Town Hall
Middle America Meets The Cupcakes
Concylopedia America
In 2045, the United States Congress rejected the Educational Curriculum Conformity Act, a bill that would have imposed a system of scholastic standards and psychological evaluation on every school across the country; affecting every educational institution, public and private, from kindergarten to college, on a very granular level.
This bill, sponsored by the administration of President Joseph Hunt Byron, was obviously a bridge way too far for the American people, though the Congress would have voted for it if left to its own devices. When it was soundly defeated by a coalition led by Dr. Roger Poole, Senator from Kentucky, the President and his supporters waited a year, then imposed an executive order that implemented the ECCA legislation under a different name. A new agency was set up under the Health Education and Welfare Department called MECCA, the Multidisciplinary Education Curriculum Conformity Administration. Very quickly, teams of social workers and psychiatrists and various big government hangers-on were dispatched to test-bed cities to steal the parental rights of millions before they noticed the theft.
This trojan horse snuck its way into several school systems in the northeast before again being impeded by the efforts of Senator Poole and friends. By that time, psychological testing for gender identity among nine year old students had already begun, and ‘hate speech’ legislation for elementary and secondary schools was about to be implemented.
It was then when state governors and town mayors began to take notice. And young families from one end of the country to the other saw a threat to their children that they’d never seen before. And it didn’t take long for the putative ‘Silent Majority’ to be heard.
Good morning Mr. and Mrs. American Pie, and welcome to WACC Morning Cruise News, the commuter compendium of current events that enlightens and thrills, even as we offer our routine caution: Remember, many of the direct quotations you hear on this program originate from the mouths of lying politicians and advertisers employed by pharmaceutical companies. Thus they cannot be accepted on face value. Neither WACC nor its staff can be held liable for damages resulting from a literal acceptance of information gleaned from this program.
As expected, President Joseph Hunt Byron issued an executive order today establishing a new agency called M.E.C.C.A., yet another unfortunate Arabic acronym referring to the Multidisciplinary Education Curriculum Conformity Administration. This newest exercise in pointless government spending is designed to implement the failed 2045 bill termed E.C.C.A., the Education Curriculum Conformity Act, which was roundly defeated by a congressional vote of 411 to 28.
Among the mandate's many odious provisions is the application of 'Hate Speech' rules in the school classroom from kindergarten to college, instruction in 'Gender Identification' from fourth grade upward, the removal of 'negative Muslim stereotypes' in History or Current Events classes, and the elimination of school dress codes. In application, this means that racial or sexual slurs would be punishable by suspension or a fine, students would be encouraged to question traditional sexual roles, terms like 'Muslim Terrorist' or 'Islamic Jihad' would be eliminated from textbooks, and boys could not be forbidden from wearing skirts by local school boards.
President Byron, the nation's first cyborg chief executive, was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2026 and had forty two percent of his brain replaced by computer chips. He is now the first president to pilot his own presidential limousine without use of his hands or feet.
He is also the first president to state on national television that:
No black man has ever looted a liquor store during a riot.
There is no statistical link between homosexuality and HIV.
Mao Zedong was not a communist.
None of the 1,323 charges of corruption against members of the Ukraine government over the past nine years are valid.
Baskerville, North Dakota was a small town located precisely in the middle of nowhere, full of farmers and tractor repairmen and short order cooks. Not the kind of people you’d expect to start a lot of trouble over nothing. In the winter of 2047, however, that all began to change.
Lorelei Long was at her desk in the lobby of the Mayor’s office. The LCD panel on her phone read out ‘HEW-DC’. Never a good sign. She clicked to answer.
“Earl’s office,” she announced through her headset.
“Is this the Baskerville Town Hall?”
“All day, honey,” Lorelei confirmed in an accent that sounded a lot more like South Carolina than North Dakota. She looked and sounded like a healthy young farm girl with a pleasant phone voice.
“Is the Mayor in?”
“The Mayor’s never in,” Lorelei answered. “That’s what he’s got his highly compensated and very competent staff for. We’re in and we stay in. I cain’t even tellya the last time I saw the sun.”
There was a short silence. Then:
“I’m Lillian Forbes from MECCA.”
“Hey, Allahu Akbar, baby,” Lorelei said.
“Not that MECCA,” Lillian corrected. “I’m from the Multidisciplinary Educational Curriculum Conformity Administration.”
“Whoa!” Lorelei gasped. “Say that ten tahms fast with a mouthful a’ marbles!”
The accent became more pronounced when she was amused. Talking with the twinkies in Washington was always amusing. But not necessarily in a good way.
“MECCA is a division of the Health, Education and Welfare Department in Washington, DC,” Lillian explained, as if speaking to a ten year old immigrant from Irkutsk.
“Oh yeah, I read about your outfit one time. Are you the guys who lost three and a half billion dollars last winter and couldn’t find it for a whole year?”
“Well, yes. But they found the person who misplaced the money. He has been reassigned.”
“Reassigned? I gotta hope they don’t put him nowhere near a cash register.”
Lillian strove to bring the conversation back on track. “I wonder if you got our information packet last month concerning our upcoming implementation of the President’s Education Conformity Mandate.”
Lorelei pulled open her new walnut file cabinet and withdrew an encyclopedic orange hanging folder. “Woowee!” She cheered. “When you folks send an information packet, you don’t mess around. I could grill ten burgers with half this paper!”
“I’m assuming you’ve read it.”
“Read it? Mercy no! I could barely lift it! I dropped it on Earl’s desk soon as I got it.”
“Did Earl read it?”
“I don’t wanna speak for Earl, honey. But he ain’t much of a reader.”
“Can you put me in touch with the person responsible for reading it?”
“Lilly, I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Lorelei confided. “We ain’t got but six people in the whole town hall, and one of ‘em’s the janitor. Unless it’s a really short Christmas card sent by a family member, chances are nobody’s read it.”
“Is this really a government office?”
“Well, there's a lotta room for improvement, if that's what you're sayin',” Lorelei nodded. “But we just run the town, we don’t read their mail.”
“This is crazy,” Lillian said. “We’re scheduled to be there in a week with a command center set up.”
“Well, I tellya what. We don’t run things quite like you folks do in TwinkieTown, but Money Talks just about as loud here as in Washington. Why don’t you tell me what this is all about and I’ll see if I can help you?”
There was a deep sigh from the other end of the line. “Our division is assigned the task of implementing President Byron’s Education agenda. It’s called ‘ECCA’, the Educational Curriculum Conformity Act. That’s where we got the name ‘MECCA’. It’s designed to bring every school system in the country in line with standards recommended by our staff of educational experts in Washington.”
“Uh huh.” The members of the Baskerville School Board loved it when Washington pencil-pushers talked about their ‘educational experts’. It gave them a warm and fuzzy feeling all over.
“You supposedly have a school system with two thousand one hundred and eighty students. We need to initiate a series of tests throughout the next school year on all students in grades four through twelve, involving coordination between your school administration and our agents, thirty five to forty of which will be in your state and within driving distance of your schools for a six to eight month period.”
Lorelei began writing on her big yellow legal pad. “Fifty IPv6 Phones, Windows 22 computers, CAT 10 ethernet, forty inch Samsung monitors, conference room with Polycom system, workstation-based paging and forwarding, encrypted email with HIPAA compliance, Microsoft Surface Hub--I guess the 72 inch would do it, track lighting, cubicle audio, street parking, fleet maintenance for twenty vehicles. Four hour IT support and onsite plant manager. Two year lease. You'd need seven thousand square feet, assuming you have four bigshot shrinks among the crew and an administrator. The space I have available is about a quarter mile from the town center in Rock Haven, which is just north of Bismarck. It's a lot bigger than little old Baskerville and has a lot more going on at night, assuming you've got young folk and they're all Liberaces. Probably run ya 250,000 a year with one month’s deposit of twenty one grand.”
Lillian was impressed for the first time. “For a girl who doesn’t read her mail, you seem to know an awful lot about property rental.”
“My daddy says that ‘you need a light to read, but readin’ don’t keep that light on’.”
“That’s an interesting saying.”
“The Chamber of Commerce doesn’t care for empty storefronts,” Lorelei explained. “So Earl likes to have someone around with a commercial real estate license.”
“Do you also have a contact number for your School Superintendent?”
“Sure. Davey is easy to deal with.” Lorelei said. “But you might be better off going to somebody on the school board.”
“Why?”
“It’s March” Lorelei said. “Almost Golf season.”
“Your Superintendent is a golfer?”
“He owns the golf course. He’s kind of hard to get after Easter.”
“So the School Board Chairman is the person I should call?”
“Well…I’ll add Charley’s number when I send you the contract for the lease. Just don’t tell him you’re from Health and Welfare and all that. He had some big beef with one ‘a you guys a couple years ago and he’s still plenty peeved.”
“What was the problem?”
“Well, to hear him tell it, there was a thing your Congress people wanted to do that would take control of our school system away from the town and let some twinkie shrinks from Washington run it. He’s kinda paranoid about how all these cupcakes in DC wanna turn our young boys into ballerinas. I guess you could say that Charley’s not a fan.”
“Cupcakes?”
“Yeah. You know, Switch-hitters. Liberaces. You gotta know some. I hear the government’s chock full of ‘em.”
“If you’re talking about gays, I’m gay myself.”
“Well, that would make sense, since you’re from the government. They're all gay or black or commie atheists from Vladivostock, far as I can see.” Lorelei said, totally unembarrassed. “And you can do what you want, but if you want to get along with Charley, just as well not to let the subject come up.”
“Unfortunately, the program that Charley doesn’t care for is exactly the one I’m working for.”
Lorelei pulled herself up out of her chair. “Guess I got to apologize to Charley. I thought he was makin’ all that stuff up.”
“We think it’s good for every student to know what options are open to them when they choose their gender identity.”
Lorelei laughed. “Say what?”
“Many students grow up confused about gender. Our trained professionals will assess their gender orientation at an early age and make recommendations as to what sexual role would be most suitable for them.”
“Well, I got big news for you, Lil. I don’t know how it works back east. But, by the time the kiddies get to school in Baskerville, I bet you twenty bucks that their mothers took a look inside their shorts and found out real quick what their gender orientation was.”
“But it’s more complicated than that.” Lillian insisted.
“Not in Baskerville, North Dakota, honey.”
Lillian took a breath. “I take it your town is not gay-friendly.”
“People in Baskerville are friendly to everybody. If we ain’t friendly to gays, it’s ‘cuz we got no gays.”
"Okay." Lillian temporized. “But what if you did have gays?”
“Well, then, I bet they’d eventually run into Charley.”
Lorelei was installing an ethernet jack in Earl's office when she got a call from Lillian before lunch:
“Lori, we received your package. What’s a 'B.I.T.E. Kit’?”
“‘Bear Identification Tag for Emergencies’,” Lorelei explained. “It’s a bracelet with a name tag.”
“Why would a bear need a name tag?”
“It’s for your staff, hon. The big cities around here don’t have that many bears nearby but Baskerville sure does. Most of ‘em are not too dangerous if you keep your distance. But there are incidents. This is for the incidents.”
“If we’re attacked by a bear, that doesn’t mean we won’t know who we are.”
“If you’re attacked by a particularly contrary bear, your own mama won’t know who you are.”
“You have a lot of bears, do you?”
“Well, I happen to love bears. But, for most folks, I suppose one is a lot of bears.”
“We already have identification, you know.”
“This bracelet comes with an RFID chip. It can also make a sound the bears don’t care for much. It comes with an app for your phone that can call the Bear Force if a bear comes near you.”
“Bear Force?”
“It’s the statewide animal control system. It'll send out an officer from the wildlife service while lettin' the local police know you might be havin' a problem.”
“If we stay in town, do we really have to worry about Bears?”
“I’m acting Town Attorney, so I haveta do some CMA. There are indemnification issues involved in our town officially hosting government agencies here. You’ll find paperwork in my package that we need you to sign—just in case. Don’t worry, our forms are always a page or less. You know how we are about unnecessary reading.”
“Are there a lot of injuries due to bears?”
“If a bear gets close enough, you don’t haveta worry about injuries. Your troubles will be over quickly. But, if you’re still far enough away to use the Bear Alarm on the bracelet, you have an excellent chance of survival.”
“This is starting to sound like a dangerous visit.”
“Oh, the bears ain’t nothin’ compared to the critters in Coyote Country—especially out by the nuke plant.”
“You have a Coyote problem too?”
“They ain’t so bad if they ain’t hungry, and there’s less than four of ‘em. It’s the short-horned lizards that are the real problem.”
“You have lizards?”
“The ones in town are okay. They’re only maybe eight inches long and stay away from people. Out by the nuke plant, though, they start lookin’ like alligators. Back in South Carolina, we had some nasty gators, but a gator can’t shoot poisonous blood out its eyes like these short-horned cuties.”
“Your lizards can shoot poison from their eyes?”
“Yeah. It’s a cool trick, to watch it on a video. And the blood don’t kill you. But it sure is scary the first time you see it.”
“I’ll bet! Guess I’ll tell the staff no tours of the nuclear plant.”
“Just as well. These clowns have so many accidents I’m surprised they ain’t just a big hole in the ground by now.”
“How far are you from the plant?”
“At least five miles. They ain’t usin’ the reservoir for coolin' any more, so the water’s a lot less radioactive these days. I wouldn’t worry about the plant so much. It’s the critters that live around the plant. They're gittin’ positively strange.”
“They’re growing? Are they sick?”
“They got wolves out there the size of ponies. And they look healthier than I do. My daddy shot one maybe six years ago. He didn’t have much of a choice, but he still feels bad about it to this day. A magnificent animal. He had it stuffed, if only to prove that he wasn’t lyin’ ‘bout how honkin’ huge this mama was.”
“Just as well we’re staying near Bismarck then. So what are these balloon things you sent?”
“We call them ‘I.C.E. Packs’. ‘Igloos Compressed and Expandable’. They’re for sudden winter storms. Sometimes they sneak up on you—kinda like those short-horned lizards—and all of a sudden you’re hip deep in snow. If you’re away from home, neither you nor anybody else may be able to travel for days, so a portable, self-inflating tent with a built-in sterno furnace can be mighty useful. All you gotta do is make sure you ain’t in the middle of the road, pull the cord and you’re snug as a bug in a rug. The B.I.T.E. phone app has an igloo activation button.”
“Are there a lot of bad storms?”
“Depends on your definition of ‘bad’. If ‘bad’ is a question of ‘can you go anywhere but the back porch to get firewood for five days, hoping the windows don’t blow in and the roof don’t fly off’, well, yeah, they can be bad.”
“I’m going to have to sell this in pieces to the staff.”
“Tell ‘em to look on the light side.”
“Which is?”
“Up here, nobody tans to death. Nobody dies of HIV or fentanyl overdose. No muggings, no stolen cars. And nobody pays more than nine fifty for a six pack.”
Orville Rong was Assistant Secretary of Education for the Health, Education and Welfare Department. He was a gay college professor from the University of California at Los Angeles, which meant that he was among the most far left progressives in the United States. Che Guevara would have thought this guy was a lefty lunatic.
Lillian Forbes was a gay lawyer who graduated from Yale and had worked for years in the Reproductive Rights Division of the San Francisco Health Department. She was way to the left of Joseph Stalin, but even she thought Orville was a looney tune.
She was dealing with the mass defection of the team that was scheduled to go to North Dakota on Thursday. After hearing about the bears and the short-horned lizards and the perpetual snow and radioactive coyotes, the satisfaction of showing these hicks how the federal government did modern education just did not seem worth the candle.
They met in Orville's office. It was a big corner office that overlooked New York Avenue. There were a lot of windows and a portable putting green in one corner. He had a desk that was shinier than the President's and an expense account bigger than the treasury of Romania.
“I told you we should’ve started with Ohio,” Orville reiterated. He must've said this twice already today, but she supposed he was honestly telegraphing how he was going to throw this squarely on her lap if someone noticed how poorly her project was going. Considering that this is how the government worked, any display of honesty--even honest cowardice-- was appreciated.
Lillian, who was much smarter than her boss, easily countered: “You mean the state where bikers with shotguns drove through a Gay Pride parade last September, lassoing people and dragging them down the street?”
“Oh. Yeah," Orville winced, remembering why he had tried to avoid arguments with Lillian. "Well, how about Kentucky? They’ve mellowed a little since they replaced Bucky Carlisle in the Congress.”
“You mean the new congressman that hired guys in white hoods to erect a gallows in front of the Governor’s Mansion before the gay Transportation Secretary arrived?”
“Okay, maybe we have to rethink our deployments. But I still can't force your team to put themselves in danger. North Dakota is beginning to sound like the North Pole—only instead of Santa Claus, you have arctic alligators.”
“Short-horned lizards,” Lillian corrected.
“Whatever. We’re down to two psychologists who are willing to go. Martin Veeber and Latoya Sokolov.”
"Unfortunately, they are the youngest and gayest of my original team. The first time they walk into a Baskerville school, every bubba west of Youngstown will have their pictures," Lillian pointed out. She would like to have added that they were the least perceptive and the most likely to ruffle feathers among the locals, but she kept that to herself.
"They'll only be there till the end of the school year."
"You don't get it. These people in Baskerville are hicks from the Stone Age. A lot of them have never seen a queer before. Not one who likes to dress up and act out like Marty."
"Part of our mission is to show the rest of the country how the President is going to do Education Reform," Orville insisted. "Whether the hicks like it or not, Marty is the new face of Education Reform."
"God help us," Lillian thought, but kept that to herself also. No one in a Washington federal building had mentioned God for years, except when someone sneezed.
“Fine," she said out loud. "Saves me a trip to Hicksville myself. After arranging things for the last month with Elly May Clampett, I don’t think I want to talk with anyone west of the Mississippi for the next ten years.”
She left the office without closing the door, but Orville didn't notice, his mind stirred by this one question:
“Who’s Elly May Clampett?”
Lorelei was looking over the revenue spreadsheet for the second quarter, when a call came in from HEW.
“Hi Lil,” she clicked on her headset.
“Lori, we’ve had our personnel cut to two psychologists.” Lillian said.
“Sorry to hear that. You want to cancel the condo sublets and move them to one of our local hotels?”
“They’re both young and both very gay. They don't want to stay in Baskerville where everybody's in bed by eight.”
Lorelei closed the spreadsheet. “Before you move them to the Bismarck Hilton, I gotta remind you that your government is sponsoring a Muslim American Cooperation Conference at the hotel.”
“So?”
“Don't know if you're familiar at all with the Koran. But, Muslims don’t much care for Gays.”
“Well, they’re in America now, and they’re at a ‘Sensitivity Training’ conference, so one assumes they are expected to show some sensitivity.”
“One assumes. However, there was an incident last time the Muslims were at the Hotel.”
“I appreciate you mentioning it, but a young gay person would die of boredom in Baskerville after just one weekend.”
Lorelei winced as she considered her response: “Better bein' a little bored than being wrapped in a carpet bag, stripped down past your shorts and dropped off in the middle of a superhighway with your head shaved and 'Satan' spray painted in red on your chest.”
“They did this to a gay guy?”
“I saw him on the television. Naturally, the TV people blamed it on the homophobes of North Dakota.”
Lillian shrugged. “Let him find his own hotel.”
"Hope he ain't allergic ta spray paint."
*
Despite her best efforts, Lillian Forbes had ended up in Hicksville--or at least the next town over from Hicksville. After starting with a staff of forty, it was clear now that just handling two young psychologists and the Hicksville school system would be a significant management challenge.
She had always been considered management material, and she'd always dressed the part. Gay, straight or in between, it was an unwritten rule that, if you ever needed to appear before a television camera or an ambassador from a third world country, you had better look professional. Swing from the chandelier dressed like Wonder Woman on your own time.
The young ones hadn't received that memo.
Lillian sat at the head of her conference table in the huge office Lorelei had set up for her. It was a really nice office, and well appointed with the latest office gadgetry. For a girl who talked just like Elly May Clampett, Lori really knew how to take care of a customer with large office needs and large office tech. She had even set up a VPN to the HEW servers in Washington, and call forwarding to HEW as well. Lillian reminded herself that she should really thank her, but not until this was all over. The surveys weren't done yet and they weren't through butting heads. Lorelei was like a concrete wall with a big smiley face painted on it. You might be encouraged to think that the wall would move for you if you spoke to it nicely, but it was still a concrete wall.
There were two psychologists at the table with her. Marty was a gay male who tended to dress in an extravagantly gay male way; wild pinks and yellows and bordered lapels. Latoya was a transgender woman who tended to dress in an extravagantly transgender way; comic book profile, ridiculously tight skirts, and Play-Doh-colored makeup. Both of them were dressed in a manner that would instantly and continually arouse attention among the populace--especially this populace. Though they both had advanced psychology degrees, they seemed opaque to the notion that the attention they'd receive would be anything but positive.
“Remember,” she counseled. “We are in strange territory. Many of the people you meet have never met transgender or even gay people before. Eighty five percent of the town is white, and the rest are Native Americans. Every one of them has voted Federalist or Republican since the Civil War. They have the lowest abortion rate in the country. Bowling Green, Kentucky is a model of diversity compared to Baskerville! During the interview process, we don’t want to call attention to ourselves or act in ways that are considered inappropriate to the locals.”
Martin was not persuaded. Unlike Latoya, he had no chance of passing as straight and chose to view that inability as an asset. “I don’t even understand how these people could exist out here by themselves with no cultural interaction with the rest of the country.”
Lillian folded her hands on the table. “This is Baskerville, North Dakota. Bears literally roam the streets. It’s the closest you can get to the North Pole in the whole country. There are tornados here that throw trailer trucks from one end of town to the other. Buildings like this are transformed into igloos by one snowstorm. These people exist in this remote location, almost completely isolated, because no one else can live here.”
“So what about the Bears?” Martin wanted to know.
“The least of our worries now," Lillian said. "It’s the people that scare me.”
Latoya chimed in unhappily. “The good news is that the feeling is mutual. The kid at the coffee shop just asked me if any of the original members of KISS are touring with us.”
Martin smiled in his most patronizing way. “I originally thought we might want to blend in with the natives more. But, as I think of it, the insertion of our personalities and non-standard appearance into the interview process might have a beneficial effect.”
Latoya agreed with this assessment, whereas anyone on the planet outside this conference room would have known it was wrong. “Yes. We’re probably not the last people from the east coast that will ever visit here. They might as well get used to us.”
Without the extreme makeup, she could actually be quite attractive. But, without the essential skill of reflection, she would never know that.
Lillian stifled a long sigh. “Let’s agree on the basics, though. Some of those teachers are pretty 1950’s.”
“No lie. One of them wouldn’t let me get near the students all the time I was in the school. A little lipstick and eye shadow and they think you're Lestat de Lioncourt.”
“It might be just as well," Latoya said. "Some of these people are dangerous.”
“They live with bears!" Martin exclaimed. "What do you expect?”
Lillian pressed on: “So we’re all on the same page. No bare chests. No nose rings in the classroom. No war paint, chains or unnecessarily exposed tattoos.”
"Oh, come on, Lil!" Martin groaned. "No nose rings? That's petty."
“So how many bears are there exactly?” Latoya wondered.
"We have to plan for next year, too," Lillian said. "We have to adapt."
Latoya added. “Hopefully our discretion now means a much more tolerant atmosphere here when we return in ten or twenty years.”
“Hopefully, in ten years they’ll have at least one gay bar,” Martin hoped.
“At least one tattoo parlor!”
“Cannabis in the convenience stores!”
“Unisex bathrooms.”
“No more town hall receptionists calling me ‘Tinker Bell’,” Martin said.
“Transsexual college sports.”
“No more waitresses at Downtown Donut turning me down because I wear eye makeup,” Marty exclaimed with some disgust.
The two women turned to him.
“Hey! Just because I’m gay that doesn’t mean I’m repulsed by high school girls in short skirts!”
“They make a great raspberry jelly donut, by the way.” Latoya added.
*
W.A.S.H. News
The Washington Perspective from across the country and across the world. This is Jive at Five, with Carson Clive.
A sobering copycat hate crime was caught on video last night when a carload of guests at the Bismarck Hilton Hotel in North Dakota deposited a naked gay man from a rented Mercedes into the middle of a four lane highway. He could be seen dodging traffic, his head shaven and his body covered with spray paint. When rescued by a passing police cruiser, he explained that young anti-gay ruffians had seized him outside the hotel and covered him in a long canvas bag, tossing him into the back seat of their rented vehicle and carefully stenciling the Arabic word for “Satan” on his chest.
Many remember that, in the late spring of 2042, the same fate befell another gay man at the same hotel.
This latest crime of hate brings to eleven the homophobic acts of violence in North Dakota for the year 2047.
Lorelei was taking the old computer printouts from the Finance Office down to the recycling bins in back of the Town Hall when a call came from HEW.
“Earl’s Office,” Lorelei said, positioning her headset.
Lillian's voice came over the little speaker. “You probably heard about Marty.”
“Yeah. I imagine he might want to change hotels till the Muslim Sensitivity Seminars are over.”
“Nonsense. This was just an attempt to smear the Muslim community.”
“I getcha,” Lorelei said. “So the fact that the car, rented by the Muslim-American Cooperation Association, was occupied by four Muslim members of the organization--who spoke Arabic and read the Koran while the victim was in the car with them--has no bearing on this case, even though the spray painting on his chest was written in Arabic as well.”
“Yes.”
“And, of course, the fact that it was an almost exact copy of a previous crime--also perpetrated by Muslims driving a vehicle rented by a Muslim, four years ago at the same hotel which was hosting a conference full of Muslims--does not raise any red flags either.”
“No,” Lillian answered flatly.
“Gotcha.” Lorelei said. “So, movin’ on…”
“Marty and Latoya are going to start the interviews on Monday.”
“He’s feelin' up to it?”
“He’s fine. He just has his feelings hurt.”
“Odd that they’d give his name and address on the television but not mention the fact that the organization which kidnapped him was having a conference in his hotel with a fifty foot banner inside the hotel lobby.”
“Yes. Well, he’s letting bygones be bygones. We’re planning on doing sixty interviews a day between the two of them. We’ll have our target sample size by the end of the semester.”
“Well, I should probably not mention it, but, if this conference is anything like last time, the young sheiks will be visiting our area in search of love and adventure very soon. Marty and Laytoya might appreciate a heads-up.”
“You folks really don’t like Muslims, do you?”
“I don’t care for young men coming into our town intoxicated and assaulting our women and disobeying our laws. If they were Hindus or Baptists, I doubt if I would care for it much more.”
“Muslims don’t drink.”
“Course they don’t. ‘Less they’re seventeen years old and on vacation and nobody’s payin’ attention.”
W.A.S.H. TV News
It's Kevin at Eleven, with Kevin McLeod and the Midnight Media Team, Wall Street veteran Moshe Golden, Weatherman Ronald "Rainman" Rubino and Sportscaster Bif Markowski.
In a curious twist of fate last night, a group of Muslims attending the Muslim American Cooperation Association conference in Bismarck, North Dakota were apprehended by authorities in Baskerville and charged with sexual assault on three local teenage girls. When eyewitnesses were interviewed, they were quick to point out the resemblance between the black Mercedes sedan the young men were driving and the vehicle identified two nights before in the kidnapping of a gay man outside the Bismarck Hilton Hotel where the men had been attending the conference. The three men were arraigned before a local judge and charged with drunken and disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, assault, battery, kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap, unlawful restraint and reckless endangerment. The driver was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.
When the kidnap victim was contacted and asked for a comment, he said, "Islam is a religion of peace, and these men are ambassadors of peace. I trust this misunderstanding will be straightened out shortly and that the local hoodlums responsible for this act will be quickly found."
Lorelei was fetching a couple of Cappuccinos at Willards when her headset beeped.
"Earl's office," she answered, clicking on her headset. People always found this unusual, but her office headset worked all the way to Charley's logging camp at the north end of the state.
"Lori," Lillian's voice came through the speaker above the noonday traffic on Main Street. "You might have heard the news about the unjustified arrests last night in your town."
"Earl told me George the Barber and a couple of buddies witnessed an assault right outside his barbershop last night."
"Did he say the assailants were Muslim?"
"The assailants said they were Muslim," Lorelei said. "They said they were attending the conference in Bismarck and they were looking for some American whores."
"Well, I'm sure it was all a misunderstanding,"
"They took out jacknives and attacked our sheriff's deputies in the name of the Jihad, and cursed them in the name of Allah."
"You don't understand," Lillian said. "Washington is sponsoring this conference. It's a big part of the President's anti-hate initiative."
"Well, maybe the President oughtta come down here and spray some 'a these folks with that anti-hate stuff he got so much of. 'Cuz they sure don't like us much."
"The Muslims are a very sensitive community. They don't want to portray themselves as undisciplined barbarians."
"Well, I don't wanna spoil the party, Lil, but that horse has left the barn."
"They need a lawyer."
"I got in touch with this Muslim American Cooperation outfit, but they haven't returned my call. I figured they'd take care of it."
"We want to send an attorney and a media relations officer."
"Do what you like. But if I were you, I wouldn't send a government lawyer."
"Why not?"
"You'll own this case from that moment on. You think you'll get the towelheads on your side. But you can't win this one. The kids confessed, they have multiple eyewitnesses to the kidnapping and the assaults and the attacks on the officers. You can appeal after the conviction, but you'll just succeed in keeping the case in front of the media.
"These innocent kids are going to face a kangaroo court and get railroaded by Islamophobic white supremacists."
"I love it when Washington lawyers do that Johnnie Cochran thing."
"What Johnnie Cochran thing?"
"Basing your whole defense on ad hominem attacks on the prosecution and legal system."
"I'm happy you're paying attention in law school, but--"
"Hey! It worked for Johnny Cochran. I'm not putting it down. I'm just pointing out that Johnny tried to throw some circumstantial evidence in there too."
"I'm sure I could get them a new trial or change of venue."
"New trial maybe. As for change of venue, they're already on their way to Charley's logging camp."
"A one day trial? That's outrageous!"
"They had to get 'em out of town," Lorelei explained. "If they'd knocked over our liquor store, everybody woulda been okay with a three week trial and a year of hard labor. But when ya touch the kids--"
"This is like the Wild West--"
"Don't worry," Lorelei advised. "The boys will be treated just fine. Charley likes Muslims a lot more than he likes Gays."
Marty and Latoya had all the interviews done by the end of May, and presumably all the beancounters in Cupcake County had been compiling and analyzing the data since he started. From March to May, they'd pretty much covered every student from fourth to twelfth grade. Lorelei figured that it would have taken her a week and a half to read all the interviews and two days to analyze the data. Give it a weekend to write a report.
Knowing that, she gave the eleven data analysts in Washington sixty days to review the data and, sure enough, she got a call from Lillian toward the middle of July.
"Earl's Office," Lorelei answered, sitting on her receptionist's desk with a quart cup of plain yogurt. It was Saturday night at 8:30 pm. People outside on the sidewalk were walking home from Ducky's. He was serving open roast beef sandwiches for dinner. Nine and change with your choice of vegetable and a cup of coffee. Couldn't go wrong.
"Lori," Lillian said. "Have you seen the interview results?"
"Yeah," Lorelei said. "Pretty disheartening, huh?"
"More than disheartening. Almost impossible. We compared them to the first survey from five years ago, and your students are actually more intolerant, racist and homophobic than they were back then."
"Yeah. I'd have to agree with ya. Folks in Baskerville are nothin' if not consistent."
"I sent you an email of the interview highlights. After reviewing them, I'm sure you'll agree. We're going to have to cancel our entire program for next year in your town."
"That's understandable."
"And you don't seem to have any problem with this."
"Nope."
"So it's okay with you none of your students want more Muslims or Gays in your town."
"Sure," Lorelei agreed. "Muslims and Gays don't like it here, don't want to follow the rules and let us know from Day One that they don't approve of the way we live. It kinda makes us wonder why they're here at all."
"They don't like you because you're intolerant."
"We certainly are intolerant of garish behavior, sexual abuse, drunken driving and kidnapping. But I don't know if that feelin' is all that rare."
"They aren't all like that."
"And the ones that aren't like that are not serving a sentence in Charley's logging camp. Only the ones that are like that."
Lillian, seeing that Lorelei had a legitimate point to justify the town's xenophobia, moved on: "Did you read the one from the middle school bimbo who thought that big breasts and a degree in fashion design was the key to eternal happiness?"
"That woulda been me in middle school, yeah," Lorelei admitted.
"Do you really want to raise an entire generation of females whose only source of validation is their ability to attract males with the size of their mammary glands?"
"Not necessarily. But that ain't my decision now, is it?"
"Whose decision is it?"
"That's the beauty of a place like Baskerville. Nobody in the government is tellin' these little girls what to think. Maybe if they want somebody's opinion they'll ask their parents."
"But they're not thinking anything!"
"Neither did I!" Lorelei said. "Now, I just passed the bar and I'm gettin' a big raise! Pretty good for not thinkin'!"
"Congratulations."
"And I ended up with some pretty decent boobs too, if I do say so myself! That ain't the be-all and end-all of validation, but it don't hurt either."
She opened the email from Lillian and smiled. Even though she was trying to commiserate with Lillian, Lorelei couldn't help but laugh out loud when she read the excerpts:
MECCA
Student Interviews
3-15-47 to 5-15-47
Baskerville Middle School, Findlay Fuller Elementary School
Town of Baskerville, ND
Interview 17
Student: David Oberhut, 5th grade
Interviewer: What gender do you identify as?
Student: Say what?
Interviewer: What sex do you think you are?
Student: That ain’t a question of thinking.
Interviewer: Do you think you’re a boy?
Student: I don’t think I’m a boy. I’m a boy! For five bucks, I’ll prove it to you. Even a shrink from New York will pick up on it right away.
Interviewer: Some people who think they’re boys might look a lot different than you.
Student: Where you going with this, Doc?
Interviewer: I just want you to consider that there might be more definitions of boys and girls than you’ve heard about so far.
Student: Hey, I’m in fifth grade. No point in making my life more complicated than it has to be.
Interviewer: Do you know that, all over the country, there are people living as girls who have the body parts of a boy?
Student: Sure. There’s people that think they’re Napoleon too.
Interviewer: Do you think there’s something wrong with people that were born as boys who want to be girls?
Student: Well, if people think they’re Napoleon, and they ain’t, there’s a problem, right?
Interviewer: That’s different.
Student: If you say so, Doc.
Interview 291
Student: Henrietta Asmundson, 6th grade
Interviewer: Have you ever heard of a boy that wanted to be a girl?
Student: Sure, in New York. That’s where they send all the wackos.
Interviewer: You think that boys who want to be girls are crazy?
Student: Well, I know they want to be girls and they aren’t.
Interviewer: Don’t you think you could be friends with a boy who wanted to be a girl?
Student: Maybe if I lived in New York or another place that was full of crazy people.
Interviewer: You don’t think there could be people here in Baskerville that were born boys but wanted to be girls?
Student: Not unless they came with you MECCA guys.
Interview 683
Student: Garnet Philboyd, 7th grade
Interviewer: Do you know what ‘hate speech’ is?
Student: I think I heard this from some fruitcake on the television. It’s when somebody says something bad about a guy because he’s from somewhere else or he’s a different color maybe. Like my buddy Stu the Pollack. Stu calls Eddie the Wop a Guinea all the time. That’s what you people call ‘hate speech’, right?
Interviewer: Did you call people on TV ‘fruitcakes’ because of their gender identification?
Student: Heck no. I call ‘em ‘fruitcakes’ because they’re fruitcakes. These guys wear makeup and girl’s clothes and walk like Michael Jackson. You tell me.
Interviewer: What if I told you that calling someone a ‘fruitcake’ is ‘hate speech’?
Student: Well then, calling that big wall of glass over there a ‘window’ is ‘hate speech’. Calling that ugly jacket you’re wearing an ‘ugly jacket’ is ‘hate speech’ ‘cause maybe you don’t care to hear it. You can’t go by what the other guy calls what you say, ‘cause he might not want you to talk at all.
Interview 807
Student: Marianne Papadopoulos, 8th grade
Interviewer: What gender do you most closely identify as?
Student: Well, I spent an hour and a half on my hair this morning. I’m wearing a very snug mini-skirt whose only purpose is to make boys stare at me all day. My present goal in life is to finish ninth grade with boobs I can carry my lunch tray on. I’m wearing this perfume so that even blind people know when a hot chick is walking by. On my twenty second birthday, I want a college degree in Fashion Design, twin girls, and a pink split level right beside my husband's dental clinic. What gender do I most closely identify as?
Interviewer: Well, I guess I’ll put down ‘female’. But, can you see why some boys would want to be a very popular and pretty girl like you?
Student: No. Because they can look forward to something way better than that.
Interviewer: What would that be?
Student: They can try getting me into the back seat of a car.
Interviewer: I can see your point.
Student: Do you really think I’m pretty?
Lorelei smiled. "I can see where you'd be kinda disappointed."
"Disappointed? You people in Baskerville have beaten out every county in Arkansas as the most racially isolated and gay-intolerant town in the whole United States."
"I notice you said 'the whole United States'. Does that mean we're still in the running against Iran and Saudi Arabia?"
"Not only are you in a dead heat with Saudi Arabia, not only have I wasted the last three months on this fruitless survey, but I now have a two year lease on office space no one's going to use."
"Au contraire, honey! You hit the nail right on the head when you were ranting about how racist we are. What you guys need is a Muslim-Gay Cooperation Center."
"A what?"
"Think about it. How impressed is the President going to be when he finds out that, months before the Muslim kidnapping of a gay government psychologist, Lillian Forbes already had a Muslim-Gay Cooperation Center fully functional."
Lillian smiled through the phone. "Who knew the town hall receptionist of Baskerville had a Machiavellian side!"
"Of course, as a discriminating American, I recognize that a Muslim-Gay Cooperation Center is an even bigger waste of time and money than the Muslim-American Cooperation Association. However, for the President and his fans, it's a giant coup, 'cuz any day you get a towelhead to show up at a conference without forty pounds of plastic explosives strapped around his waist is a good day. And any day where I can divert a government twinkie to Rock Haven instead of Baskerville is a good day for me."
"So this is just another ploy to keep the queers out of Baskerville?"
"In the meantime, I also get to lease you office space and cars and IT support. When you or your friends decide to apply for more free government money, you might think of me, and I'll be able to get a little bit of it back to the taxpayers, with a little gravy for myself."
"I guess we all have our place on the food chain."
"It's a race to the bottom Lil. And only time will tell if you can spend the government into bankruptcy before I can siphon off enough gravy to pay off my student loans."
"The way you put it, the process sounds so...deterministic."
"My grandfather was a Calvinist. He thought his success or failure was already preordained, so whether he went to college or not or worked hard or not would make no difference."
"How did he make out?"
"Lost his job, lost his house and drank himself to death at forty seven."
"Calvinism just isn't for everybody."
"That's what my daddy says."
"Good night, Lori," Lillian said.
"Good night, Lil," Lorelei smiled into the phone.
Long into the night, even after she locked up the office and walked home, Lorelei mulled over the same thought, and had no trouble believing Lillian was thinking the same thing:
"We could have been friends."