Monday, November 29, 2010
Presidential Pardon?
Chapman's ould lad had worked in the corpo for years, and got the boys a cushy number on the public broom, sweeping streets on a cushy beat up be Earlsfort Terrace, it being as much as their benighted brains was up to, when they unintentionally foiled an armed robbery be-way of a missed banana skin, generating so much good will from the bewildered bank manager that he promised them anything their hearts desired; he was doubly, and even more unjustifiably impressed when, after a brief conflab, they decided the one thing that would, as it were, get them off the streets, would be a decent education. He bought them the finest education money could buy, and they were both duly dispatched to MIT on the east coast of the US, the very next day.
The following summer, Keats procured them both lowly paid internships at US media watch dog F.A.I.R. where they were tasked with an analysis of the media's performance of what became known in certain circles as "Death Race 2000" - the US presidential election of that year, contested by Messrs. Bush and Gore. Keats, having first looked into some of Chapman's homework, was duly impressed. "I enjoyed your analysis of the class of cornball stunts the candidates engaged in, attempting to woo Johnny Six-Pack at the 11th hour", he said over a pastrami on rye from Leibowitz' Deli in the green pastures of MIT one lunchtime, "in particular that one when Gore tried to play the bongos, as if to emulate Big-Bill with his sax". Chapman demurred on the compliment as he toyed with the meatball sub from Ciccioni's, lamenting the Bushified state of the world at that time compared to what it might have been had Gore won (thus engaging, unknowningly in an act of weldtschmertz), replying "Not only did Gore play the drums superbly, and completely in time with the professional band hired for the occasion, with no rehearsal, but he was, hands down, the winner of that evening's debate - in fact, the lucidity of his arguments, his step by step demolition of his opponents attempts at logic, could be taken as a generic template of organised, constructed thought processes".
"Oh, well, that explains the headlines I've been reading in the archives from the following days analyses myself, as part of my research then", replied Keats, slowly and somewhat reluctantly putting his pastrami on rye down, edging away from Chapman on the bench in the park.
Chapman squinted nervously at the clock tower as it chimed one and the sun, suddenly dazzling, emerged from behind a scudding summer cloud. "What headlines?", he asked, fatalistically. Keats was already standing, backing away slowly as he said, "Why the LA Times, New York Times, and the Washington Post all lead with one version or another of:
'Al Gore: Rhythmically Correct'.
Chapman resigned his internship the next day and went back to sweeping up the streets. Keats is still missing.
# posted by Flann O'Brien @ 4:17 PM 
