Philip Roth - Our Gang

TRICKY ( interrupting ): That’s exactly why I’m having my sweat glands removed, to show how in control I am.

LEGAL COACH ( continuing ): Now, as you know, there is bound to be a certain amount of blood shed, when we go ahead and kill these young people, whether we do it before or after. This blood is something we seem always to run into with the killings, one of those facts of death we have to live with. Reverend, I see you shaking your head. Are you suggesting that it is possible to kill people, even youngsters like this, without spilling blood? If so, I’d like to hear about it.

SPIRITUAL COACH ( anguished ): Well.. what about gas.. poison gas… Something like that? Surely enough blood has been shed in our century.

MILITARY COACH: The only trouble with gas, Reverend, if I may speak here on the basis of my own firsthand experience — the trouble with gas is that unfortunately we don’t have these Scouts in a big open space. If we had them, say, smack in the middle of a desert somewhere, sure, spray ‘em and it’s over with.

SPIRITUAL COACH: Couldn’t we get them to a desert then?

LEGAL COACH: How? ( Wary ) Are you suggesting bussing them there?

SPIRITUAL COACH: Well, yes, busses would do it, I suppose.

TRICKY: No, I’m afraid they wouldn’t, Reverend. I have thought this matter through and I have made my decision: this administration will not bus children from Washington, D.C., all the way to the state of Arizona to poison them. That is a matter in whieh the federal government simply. will not intervene. This is a free country, and certainly one of your fundamental freedoms here is choosing the place where you want your child to be killed.

SPIRITUAL COACH: And there’s simply no way you can poison them right here?

MILITARY COACH: Much too dangerous, Reverend. Start out gassing these kids, and next thing, you get a wind or something, and you have poisoned some perfectly innocent adult miles away.

LEGAL COACH: Of course, you’re going to get some guilty adults too, you know, if you let it spread far enough.

SPIRITUAL COACH: Gentlemen, please! I stand utterly opposed to any course of action wherein the welfare of ‘a single innocent adult is even remotely threatened. I don’t care how many guilty adults you get in the process.

MILITARY COACH: All right with me, Reverend. I’d rather shoot ‘em anyway. I have always maintained that it gives the individual soldier a stronger sense of participation and accomplishment to pull the trigger and see the results with his own eyes.

SPIRITUAL COACH ( to Legal Coach ): And you?

LEGAL COACH: Fine with me. So long as we all realize beforehand that there is going to be this blood, and sure as we are sitting here, the media are going to exploit it to the hilt. I don’t have any doubt whatsoever, given the kind of people who pull the strings in the press and TV, that they are going to blow this whole thing out of proportion, and, for instance, are not going to have a word to say about the restraint that’s been displayed by our not using poison gas, or bussing. I mean, we could subject these kids to what is virtually a cross-country bus trip, a long hot grueling drive out to Arizona, without food, water, toilet facilities and so on, prior to killing them, and yet, as we all know, with the exception of the Reverend here, not a single member of the administration has spoken in support of such a proposal. But will you hear about that on TV? I think not.

TRICKY: Oh, no. They never tell that side of the story. It’s not sensational enough for them, not enough gore. Not enough violence to suit their taste. No, it’s never what we didn’t do, it’s always what we’ve done. That, unfortunately, is what these people consider newsworthy.

LEGAL COACH: Luckily, Mr. President, the people of this country are still by and large passive and indifferent enough not to get all stirred up by this kind of irresponsible sensationalism on the part of the media.

TRICKY: Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’ve never lost my faith in the wonderful indifference of the American people. Just because they happen to see a little Boy Scout blood on TV… Boy Scout blood on TV? ( His lip is suddenly drenched with perspiration ) They’ll impeach me! They’ll —

LEGAL COACH: Nothing of the sort, Mr. President, nothing of the sort. It’s only another crisis, you have nothing to worry about. Come on nowcool, confident and decisive. Come on, repeat it after me, you know how to behave in a crisis: cool, confident and decisive.

TRICKY: Cool, confident and decisive. Cool, confident confident and decisive. Cool, confident and decisive. Cool, confident and decisive.

LEGAL COACH: Feel better now? Crisis over?

TRICKY: I think so, yes.

LEGAL COACH: You see, you mustn’t be frightened of Boy Scouts, Mr. President. Of course they’re going to bleed a little and there may even be this hue and cry about it on TV, but when the country sees this sign that one of them was carrying before the bleeding began ( extracts from his briefcase a sign reading DIXON FAVOR SEFFING — The Reverend gasps ), I think our worries are going to be over. Let the newspapers run all the photos of Boy Scout corpses they want — we’ll just run a photo of this sign, and of the five thousand replicas that I have asked the Government Printing Office to run off by morning. We’ll see who gets the support of the nation then.

TRICKY: Look! I’ve stopped sweating!

LEGAL COACH: See? You’ve weathered another crisis, Mr. President.

TRICKY: Wow! That makes six hundred and one! ( Congratulations all around, from everyone except the Highbrow Coach, who speaks now for the first time. )

HIGHBROW COACH: Gentlemen, I wonder if I may take a somewhat different approach to the problem that we have been assembled here to solve. All the while I have been listening to your suggestions, I have simultaneously been bringing to bear upon the problem all my brainpower, wisdom, academic credentials, cunning, opportunism, love of power and so on, and the result is this list that I am holding in my hand, of the names of five individuals and/or organizations upon whom I think we can safely — if I may use the vernacular for a moment — pin the rap.

LEGAL COACH ( his interest suddenly aroused, after initial suspiciousness of “the Professor” ): The rap?

HIGHBROW COACH: “The rap.”

LEGAL COACH: Which rap?

HIGHBROW COACH: You name it. Inciting to riot. Tampering with the morals of minors. If you prefer, corrupting the youth of the nation.

POLITICAL COACH: “Corrupting the youth.” Hey, that’s got a real campaign ring to it!

HIGHBROW COACH: And a certain historical resonance, I would think.

SPIRITUAL COACH: At the risk of sounding “square,” may I put in a good word for “tampering with the morals of minors”? I’ve always found it to have tremendous appeal. It seems there is something in the word “tampering” that particularly infuriates people.

LEGAL COACH: That may be, Reverend, but in my book you still can’t beat “inciting to riot” for scaring the hell out of the public.

TRICKY: And you, General? You look distressed again.

MILITARY COACH: I am distressed again! I am distressed every time the Professor opens his mouth! What is this business of bringing charges? Oh, mind you, they’re good charges and I don’t have anything against them personally, but the last thing I remember we were talking about shooting the bastards.

HIGHBROW COACH: General, despite your low opinion of intellectuals, I happen to have the highest regard for Army officers such as yourself, particularly in their devotion to their men and to their country. I wonder if once you have heard me read my list, you won’t agree that to charge any of these five self-avowed enemies of America with the crime, to fix the responsibility for the uprising of the Boy Scouts on any one of them, will simultaneously absolve the Boy Scouts themselves of any real guilt, while totally discrediting the charges they have made against the President. The Scouts will retreat in panic…