by Philip Roth
But, I must admit, never in my long career of dealing with falsehood have I come upon a lie so treacherous and Machiavellian as this one my enemies are trying to pass off about me … What did I say? Let’s look at the record. I said nothing! Absolutely nothing! I came out for “the rights of the unborn.” I mean if ever there was a line of hokum, that was it. Sheer humbug! And as if it wasn’t clear enough what I was up to, I even tacked on, “as recognized in principles expounded by the United Nations.” By the United Nations. Now what more could I possibly have said to make the whole thing any more inane? Maybe I was supposed to have told them “as recognized in principles expounded by the American Automobile Association.” Maybe I should have given the whole speech in Pig Latin, and made funny faces while I was at it! Maybe I should have come out to make the statement in a clown’s costume! But I did not do that—because I refuse to talk down to the American public. I refuse to pull my punches. I refuse to believe that the people of this great nation are incapable of recognizing the most outrageous kind of hypocrisy or sniffing out the most blatant contradictions imaginable … And yet this, this is my reward, for my faith in America. The Boy Scouts of America screaming to the TV cameras that Trick E. Dixon favors sexual intercourse. Favors fornication—between people!
POLITICAL COACH: Of course, as of now, it’s still only the Boy Scouts, Mr. President.
TRICKY: Today the Boy Scouts (here he sinks down onto the bench before the blackboard, barely restraining a sob)—tomorrow the world! … And what about my wife—what is she going to think? What if she starts to believe it? What about my children? WHAT ABOUT THE VOTERS!
SPIRITUAL COACH: Here, here, Mr. President. I sympathize with your chagrin, particularly as it relates to your fine family. But, frankly, I do not believe that the American people who see you on TV, any more than those who know you at firsthand, are going to be taken in by such a blatant fabrication. If ever a man, in his every word and deed, his every movement and gesture, his glance, his sneer, his very smile, put the lie to such a slanderous accusation as this one, it is you.
TRICKY (visibly moved): Reverend, I thank you for that tribute. Surely I have tried to give no indication whatsoever to the people of this country that I even know what sexual intercourse is. Furthermore, I have instructed my family that they must under no circumstances allow it to appear that any of us have ever in our lives been infected by desire or lust, or, for that matter, an appetite for anything at all, outside of political power. This may sound immodest of me, but I happen to pride myself on the fact that if it weren’t for my perspiring so on television, the American people would probably have no way in the world of telling that under my clothes I am flesh. And, of course you all know, as a result of a decision I reached here during a lonely vigil in the locker room only a few nights ago, this disorder will very shortly be corrected when I enter Walter Reed Hospital to undergo a secret operation for the surgical removal of the sweat glands from my upper lip. You see, gentlemen, that is how dedicated I am to dissociating myself from anything remotely resembling a human body.
But now to accuse me of this! As though to be for the rights of the unborn was prima facie evidence—that is, evidence sufficient to establish a fact, or to raise a presumption of fact… that’s what we lawyers mean by that phrase … as you know, before entering the White House I was a lawyer, and so I know phrases like that… as though that were prima facie evidence that I was also in favor of the process by which the unborn come into existence in the first place. To accuse me, because of a perfectly innocuous statement like that, of encouraging people to have intercourse in order that they should have unborn, in order that those unborn should have these rights—that don’t even exist! And that I wouldn’t care about, even if they did! How could I? Here I am, President of the United States and Leader of the Free World, working and slaving with every fiber of my being, night and day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, for the sole purpose of getting myself reelected—where would I find the time to worry about the rights of anything? Haven’t they any idea what this job is all about? The whole thing is so patently absurd! And yet there are those Boy Scouts, in uniform, marching in the streets of the nation’s capital—and those signs:
GO BACK TO CALIFORNIA, SENSUALIST,
WHERE YOU BELONG
POWER TO THE PENIS? NEVER!
REPRESSION—LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT!
SPIRITUAL COACH (solemnly, taking the arm of the shaken President): Mr. President, forgive them, they know not what their signs say.
TRICKY: Oh, Reverend, Reverend, I assure you, under ordinary circumstances I would bend over backwards to forgive them. I like to think that I am the kind of man who can find it in his heart to forgive his worst enemy. Why, not only have I forgiven Alger Hiss, but when I was elected President, I sent him an anonymous telegram expressing my gratitude for all he had done in my behalf. And that man was a perjurer! Listen, I would actually have forgiven Khrushchev himself, yes, right there in that kitchen, if it had been politically expedient to do so. Just look what I’m up to right now: I’m in the very process of forgiving Mao Tse-tung, who by my own estimate has enslaved six hundred million people!
But I am afraid, Reverend, that where these Boy Scouts are concerned, we are fighting for a principle so fundamental to civilized life, that even a man of my magnanimity must rise up and say “No, this time you have gone too far.” Reverend, they are trying to prevent me from winning a second term!
SPIRITUAL COACH: I see … I see … I must confess that I had not thought of it quite that way.
TRICKY: It is not a pleasant way to have to think about it. All of us would prefer to look with charity and respect upon our fellow human beings, whatever their race, creed, color or age, and to treat them according to the tenets of our religious beliefs. Certainly no one in this country wishes to appear more religious than I do. But sometimes, Reverend, people just make being religious impossible, even for someone who stands to gain as much from that posture as I do.
SPIRITUAL COACH: But if such is the case, if these Boy Scouts, for some incomprehensible reason, are out to destroy your political career by casting doubt upon your Sunday school morality, perhaps it would be best for you to go on television and give the people the facts as they really are. As you did when they accused you in the 1952 election of being the recipient of an illegal political fund. The Checkers Speech.
TRICKY (intrigued): You mean give it again?
SPIRITUAL COACH: Well, perhaps not the very same speech.
TRICKY: Why not? It worked.
SPIRITUAL COACH: True. But I wonder, Mr. President, if it addresses directly the issue at hand.
TRICKY: Maybe not. But you know, Reverend, when you’re dealing with wild and reckless charges like these, when you’re in the midst of a crisis such as this one, that could snowball overnight into political disaster, then you sometimes have to do what works, and leave things like the issues themselves for later. Otherwise, I’m afraid there might not be any later.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Well, I’m not a politician, Mr. President, and I must admit that I may be hopelessly naive to believe that The Truth Shall Make Ye Free. But I do think that if instead of giving the Checkers Speech again, instead of itemizing your earnings over the years and telling how much money you owe your parents and so on, you were now to make a similar address, in which you presented to the nation an itemized account of your sexual experiences, giving exact dates from your appointment calendar—when, where, and with whom—you might well feel secure in leaving it to the American people to judge whether or not you are an advocate of fornication.
TRICKY: You mean, go on TV with the appointment books …
SPIRITUAL COACH: Yes, and leaf through them page by page, until at last you come upon an item to read aloud. I would think the long silences will in themselves be the most eloquent part of the broadcast.
TRICKY: What about charts though? What about a graph? You see, I don’t know if people are going to sit around all night in fro
nt of their television sets waiting for me to say something. But if we had a graph where we measured the hours in which I have engaged in the ordinary human activities of scheming, plotting, smearing and so on, against those I’ve spent having intercourse—well, it could be pretty impressive.
And I could use a pointer! At the risk of seeming immodest, I think I can hold my own with any schoolmaster in the country in using a pointer and charts, though of course by training I’m a lawyer, you know … And I’ll borrow a dog!
Well, how does it sound to the rest of you?
POLITICAL COACH: Speaking frankly, Mr. President, I think we are barking up the wrong tree with this whole idea of using the truth or the dog. We’ve used the dog, of course, and with some success, and though I don’t have my file with me, I’m sure we’ve used the truth some time or other in the past, too. Off the top of my head I can’t remember exactly when, but if you like I’ll have my secretary look it up in the morning. However, right now it seems to me that, given the hysteria of those Scouts, and the kind of coverage they’re getting, if you were to go on television and say that you have had intercourse only once in your entire life, maybe as some kind of initiation rite when you were in the Navy—crossing the equator maybe—and that the whole thing had lasted less than sixty seconds, and you had hated it from beginning to end, and that you had to be held down throughout, and so on, even that would be enough to make you appear guilty of the charges the Boy Scouts are bringing against you.
TRICKY (reflecting): Of course, if you’re going to rule out the dog and the truth and so on, maybe the best approach is for me to go on TV and deny the whole thing. Say I’ve never had intercourse.
POLITICAL COACH (shaking his head): Have you seen that mob, Mr. President? They wouldn’t believe you, not at this point.
TRICKY: Suppose I spoke from HEW, with the Surgeon General at my side, and he read a medical report stating that I am not now, nor have I ever been in the past, capable of performing coitus.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Mr. President, at the risk of being politically naive again, you are the father of two children … that is, if that means anything, in this context…
POLITICAL COACH: Politically naive, hell—that was good thinking, Reverend.
TRICKY: But why can’t we just say they were adopted?
POLITICAL COACH: No, no, that doesn’t really solve the problem. Even if we are able to establish you as not only sterile, but one hundred percent impotent, even if we were able to get the American public to believe that these children who resemble you so were adopted—and, mind you, I think we could do both, if it came down to it—you are still going to be compromised, it would seem to me, by appearing to have taken into your home the offspring of somebody else’s sexual intercourse. You are still going to be locked into this fornication issue.
LEGAL COACH: Absolutely. Open-and-shut case of guilt by association. If I were the judge, I’d throw the book at you. And another objection. If he goes on TV and says he’s impotent, most of the people out there aren’t even going to know what he’s talking about. I don’t doubt that half of them are going to think that he means he’s queer.
POLITICAL COACH: Wait a minute! Wait one minute! How about it, Mr. President?
TRICKY: HOW about what?
POLITICAL COACH: Going on TV and saying you’re queer. Would you do it?
TRICKY: Oh, I’ll do it, all right, if you think it’ll work.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Oh, but surely, Mr. President…
TRICKY: Reverend, we are talking about my political career! With all due respect, we happen now to be listening to a man whose business is politics, just the way yours is religion, and if he says that in a situation like this one the truth and the dog and so on are not going to get us anywhere, then I must assume he knows what he is talking about. After all, one of the signs of a great leader is his willingness to listen to all sides of an issue without being blinded by his own prejudices and preconceptions. Now I am a Quaker, as you well know, and consequently it is only natural that I should be prejudiced in behalf of the advice given to me by a spiritual person like yourself. But I cannot run from the facts, just so as to be a better Quaker in your eyes and in mine. We are dealing with a mob of youngsters whose minds have been poisoned with a terrible lie. We are going to have to find a way to restore them to their senses while simultaneously restoring to the office of the Presidency its dignity and prestige. And if in order to accomplish those two important tasks I have to go on TV and say I am a homosexual, then I will do it. I had the courage to call Alger Hiss a Communist. I had the courage to call Khrushchev a bully. I assure you, I have the courage now to call myself a queer!
The problem is not my courage to say this or say that; it never has been. The problem, as always, is one of credibility. Will they believe me?
General, will they buy it over at the Pentagon? That should certainly be a good test case.
MILITARY COACH (considering): They might, sir. They very well might.
TRICKY: Would it help if I batted my eyes more, when I talk?
MILITARY COACH: No, no, I think they feel you bat your eyes enough already, sir. Any more and it might not go over too well with some of the old-timers.
TRICKY: I take it from what you say that you would positively rule out my wearing a dress. Something simple. A basic black, say.
MILITARY COACH: Not necessary, sir.
TRICKY: How about earrings?
MILITARY COACH: No, I think you’re fine as you are, sir.
TRICKY: The point is I don’t want to come off as just a sissy. Five o’clock shadow and all, I really have to watch myself in that department.
SPIRITUAL COACH: Mr. President, if I may, in your eagerness to do the right thing for the nation, I think you may be overlooking a small technical point. Homosexuals have intercourse also.
TRICKY (stunned): They do? … How?
(Here the Spiritual Coach takes Tricky by the hand—much as he might comfort one in bereavement—and, leaning forward, discreetly whispers the answer into the President’s ear)
TRICKY (recoiling): Why, that’s awful! That’s disgusting! You’re making that up!
SPIRITUAL COACH: Would that I were, Mr. President.
TRICKY: But—but—(Here he leans forward to whisper into the Reverend’s ear)
SPIRITUAL COACH: I suppose they don’t care about that, Mr. President.
TRICKY (outraged): But that’s bestial! That’s monstrous! This is America! And I’m the President of America! And—and—(turning in bewilderment to the other coaches) listen, do you people realize what’s going on in this country? Do you know what he just told me?
POLITICAL COACH: I think we do, Mr. President.
TRICKY: But that’s grotesque! Uccchhy! It makes my lip crawl!
POLITICAL COACH: To be sure, Mr. President. But nonetheless in terms of the problem that is facing us, it happens to be neither here nor there. The point is this: homosexuals, regardless of whatever else they may do, are in no way involved in the sort of sexual activity that produces fetuses—and that is still what these Boy Scouts are up in arms about. Consequently, if you were to go on TV and say you were a homosexual, in the minds of most Americans you would have cleared yourself of the charge the Boy Scouts are making, that you are a heterosexual activist. You’ll be entirely in the clear.
TRICKY: I see … I see … Okay—I’ll do it! There—that’s the way to be in a crisis: decisive! Just as I wrote in my book, summarizing what I learned during General Poppapower’s heart attacks, “Decisive action relieves the tension which builds up in a crisis. When the situation requires that an individual restrain himself from acting decisively over a long period, this can be the most wearing of all crises.”
You see, it isn’t even what you decide—it’s that you decide. Otherwise there’s that darn tension; too much, and, I tell you, a person could probably crack up. And I for one will not crack up while I am President of the United States. I want that to be perfectly clear. If you read my book, you
’ll see that my entire career has been devoted to not cracking up, as much as to anything. And I don’t intend to start now. Cool, confident and decisive. I’ll do it—I’ll say I’m a queer!
LEGAL COACH: I wouldn’t if I were you, Mr. President.
TRICKY: YOU wouldn’t?
LEGAL COACH: Nope, not if I were the President of the United States. Why should you? At the time of the Checkers Speech, when you were only a candidate for the Vice Presidency, of course it was necessary to explain and apologize and be humble and tell them how much money you owed your Mommy and Daddy and that you had a doggie and so on. Look, I wouldn’t have objected back then if you had gotten down on your hands and knees on television, and demeaned and debased yourself in whatever way was most natural to you, in order to come to power. But now you are in power. Now you are the President. And who are those kids in the street, leveling these outlandish charges at you? They’re kids, in a street. I don’t care what kind of uniforms they wear, they are still not adults in houses. And that makes all the difference in the world.
TRICKY: Your suggestion then is what?
LEGAL COACH: No less than any other citizen in this country, Mr. President, you still have recourse to the law. I say use it. I say round ’em up, put ’em in the clink, and throw the key away.