The Politics of Everything

Prisoner: Can you get the light out of my eyes?

Guard: No.

Prisoner: These handcuffs are very tight.

Guard: Too bad. Are you ready to sign the confession?

Prisoner: I didn't mean to do it.

Guard: That's what they all say.

Prisoner: Listen, it really wasn't my fault. The tuna commercial set me off.

Guard: The tuna commercial?

Prisoner: Remember how it started? "Ask any mermaid you happen to see, 'What's the best tuna....'"

Guard: No singing!

Prisoner: Why? What's wrong with singing?

Guard: You might use banned thoughts or words or even concepts that are offensive or may be offensive to individuals or groups.

Prisoner: I guess I don't understand. Nobody sings anymore?

Guard: There are only three songs approved by the government: My Country, 'Tis of Thee, Amazing Grace and Runaround Sue.

Prisoner: Runaround Sue?

Guard: It's Jesse Helms's favorite. We don't ask why.

Prisoner: So I'm listening to this tuna commercial and I'm waiting for the jingle and, all of a sudden, I hear them telling me I should buy their tuna because they don't catch dolphins in their nets. And I just snapped.

Guard: What's wrong with that?

Prisoner: We're talking about tuna fish, for cripe's sake! Tuna sandwiches. Tuna salad. Tuna casserole. Tuna surprise. It's not about politics! It's about tuna!

Guard: Tuna is politics. A dolphin is politics. Don't you get it? Life is politics.

Prisoner: So I was beginning to realize. And I guess I knew it for sure when I saw the copy of Playboy. I don't suppose Playboy is still legal?

Guard: On the contrary. The Girls of the Justice Department was a big hit last month.

Prisoner: Sex is still OK?

Guard: Oh, yes. Approved at the highest levels. So long as it's not done outdoors.

Prisoner: And what's wrong with doing it outdoors?

Guard: It might scare the spotted owls.

Prisoner: I pick up an issue of Playboy and I'm flipping through and I get to this ad for something called Low Tide. It shows an attractive couple on the beach watching a sunset.

Guard: So?

Prisoner: The ad copy begins: "Help restore and preserve the waters, shores and coastlines of America. Volunteer your time! Make a donation! Speak out publicly!"

Guard: So?

Prisoner: So, it's an ad for cologne. Stuff you splash on your face to smell nice.

Guard: It also happens to make you tingle nice after you shave. Don't forget about that.

Prisoner: Right, exactly. It tingles nice after you shave. So what does that have to do with the waters, shores and coastlines? And then I get a coupon in the mail for something called Purific. A shampoo and conditioner. The ad says: "Better for the Environment. Better for Your Hair. Earth-Friendly Package. Not Tested on Animals. One-hundred percent Biodegradable Ingredients." I couldn't help myself. I snapped again.

Guard: Were you (concluded on page 196) Politics(continued from page 112) anti-environment?

Prisoner: But I wasn't! I separated my garbage every night. I cut up those plastic six-pack tops so they wouldn't strangle waterfowl. I used nonphosphate detergent, unbleached coffee filters and I made sure never, ever to ram an oil tanker into the state of Alaska.

Guard: So what did you want, a medal?

Prisoner: I just wanted to be left alone. I didn't want to have to feel guilty every minute of every day. I wanted to escape the politics. The politics of everything. Like when I was in that restaurant.

Guard: We have that on your record. You were intercepted by a militia unit of the Peace and Love for All God's Creatures movement.

Prisoner: They stabbed me with a steak knife!

Guard: Yes, but you were eating veal at the time. Do you know how those poor calves are raised? They're imprisoned in 22-inch crates and made anemic. It's inhuman.

Prisoner: It's inhuman to stab somebody with a steak knife, isn't it?

Guard: It depends on your priorities. The Peace and Love for All God's Creatures movement believes it is justified in killing human beings as long as it's done to save an animal.

Prisoner: When I got out of the hospital, I tried to be careful. I realized nobody was safe from the zealots. I tried to clean up my act. I even went down to the basement and dug out my old Crayolas and threw away the Flesh color. I don't suppose any of the Crayola people escaped?

Guard: Oh, no. We caught them in the first big cleansing.

Prisoner: They meant no harm.

Guard: That's what they claimed. But since not everybody's flesh is the same color, how dare they label one color as flesh? The Crayola people were offensive and politically retrograde.

Prisoner: May I ask what happened to them?

Guard: We hanged them from trees. But it was in the name of brotherhood.

Prisoner: I began to watch every step I took. I avoided circuses and rodeos because of the way they treated animals. I stopped rooting for the Cleveland Indians because of the way they stereotyped native Americans. I bought a copy of John Robbins' Diet for a New America, in which he says: "Don't eat anything that has a face. Don't eat anything that has sexual urges, that has a mother and father or that tries to run away from you."

Guard: Kept you busy, I'll bet.

Prisoner: It was incredible. I had to worry about everything I used, whether it was a petroleum product or a forest product or an animal product. I couldn't win. I got rid of my leather shoes and thought I was safe, until a mob chased me through the streets for wearing Nikes. I had to duck into a theater to escape.

Guard: Sure. Where an illegal performance just happened to be taking place.

Prisoner: It was Shakespeare. The Merchant of Venice!

Guard: Religious stereotyping of the worst sort. And very unfair to merchants.

Prisoner: I didn't know that Shakespeare had been banned.

Guard: Along with the works of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, H. L. Mencken, Rita Mae Brown, Robert Mapplethorpe and Wayne Newton—to name but a few.

Prisoner: Wayne Newton?

Guard: You play Danke Schön backward and it sounds like he might be saying a dirty word in Spanish.

Prisoner: I thought I'd be safe in The Merchant of Venice because all the actors were actually from Venice.

Guard: They had to be. After the flap over Miss Saigon, they passed a law. If you were playing an Asian, you had to be Asian. If you were playing an Italian, you had to be Italian. They had a heck of a time finding enough real orphans for Annie 3, but you'd be surprised how many kids were willing to kill their parents to get a part.

Prisoner: I tried to do the right thing, I really did. But then I found out that the zealots couldn't even agree on their zealotry.

Guard: I suppose you mean the diaper wars.

Prisoner: Thousands died!

Guard: It was for a good cause.

Prisoner: I never did understand it. In the late Eighties, some Yuppie parents stopped using disposable diapers.

Guard: Because it takes between four hundred and five hundred years for disposable diapers to biodegrade in landfills. And since fifteen point eight billion disposable diapers were being used annually in America, the landfills began to fill up.

Prisoner: Some people switched to cloth diapers and hired diaper services.

Guard: Yes.

Prisoner: But then the disposable diaper Yuppies figured out the energy costs of washing all those diapers in hot water, along with the cost of the gasoline for the delivery trucks and the exhaust emissions. And so they began attacking the cloth diaper Yuppies. And chaos ensued.

Guard: You can understand why. The Yuppies didn't really care which was better for the environment. They just wanted to be socially correct. They couldn't stand the thought of being politically un-hip.

Prisoner: The violence was terrible. Dy-Dee trucks rammed by BMWs. Booby-trapped boxes of Pampers. The horror, the horror.

Guard: And when the government stepped in to end the diaper wars, it seemed logical to pass certain laws to determine what was politically acceptable and what was not.

Prisoner: Which is when I went underground.

Guard: What was the name of the pathetic group you formed?

Prisoner: The Retro Rangers.

Guard: How precious. How très, très droll.

Prisoner: We started small. We broke into restaurant kitchens and replaced the margarine with butter. We put real cream in the little silver pitchers they give you with the coffee. And at night, we'd sit around the campfire and grill hot dogs without embarrassment.

Guard: Disgusting.

Prisoner: But we didn't care! That was the whole point. We didn't care about the politics of anything. We told ethnic jokes. We converted our cars to leaded gas. We never wore seat belts. We had sex without condoms. And we put salt on our food without tasting it first!

Guard: I'm glad you have confessed. I am sure you feel better. I am empowered to offer you a deal: Sign the confession, and then we'll take you out and shoot you.

Prisoner: What the hell kind of deal is that?

Guard: You don't understand. Before we shoot you, we let you have the one thing that has been banned for as long as anyone can remember. It was the first thing that divided America and set us down the path to our current state of affairs.

Prisoner: You don't mean—

Guard: Yes! Just before we shoot you, we let you smoke a cigarette.

Prisoner: May I talk to a lawyer before I decide?

Guard: I'm sorry, but we hanged the lawyers even before we hanged the Crayola people.

Prisoner: Well, I guess no society is all bad.

you're manacled to the evgonomic chair. the halogen lamp is in your eyes. you can't imagine the crimes, you've committed, welcome to the nineties

"I am empowered to offer you a deal: Sign the confession, and then we'll take you out and shoot you."