Dave Barry - Bad Habits

I realize it’s none of my business, but I have a few questions about the MX missile system. Here, as I understand it, is how the MX is supposed to work: We would put a bunch of missiles where the Russians can’t hit them with their missiles. That way, if the Russians shoot at us, we’ll be able to shoot back, and everybody will wind up dead. This is considered to be much more desirable than what would happen without the MX, namely that the Russians would still be alive and we would be dead. Obviously, the best solution would be for us to be alive and the Russians to be dead, but for this to happen we would have to shoot first, and we wouldn’t do that because the whole reason we built all these nuclear devices in the first place is to preserve world peace. So we are going for the peace-loving solution, which is to guarantee that if anybody attacks anybody, everybody winds up dead.

So far so good. I mean, any fool can see the MX is the way to go. But what troubles me is the particular kind of MX President Reagan decided to build. Basically, the people who worry about our national defense for us came up with two options:

OPTION ONE: Dig several thousand holes in Nevada and Utah, but put actual missiles in only a few of them, so the Russians won’t know which holes to shoot at. Cost: A trillion or so dollars. Advantages: The bulldozer industry would prosper beyond its wildest dreams. Disadvantages: It won’t work. One flaw, of course, is that the Russians, using their spy satellites, could figure out which holes we put the missiles in. We could probably come up with some crafty scheme to overcome this flaw: Maybe we’d attach leaves and fruit to the missiles, so the Russians would think we were merely planting enormous trees in Nevada and Utah; or maybe we’d put huge signs on each missile with the words “THIS IS NOT A MISSILE” printed in Russian. So hiding the missiles is not the problem. The problem is that the Russians, if they have any sense at all, would simply build more missiles and shoot at all the holes, and we’d all wind up dead with no way to make the Russians dead. So the national-defense people came up with Option Two.

OPTION TWO: Put the MX missiles in holes we already have. Cost: A few hundred billion dollars. Advantages: None, except it costs less, which is not really an advantage because the government will spend the leftover money on some other gigantic scheme anyway. Disadvantages: It won’t work, since the Russians already know where the existing holes are. Heck, I even know where they are. They’re in Kansas. All the Russians would have to do is locate a map revealing the location of Kansas, which they could probably do, what with their extensive spy network.

So basically, President Reagan was faced with two options, both of which involved holes and neither of which would work. He pondered this problem for a while, on his horse, and finally decided to go with Option Two. Why, he reasoned, should we pay a trillion dollars for a system that wouldn’t work, when we can get the same thing for a few hundred billion? He’s going on the time-honored axiom that if something is not worth doing, it is not worth doing right.

Ideally, President Reagan would have delayed his decision in the hope that, given time, his defense planners could have come up with a third option, such as covering Nebraska with ice and launching the missiles from dogsleds. But he had to act fast, because of the Window of Vulnerability. The Window of Vulnerability, which was discovered only recently, is the period of time between now and whenever we finish the MX system, during which we are vulnerable to Russian attack. Reagan’s defense advisers are very big on the Window of Vulnerability: for months now, they have been running around the country proclaiming how vulnerable we are. This puzzles me. I mean, if we’re so vulnerable, why are we telling everybody? And if the Russians are so hot to attack us, why don’t they do it now? Why on earth would they wait until after we finish our MX system? And if they don’t attack us when we’re vulnerable, why do we need the MX at all? These questions deserve a lot of hard thought, which I intend to give them just as soon as I’ve had another drink.

I’m a little worried about the MX missile system. Don’t get me wrong: I certainly think we need another missile system. Better safe than sorry, that’s my motto.

What I’m worried about is that we won’t be able to get anybody to repair the MX. You can’t get anything repaired these days. Take, for example, Voyager 2, a United States space rocket that recently flew to Saturn to take pictures. It worked okay for a while, but then the camera got pointed in the wrong direction and started sending back pictures of outer space. This was bad public relations: taxpayers don’t want to pay nine zillion dollars for pictures that look like the inside of somebody’s closet with the light off. The NASA scientists claim Voyager 2 is a success anyway, but they have to claim this, because otherwise they can’t ask for more money. They would have claimed Voyager 2 was a success even if it had crashed into Phoenix, Arizona. The truth is, Voyager 2 broke and they couldn’t get it repaired.

This is a problem not only with rockets but with other major appliances as well. If you have ever called the service department of a major department store to get an appliance repaired, you know what I am talking about:

YOU: Hello, my washer ...

TAPE RECORDING: Thank you for calling the Service Department. All of our service representatives are smoking cigarettes and chatting; your call will be taken just as soon as somebody feels like taking your call. Thank you.

(For the next thirty-five minutes, you listen to a medley of songs by Barry Manilow, who has written a great many songs. Perhaps too many. Then an actual service representative comes on the line.)

SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE: Thank you for calling the Service Department. How may we serve you?

YOU: It’s our washer. One of the drive belts snared my wife by the arm and she can’t get loose and we can’t turn it off and we’re worried about what will happen when it gets to the spin cycle.

SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE: When did you purchase the washer?

YOU: A year ago, I guess. Could you hurry please? It’s almost done with the rinse cycle.

SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE: Then I’m afraid you are not covered under the ninety-day warranty. But don’t feel bad: nobody is ever covered under the ninety-day warranty. That’s why we offer it. Did you buy a maintenance agreement?

YOU: I don’t know, for God’s sake. (Your wife screams in the background.) Please, just get someone out here.

SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE: We will have a serviceperson in your area in 1986. Will someone be at home?

YOU: I imagine my wife will. What’s left of her.

SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE: Fine. We will have someone call you during the latter half of 1986 to let you know exactly what month the serviceperson will be there. Thank you for calling the Service Department.

A few years ago, we had a serviceperson come to our house regularly to try to repair our television set. He had this ritual: He would arrive with six hundred pounds of tools, select a screwdriver, take the back off the television, and stare at the insides as if he had been raised by a primitive Brazilian jungle tribe and had never seen a television before. Then he would put the cover back on, load his six hundred pounds of tools back onto the truck, and leave. Once, to prove he was sincerely interested in the problem, he took the television with him and kept it for several months. Finally, my wife and I took the cover off ourselves and blew on the insides of the television; it worked fine after that, and the serviceperson didn’t come around anymore, which was sort of a shame, because he was getting to be like one of the family.