Philip Roth - Our Gang

HIGHBROW COACH: Hanoi and the Berrigans, Mr. President.

TRICKY: Of course! See what you did with that Quemoy and Matsu? I was still back there in the fifties. Look at me, my lip is covered with goose flesh.

HIGHBROW COACH: To proceed. Number 3:

The Black Panthers. No dispute there. Good. Number 4: Jane Fonda, the movie actress and antiwar activist. Number 5: Curt Flood, the baseball player. Any questions, before we proceed to the vote. Reverend?

SPIRITUAL COACH: Jane Fonda. Has she ever appeared nude in a film?

HIGHBROW COACH: I can’t honestly say

remember seeing her pudenda on the screen, Reverend, but I think I can vouch for her breasts.

SPIRITUAL COACH: With aureole or without?

HIGHBROW COACH: I believe with.

SPIRITUAL COACH: And her buttocks?

HIGHBROW COACH: Yes, I believe we’ve seen her buttocks. Indeed, they constitute a large part of her appeal.

SPIRITUAL COACH: Thank you.

HIGHBROW COACH: Any other questions?

POLITICAL COACH: Well, about the Black Panthers — do you really think that the American people will believe that the Black Panthers are behind the Boy Scouts? That really does require quite a bit of imagination.

TRICKY: Now I take exception there. I don’t want to influence the voting, but I do want to say this: let’s not underestimate the imagination of the American people. This may seem like old-fashioned patriotism such as isn’t in fashion any more, but I have the highest regard for their imagination and I always have. Why, I actually think the American people can be made to believe anything. These people, after all, have their fantasies and fears and superstitions, just like anybody else, and you are not going to put anything over on them by simply addressing yourself to the real problems and pretending that the others don’t exist just because they are imaginary.

HIGHBROW COACH: I agree wholeheartedly, Mr. President. May we proceed to the voting?

TRICKY: By all means… Of course, gentlemen, these are going to be free elections. I want it to be perfectly clear beforehand that I wouldn’t have it otherwise, unless there were some reason to believe that the vote might go the wrong way. And I am proud to say I don’t think that’s possible here in this locker room with men of your caliber. You may vote for any two candidates on the list, and you may, in the interest of justice, add any two names of your own choosing. I will write down the votes cast for each candidate and tabulate them on this sheet of paper.

Now you’ll see that this is an ordinary sheet of lined yellow paper such as you might find on any legal pad. I was a lawyer, you know, before I became President, so you can be pretty sure that I know the correct manner in which to use this kind of paper. In fact, I should like you now to examine the paper to be sure nothing has been written on it and that it contains no code markings or secret notations other than the usual watermark.

HIGHBROW COACH: I’m sure we all can trust your description of the piece of paper, Mr. President.

TRICKY: I appreciate your confidence, Professor, but I would still prefer that the four of you examine the paper thoroughly beforehand, so that afterwards there cannot be any doubt as to the one hundred percent honesty of this electoral procedure. ( He hands the paper around to each ) Good! Now for a free election! Suppose we begin with you, Reverend.

SPIRITUAL COACH: Well, really, I’m in a tizzy. I mean, I know for sure that I want to vote for Jane Fonda — but after her I just can’t make up my mind. Curt Flood is so tempting.

HIGHBROW COACH: Vote for both then.

TRICKY: Or suppose you think it through a little longer and we’ll come back to you. General? 74.

MILITARY COACH ( belligerently ): Hanoi and Haiphong!

TRICKY: In other words, that’s your write-in vote, Haiphong.

MILITARY COACH: Mine, and every loyal American’s, Mr. President!

TRICKY: Fair enough. ( Records vote ) Next.

POLITICAL COACH: I’ll take Hanoi, too.

TRICKY: With or without Haiphong?

POLITICAL COACH: I think I like it just by itself.

TRICKY: And, anything else?

POLITICAL COACH: No, thank you, Mr. President — I stick.

TRICKY: Okay, time to hear the voice of Justice.

LEGAL COACH: The Berrigans, the Panthers, Curt Flood.

TRICKY: Slowly, please, slowly. I want to be sure to get it right. The Berrigans… The Panthers… Curt Flood… But that’s three. You’re allowed only two.

LEGAL COACH: I understand that, Mr. President. But in that my predecessors have each used only one from the Professor’s list of five, it did not seem to me a violation of the spirit of the law, if I took up some of the slack. I am a great believer, as I think you are, sir, in the spirit of the law, if not the letter.

TRICKY: Well, okay, if that’s the reason: Do you want now to add any names of your own?

LEGAL COACH:

As a matter of fact, Mr. President, I do.

TRICKY: One or two?

LEGAL COACH: As a matter of fact, Mr. President, five.

TRICKY: Five? But you were the one who made up the rule about only two.

LEGAL COACH: And I stand by it, Mr. President or would, under the circumstances such as existed at the time I suggested it. But I am dealing at this moment with what I can only call “a clear and present danger.” I am afraid, Mr. President, that if I were to submit only two of these five names that I have just this minute come up with, this administration would be in the most serious clear and present danger you can imagine of appearing to be out of its mind. If, on the other hand, the five names are submitted together, thus suggesting some kind of plot, a charge that might otherwise have appeared, at best, to be an opportunistic and vicious attack on two individuals we don’t happen to like, will take on an air of the plausible in the mind of the nation, such as it is.

Surely, Mr. President, you will permit me at least to read the names of the five. This is, after all, a free country where even the man in the street can say what’s on his mind, provided it isn’t so provocative that it might lead somebody in another state, who doesn’t even hear it, to riot. It would be a sad irony indeed, if the man who is this nation’s bulwark against those very riots that such freedom of speech tends to inspire, was to be denied his rights under the First Amendment.

TRICKY: It would, it would. And you can rest assured that so long as I am President that particular sad irony — if I understand it correctly — is not going to happen.

LEGAL COACH: Thank you, Mr. President. Now try not to think of the five individually, but rather as a kind of secret gang, protected, as much as anything, by the seeming disparateness of individual personality and profession. I: the folk singer, Joan Baez: the Mayor of New York, John Lancelot. 3: the dead rock musician, Jimi Hendrix. 4: the TV star, Johnny Carson…

ALL: Johnny Carson?

LEGAL COACH ( smiling ): Who better to be acquitted? It’s always best, you see, to have one acquitted, especially if he appears to have been unjustly accused in the first place. It provides the jury with a means of funneling all their uncertainty in one direction, makes them feel they’ve been fair about the whole thing. Makes the convictions themselves look better all around. And, of course, freeing Johnny Carson, you’ll be freeing the most popular man in America ( besides yourself, Mr. President ). Why,’ we can even, midway through the trial, have the President step in and make a statement in Carson’s behalf. Exactly as he did about Manson, only the other way around this time. Imagine, the whole country crying “Free Johnny!” and the President going on TV and casting serious doubt on the charges raised against this great entertainer.