickedest act any American can imagine, and with the women of Denmark, who are among the whitest in the entire world, and yet instead of coming right out with it, and thus exposing our Little Leaguers to a highly dangerous and tempting idea, we are going to smear him by insinuation and innuendo.

SPIRITUAL COACH: I’m deeply indebted, Mr. President.

POLITICAL COACH: We thought that went without saying, Reverend.

HIGHBROW COACH: Good enough, gentlemen. I shall now proceed to read the list one more time, so that you may decide how you wish to cast your votes. 1: Hanoi. 2: The Berrigans —

POLITICAL COACH: May I interrupt here? I wonder if I can take a moment to make a case for the innocence of the Berrigan brothers.

LEGAL COACH ( outraged ): The innocence of the Berrigan brothers?

POLITICAL COACH ( backpeddling ): Of this charge! Of this charge!

LEGAL COACH: But we haven’t even decided yet upon the exact nature of the charge — so how can they be innocent? Where is your evidence? Where is your proof?

POLITICAL COACH: Well, I don’t have any.

LEGAL COACH: Then, maybe, young man, you oughtn’t to go around calling people innocent until you do!

POLITICAL COACH: I grant you that — but what I am fearful of is this: if we do try to pin still another crime on those priests, we are going to produce a sympathetic reaction toward them such as you ordinarily don’t get until after an assassination. I should tell you that at this very moment a Hollywood movie is in the early stages of planning, in which Fathers Phil and Dan Berrigan are to be portrayed by Bing Crosby and an actor, as yet unnamed, who will be made up to resemble the late, great Barry Fitzgerald. Now these Hollywood producers, gentlemen, no matter how they may dress or wear their hair, are not hippies or left-wing fanatics by any stretch of the imagination. Underneath those anti-establishment muttonchops they are hardheaded business men with a product to market and an audience to exploit, and they can spot a trend developing a long way off. According to my informants, the movie being planned deals sympathetically with two priests who decide to blow up West Point, after Army defeats Notre Dame before seventy million television fans in the big football game of the year. There’ll be nuns and songs and so on, and who knows but that a picture like this could turn the whole damn country Communist overnight.

MILITARY COACH: Two hundred million Reds on American soil? Not if I have anything to say about it.

POLITICAL COACH: Easier said than done, General. Shoot two hundred million Americans — if that’s what you have in mind — shoot one hundred million Americans, and I’m afraid you’re going to give the Democrats just the kind of issue they can play politics with in the ‘72 elections.

MILITARY COACH: The level to which political life in this country has sunk! Now if the military were running this show…

POLITICAL COACH: Granted. Granted. But you do not build a utopian society overnight, General. And that is why I wish to caution you, one and all, against voting for the Berrigans. I know how tempting it is, especially after what we went through to track them down, but I am afraid that this is another one of those instances when we are going to have to display our characteristic restraint and moderation. Certainly the last thing in the world we want is Bing Crosby in a collar crooning to Debbie Reynolds in her habit about b-b-b-blowing things up. Not even Lenin could have devised a more sure-fire method of converting the American working class into bombthrowing revolutionaries.

HIGHBROW COACH: Ingenious analysis. Nonetheless, I think you misread Hollywood’s intentions. If the Berrigans were to get the chair, to be sure Hollywood would immediately go into full-scale production of some kind of musical about them, along the line of Going My Way. But that is only an argument against killing them. Keep them in jail, and you will be surprised how quickly the public and the movie moguls will forget they exist.

LEGAL COACH: I agree. Bury them alive. Always better.

SPIRITUAL COACH: And more merciful, too. That way, you see, it’s not capital punishment.

HIGHBROW COACH: To move on then. Number two was the Berrigans.

SPIRITUAL COACH: What was one again? Harvard?

HIGHBROW COACH: Hanoi.

SPIRITUAL COACH: Ah, yes. I knew it was some thing beginning with an H.

MILITARY COACH ( angrily ) : And what about something else beginning with an “H”? What about Haiphong! How can you have Hanoi without Haiphong? That’s like Quemoy without Matsu!

TRICKY: Quemoy and Matsu! Does that bring back memories! Quemoy and Matsu!… What ever happened to them?

POLITICAL COACH: Oh, they’re still out there, Mr. President, if we should ever need them.

TRICKY: Well, that’s wonderful. Where were they again — exactly? Wait, let me guess, let’s see if I can remember… Indonesia!

POLITICAL COACH: No, Sir.

TRICKY: Am I warm? The Philippines! No?… Near Hawaii?… No? Oh, I give up.

POLITICAL COACH: In the Formosa Straights, Mr. President. Between Taiwan and Mainland China.

TRICKY: No kidding. Hey, listen, whatever happened to what’s-his-name? The Chinaman.

POLITICAL COACH: Which Chinaman, Mr. President? There are six hundred million Chinamen.

TRICKY: I know, enslaved and so on. But I’m thinking of, you know, the one with the wife. Oh, it’s one of those names they have…

HIGHBROW COACH: Chiang Kai-shek, Mr. President.

TRICKY: Right, Professor! Shek. Little Shek, with the glasses. ( Fondly ) The Old Dixon… ( Chuckling ) Well! Enough wandering down memory lane. Forgive me, gentlemen. Where were we? So far we have Moscow and the Berrigans.