Philip Roth - Our Gang

“Which hip will that be, Blurb?”

“The left hip.”

“What about the right one?”

“We’ll try to get those to you within the week. I assure you that we’re working to clear this thing up just as fast as we can. We don’t want the people in this country to go around thinking the President has something wrong with his hips any more than you do.”

“What about the reports that he’s dead, Blurb?”

“I have nothing to say about that at this time.”

“But Secretary Lard was seen weeping as he left Walter Reed today. Surely that suggests that President Dixon is dead.”

“Not necessarily. It could just as well mean that he’s alive. I’m not going to speculate either way, gentlemen, in a matter this serious.”

“What about reports that he’s been murdered by a Boy Scout gone berserk?”

“We’re looking into that, and if there’s any truth at all to that story, I assure you, we’ll be in touch with you about it.”

“Can, you say anything definite about his condition at all?”

“He’s resting comfortably.”

“Are the sweat glands out? And if so, can we see them?”

“No comment. Moreover, it would really be up to the First Lady anyway, whether she wanted the President’s sweat glands to be made available for photographers and so on. I think she might want to keep something as personal as those glands just for the immediate family, and maybe eventually build a Trick E. Dixon Library at Prissier in which to house them.”

“Can you tell us how big they are, Blurp?”

“‘Well, I would imagine that given the sheer amount of sweating he used to do, they were pretty good-sized. But I’m only guessing. I haven’t seen them.”

“Blurb, is there any truth to the report that while at Walter Reed he was also going to have surgery done to prevent his eyes from shifting?”

“No comment.”

“Does that mean they were gouged out?”

“No comment.”

“Will the eyes be in the Trick E. Dixon Library at Prissier too, Blurb?”

“Once again, that would be entirely up to the First Lady.”

“Blurb, what about his gestures? He’s been criticized for a certain unnaturalness, or falseness, in his gestures. They don’t always seem tied in to what he’s saying. If he’s still alive, are there any plans for him to have that fixed too? And if so, how? Can they sort of get him synchronized in that department?”

“Gentlemen, I’m sure the doctors are going to do everything they can to make him appear as honest as possible.”

“One last question, Blurb. If he’s dead, that would make Mr. What’s-his-name the President. Is there any truth to the rumor that you people are postponing the announcement of Dixon’s death because you’re looking for a last-minute replacement for What’s-his-name? Is that why Mr. What’s-his-name himself keeps denying so vehemently the reports that the President is dead for fear of being dumped?”

“Gentlemen, I think you know as well as I do that the Vice President is not the kind of man who would want to be President of the United States if he felt there was any doubt as to his qualifications for the office. That’s f of even a question I will take seriously.”

“Good evening. This is Erect Severehead with a cogent news analysis from the nation’s capital… A hushed hush pervades the corridors of power. Great men whisper whispers while a stunned capital awaits. Even the cherry blossoms along the Potomac seem to sense the magnitude. And magnitude there is. Yet magnitude there has been before, and the nation has survived. A mood of cautious optimism surged forward just at dusk. Then set the age-old sun behind these edifices of reason, and gloom once more descended. Yet gloom there has been, and in the end the nation has survived. For the principles are everlasting, though the men be mortal. And it is that very mortality that the men in the corridors of power demonstrate. For no one dares to play politics with the momentousness of a tragedy of such scope, or the scope of a tragedy of such momentousness. If tragedy it be. Yet tragedies there have been, and the nation founded upon hope and trust in man and the deity, has continued to survive. Still, in this worried capital tonight, men watch and men wait. So too do women and children in this worried capital tonight watch and wait. This is Erect Severehead From Washington, D.C.”

“— the flag-burners, the faggots, the fairies, the filth peddlers, the Fabian Socialists of yore, the fair-weather friends, the fairies, the faithless, the flesh-show operators —”

We interrupt the Vice President’s address to the National Primates Association to bring you the following bulletin. A troop of Boy Scouts from Boston, Massachusetts, the home state of Senator Edward Charisma, has confessed to the murder of the President of the United States. The FBI has declined to give their names until such time as the President’s murder has been announced by the White House. The Boy Scouts are being held without bail, and according to the FBI the case is, quote cinched unquote. The murder weapon, which at first was believed to be the very knife that the President had exhibited on television during his famous “Something Is Rotten in Denmark” speech, is now identified as a Louisville Slugger baseball bat, formerly the property of Washington Senator center fielder Curt Flood. We return you to Vice President What’s-his-name at the Primates convention: “— the flotsam and jetsam of the universities, the fairies, the folk singers, the fairies, the freaks, the fairies, the free-loaders on welfare, the fairies, the free-speechers with their favorite four-letter word, the fairies —”

We switch you to our correspondent at Walter Reed Army Hospital.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this terrible news has just come to us from a highly reliable source within the hospital. The President of the United States was assassinated sometime in the early hours of the morning. The cause of death was drowning. He was found at seven A.M., unclothed and bent into the fetal position, inside a large transparent baggie filled with a clear fluid presumed to be water, and tied shut at the top. The baggie containing the body of the President was found on the floor of the hospital delivery room. How he was removed from his own room, where he was awaiting surgery on his upper lip, and forced or enticed into a baggie is not known at this time. There would seem to be little doubt, however, that the manner in which he has been murdered is directly related to the controversial remarks he made at San Dementia on April 3, in which he came out four-square for ‘the rights of the unborn."

“Right now, hospital officials seem to believe that the President left his bed voluntarily to accompany his assailant to the delivery room, perhaps in the belief that he was to be photographed there beside the stomach of a woman in labor. The recent Scout uprising, and yesterday’s nuclear bombing of Copenhagen, seemed to those of us here in Washington to have taken something of an edge off his campaign in behalf of the unborn, and it may well be that he had decided to seize upon this fortuitous circumstance to revitalize interest in his program. Doubtless, with the destruction of Copenhagen and the occupation of Denmark successfully accomplished, he was anxious to return to what he considered our most pressing domestic problem. Rumor has it that he intended, in his next major address, to use his new upper lip to outline his belief in ‘the sanctity of human life, including the life of the yet unborn.’”But now there will be no speech on the sanctity of human life with the new lip he would have been so proud of. A cruel assassin with a macabre sense of humor has seen to that. The man who believed in the unborn is dead, his unclothed body found stuffed in the fetal position inside a water-filled baggie on the floor of the delivery room here at Walter Reed Hospital. This is Roger Rising-to-the-Occasion at Walter Reed.”