Philip Roth: Our Gang

TRICKY: Oh, Reverend, Reverend, I assure you, under ordinary circumstances I would bend over backwards to forgive them. I like to think that I am the kind of man who can find it in his heart to forgive his worst enemy. Why, not only have I forgiven Alger Hiss, but when I was elected President, I sent him an anonymous telegram expressing my gratitude for all he had done in my behalf. And that man was a perjurer! Listen, I would actually have forgiven Khrushchev himself, yes, right there in that kitchen, if it had been politically expedient to do so. Just look what I’m up to right now: I’m in the very process of forgiving Mao Tse-tung, who by my own estimate has enslaved six hundred million people!

But I am afraid, Reverend, that where these Boy Scouts are concerned, we are fighting for a principle so fundamental to civilized life, that even a man of my magnanimity must rise up and say “No, this time you have gone too far.” Reverend, they are trying to prevent me from winning a second term!

SPIRITUAL COACH: I see… I see… I must confess that I had not thought of it quite that way.

TRICKY: It is not a pleasant way to have to think about it. All of us would prefer to look with charity and respect upon our fellow human beings, whatever their race, creed, color or age, and to treat them according to the tenets of our religious beliefs. Certainly no one in this country wishes to appear more religious than I do. But sometimes, Reverend, people just make being religious impossible, even for someone who stands to gain as much from that posture as I do.

SPIRITUAL COACH: But if such is the case, if these Boy Scouts, for some incomprehensible reason, are out to destroy your political career by casting doubt upon your Sunday school morality, perhaps it would be best for you to go on television and give the people the facts as they really are. As you did when they accused you in the 1952 election of being the recipient of an illegal political fund. The Checkers Speech.

TRICKY ( intrigued ): You mean give it again?

SPIRITUAL COACH: Well, perhaps not the very same speech.

TRICKY: Why not? It worked.

SPIRITUAL COACH: True. But I wonder, Mr. President, if it addresses directly the issue at hand.

TRICKY: Maybe not. But you know, Reverend, when you’re dealing with wild and reckless charges like these, when you’re in the midst of a crisis such as this one, that could snowball overnight into political disaster, then you sometimes have to do what works, and leave things like the issues themselves for later. Otherwise, I’m afraid there might not be any later.

SPIRITUAL COACH: Well, I’m not a politician, Mr. President, and I must admit that I may be hopelessly naive to believe that The Truth Shall Make Ye Free. But I do think that if instead of giving the Checkers Speech again, instead of itemizing your earnings over the years and telling how much money you owe your parents and so on, you were now to make a similar address, in which you presented to the nation an itemized account of your sexual experiences, giving exact dates from your appointment calendar — when, where, and with whom — you might well feel secure in leaving it to the American people to judge whether or not you are an advocate of fornication.

TRICKY: You mean, go on TV with the appointment books…

SPIRITUAL COACH: Yes, and leaf through them page by page, until at last you come upon an item to read aloud. I would think the long silences will in themselves be the most eloquent part of the broadcast.

TRICKY: What about charts though? What about a graph? You see, I don’t know if people are going to sit around all night in front of their television sets waiting for me to say something. But if we had a graph where we measured the hours in which I have engaged in the ordinary human activities of scheming, plotting, smearing and so on, against those I’ve spent having intercourse — well, it could be pretty impressive. And I could use a pointer! At the risk of seeming immodest, I think I can hold my own with any schoolmaster in the country in using a pointer and charts, though of course by training I’m a lawyer, you know… And I’ll borrow a dog!

Well, how does it sound to the rest of you?

POLITICAL COACH: Speaking frankly, Mr. Pres ident, I think we are barking up the wrong tree with this whole idea of using the truth or the dog. We’ve used the dog, of course, and with some success, and though I don’t have my file with me, I’m sure we’ve used the truth some time or other in the past, too. Off the top of my head I can’t remember exactly when, but if you like I’ll have my secretary look — it up in the morning. However, right now it seems to me that, given the hysteria of those Scouts, and the kind of coverage they’re getting, if you were to go on television and say that you have had intercourse only once in your entire life, maybe as some kind of initiation rite when you were in the Navycrossing the equator maybe — and that the whole thing had lasted less than sixty seconds, and you had hated it from beginning to end, and that you had to be held down throughout, and so on, even that would be enough to make you appear guilty of the charges the Boy Scouts are bringing against you.

TRICKY ( reflecting ): Of course, if you’re going to rule out the dog and truth and so on, maybe the best approach is for me to go on TV and deny the whole thing. Say I’ve never had intercourse.

POLITICAL COACH ( shaking his head ): Have you seen that mob, Mr. President? They wouldn’t believe you, not at this point.

TRICKY: Suppose I spoke from HEW, with the Surgeon General at my side, and he read a medical report stating that I am not now, nor have I ever been in the past, capable of performing coitus.

SPIRITUAL COACH: Mr. President, at the risk of being politically naive again, you are the father of two children… that is, if that means anything, in this context…

POLITICAL COACH: Politically naive, hell — that was good thinking, Reverend.

TRICKY: But why can’t we just say they were adopted?

POLITICAL COACH: No, no, that doesn’t really solve the problem. Even if we are able to establish you as not only sterile, but one hundred percent impotent, even if we were able to get the American public to believe that these children who resemble you so were adopted — and, mind you, I think we could do both, if it came down to it — you are still going to be compromised, it would seem to me, by appearing to have taken into your home the offspring of somebody else’s sexual intercourse. You are still going to be locked into this fornication issue.

LEGAL COACH: Absolutely. Open and shut case of guilt by association. If I were the judge, I’d throw the book at you. And another objection. If he goes on TV and says he’s impotent, most of the people out there aren’t even going to know what he’s talking about. I don’t doubt that half of them are going to think that he means he’s queer.

POLITICAL COACH: Wait a minute! Wait one minute! How about it, Mr. President?

TRICKY: How about what?

POLITICAL COACH: Going on TV and saying you’re queer. Would you do it?

TRICKY: Oh, I’ll do it, all right, if you think it’ll work.

SPIRITUAL COACH: Oh, but surely, Mr. President —

TRICKY: Reverend, we are talking about my political career! With all due respect, we happen now to be listening to a man whose business is politics, just the way yours is religion, and if he says that in a situation like this one the truth and the dog and so on are not going to get us anywhere, then I must assume he knows what he is talking about. After all, one of. the signs of a great leader is his willingness to listen to all sides of an issue without being blinded by his own prejudices and preconceptions. Now I am a Quaker, as you well know, and consequently it is only natural that I should be prejudiced in behalf of the advice given to me by a spiritual person like yourself. But I cannot run from the facts, just so as to be a better Quaker in your eyes and in mine. We are dealing with a mob of youngsters whose minds have been poisoned with a terrible lie. We are going to have to find a way to restore them to their senses while simultaneously restoring to the office of the Presidency its dignity and prestige. And if in order to accomplish those two important tasks I have to go on TV and say I am a homosexual, then I will do it. I had the courage to call Alger Hiss a Communist. I had the courage to call Khrushchev a bully. I assure you, I have the courage now to call myself a queer! The problem is not my courage to say this or say that; it never has been. The problem, as always, is one of credibility. Will they believe me?