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Okay, look.
For the purposes of this essay, I find it necessary to reveal something
about myself. I don’t like giving any of you people information that
might eventually lead to stepping over your whiskey soaked, near
catatonic body one morning on my way to work, but I need you to know
that what I’m writing about here, which would be plenty distressing
enough, is happening in my own back yard.
I’m from Salem, Massachusetts. Yes, that’s right, Witch City. The town
so nice they rely almost completely on a tourist industry generated by
the state sponsored murder of innocent citizens a few hundred years ago.
Sort of like if Auschwitz called itself ‘Jew City’ and had a
cute little hook nosed silhouette on their police cars, sandwich shops and called
their high school team the Fighting Shylocks. Also we’ve got the House of
the Seven Gables, but nobody ever said Satan lived there and nobody got
strung up, so who gives a crap?
Tonight, Monday March 26, 2001, at Salem State College, ex president
extraordinaire William Jefferson Clinton will give his first public
address. He’s scheduled to speak for about an hour, but that could mean
two in Clintonese, for which he will take home $100,000.00.
It will take me a little over four years to earn that sum. Since you’re
on this web site, it will probably take you a good deal longer and many
of you will have died in prisons, madhouses and gutters long before
reaching that total.
$100,000.00. For one night. Let’s try to get a little perspective. For
that same wad of tuition, Salem Sate could have five nights of Al
Franken. You can’t tell me that five nights of Franken wouldn’t have
been a better bang for the buck. This is a man who once asked Tipper
Gore what she thought of a joke that involved recycling, a stick and her
husband’s plumbing. They could have had ten nights of Oliver North, now
that’s comedy! I can’t even imagine it, it would be like huffing
airplane glue and watching ‘The Green Beret’s’ over and over with my
insane, marginally autistic cousin Lloyd. Steve Gatlin could have lived
in each Salem State dormitory for a week and spoken individually with
students about the crippling disease of Depression and how hard it makes
maintaining the grueling Gatlin Brother’s standard of excellence; if you
were willing to settle for half a month, you could upgrade to Larry! For
$100,000.00 you could build a stack of Reeces cups half way to Alfa
Centauri, except that you can only stack about thirty of them before
they fall over and also my math isn’t even in the right ballpark.
And for what? Not for the Great Man’s Wisdom. The high points will be on
the eleven o’clock news and whopping chunks of text will be on the front
page of the Boston Globe tomorrow, pushing Bush to page four where he
has been pretty much every day since the Supremes shoved him down the
collective American throat. No. Salem State will cough up a sum of cash
that might have been spent on scholarships or parking spaces to bask in
the Clintonian presence. It’s the healing balm of his celebrity they’re
looking for, not anything he might have to say.
A hundred... Thousand... Samollians. In one night. For the kind of
yammering he can’t keep from doing anyway. If he wasn’t in the Witch
City he’d be saying the same exact stuff to his dog, or the Dominoes guy
or the wall. You know who’s worth that kind of dough? Jesus. Maybe.
You know what that southern fried trailer fatso ought to do to every citizen
of Salem for that many clams? Any one of you could make up your own sex
joke. Christ, that stupid bastard Carter must feel like a schmuck, I
mean how the hell much do you get paid Framing and drywalling for the
homeless? Plus it’s hard work, not like dropping your jaw and wagging
your tongue. Hell, at a hundred Grande a night, this guy doesn’t need a
Legal Defense Fund, he needs a Great Big Underground Vault to Keep his
Money in Fund.
I know other ex presidents have cashed in. I know the Reagans got their
house for free, I know Nancy took enough designer clothes with her for
every Ethiopian to shoe the flies off their eyes with a Diore, I know
politicians tumble out of office and up to the trough, I know, I know.
But, Bill... you’re already going to need a hell of a lot of Oleo to get
that camel you’re riding through the needle’s eye. Do you honestly want
a humongous bag of loot on your shoulder as well?
note:
We wanted to pay Max Burbank $100,000 for writing this essay,
but we figured a "Thanks!" and a pat on the back would
suffice just as well.
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