Fair and Balanced

You know, folks, people think I’m a partisan because I’m always talking about the Democrats. Dad tells me I’ve got to give the other side some representation.

Even you can see that Mercy can’t take this lying down. The historic president, the post-racial president, has gone on the stump for her opponent. She has to fight back, and I’m going to let her do it.

Mercy is moving around her bedroom – her private quarters, and a surprisingly bare affair. Quite masculine. There’s a big bed (she’s a big girl) and a long closet that she built, with the help of a wood-carver downstairs, to hold her dresses. And a few mirrors. Being Mercy Alexander takes a lot of changes. She’s dressing for her fundraiser in the ballroom of the Marriott Hotel.

She doesn’t like this speech she’s about to give, but she thinks it has to be done.

She hates to go after a brother, but if he won’t recognize the tie, she can’t either. All’s fair in love and war, and he declared war – wrong ideas, indeed. Mercy likes Obama. He’s a cute kid. But politically, he’s a child of Chicago. He was nurtured by its system. He drank its “mother’s milk.”

He looks at the world through the eyes of its deprived. That makes him angry, and anger makes you blind. Blind to cause and effect. Blind to complex solutions. Blind to morality and ethics.

It’s what made him turn his head when white voters were threatened at the polls by black heavies. He needed votes in order to right a great wrong. The end justified the means.

A short ride in Mercy’s hired limo. She doesn’t want to drive, and she doesn’t want company.

They have, mercifully, pulled up to the back entrance of the ballroom, so she can steal inside without talking to any well-wishers or skeptics, and not get her make-up mussed by fans trying to touch her.

That is the reception Mercy Alexander got before she was a candidate for congress. And it’s the reception she still gets. But now she’s tired – from time spent thinking.

She steps out into the empty inner courtyard. The orange and blue diagonal stripes she’s wrapped in, light up the space. Her hair is a fat spiraled snake coiled into a squat cone on top of her head. The driver does not presume to escort the lady to the door. Mercy Alexander looks like she can take care of herself.

She’s exactly on time, and walks through the door, on to the stage. The people stand and applaud. Mercy is a pro; she can count an audience. There are three hundred in the ballroom.

They are there for her, not for the Republican Party. She is, therefore, entitled to give them her opinions, and they are entitled to hear them.

She bows the top of the snake to the audience, and as she remains in that position, they slowly quiet down and take their seats.

She begins in a low, deep voice.

“I hate to be bitchy about it, but I have some bones to pick with our President.”

A few isolated titters around the room.

“Some people say our President is a Chicago thug. Now I don’t buy that. But this is a very impressionable young man. He’s falling for Putin’s act as hard as our guy who looked into his soul.

“This is an impressionable young man who has some very questionable friends and mentors. You know two of them. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a racist, and Bill Ayres, a domestic terrorist.

“You see the Reverend Wright when Mr. Obama points his finger at a white policeman protecting a black professor’s house, and uses it to accuse white America of prejudice.

“You see Bill Ayres in the ferocious attempt to kill the private sector and relegate all its powers to the government. You see him in the President’s heavy-handed redistribution of wealth and now health. Nobody can have more than anybody else. This does not engender initiative. The experiment has been tried many times and has always failed.

“I’ll tell you what, Mr. President. We’re all going to have less, including the poor people, because you’re killing the goose that laid the golden egg. You’re killing the impetus to better oneself by one’s own acts. You’re telling people to sit on their asses and wait for the rich people to pay their taxes. But in a very short time, there won’t be any rich people. (Except in congress. And a lot of them don’t pay their taxes.)

“Tyranny begins when someone has an idea that he thinks is so good that it excuses the use of force. That’s what’s happened with the health care idea. The plan won’t work unless everyone is forced to participate. An American may choose to be homeless or hungry but he’s going to jail if he doesn’t want to participate in a government approved health plan.

“I may need insurance to drive a car, but I don’t have to drive a car. And they can tax booze and cigarettes but I don’t have to indulge. However, to tax me for not getting health coverage is a tax on life itself. It’s not pay-to-play; it’s pay-to-stay.

“For the first time in America’s history the government is saying we’re slaves – free to sing and dance, but after the cotton’s been picked. Well suppose I don’t want to pick cotton. I may just not want to plug into someplace official to get money to stay out of jail. Forcing me to do so is involuntary servitude, and I think the Constitution has something to say about that.

“And you know that the evil of plantation life wasn’t just the hard work, they took your children. Well you’re taking the children, too. What was it you said? ‘Cradle to career.’ What happened to Mom and Dad? Oh, a lot of them aren’t too good at the job. It’s much better to have them working to pay their taxes. Daycare, school and more school will do a much better job than most parents.

“With all due respect for your office, I submit, President Obama, that you are hurting America. You are hopping all over the globe promoting yourself and denigrating (it’s a real word, look it up) our country instead of promoting it. But what’s worse, you’re promoting dictatorships. Didn’t I hear you tell Putin that the US would not be interfering in the internal affairs of other countries? Then why are you doing everything you can to crush the people of Honduras who are trying to obey their constitution and remain in control of their government? Why are you a friend of Hugo Chavez?

“I’ll tell you why. You’ve joined the dictator’s club. Uh-huh. It happens to many leaders of the revolution. They become dictators themselves. Instead of letting Congress run the country – Congress, which corrupt as it may be, is still elected by the people – you’re appointing czars, who have total power over their domains.

“My worthy opponent is married to a Jew. She can’t speak up for him, but I can. What are you doing, Man? Squeezing Israel into a corner. Giving credence to holocaust deniers. Supporting the Hamas and Hezbollah rockets and suicide bombers as the moral equivalent of a nation’s defending itself. Israel is our only ally with balls, and you’re trying to cut them off.

“You’re a little too forgiving of Muslims. Christians don’t call for world domination. Jews just want to be left alone. But Muslims are calling for the extinction of a race, and you, Barack, are listening to them.

“You’re taking over, Mr. President, and that’s not the American way. Our children and grandchildren will not know what freedom is.

“America is great because we’re a democracy, and by some magic, the vision of the many is better than the vision of a few. That’s the downfall of top-down solutions like yours. The bureaucracy provides diminished services that cost more with no hope of things ever getting better. This is good for management or enslavement; when by chance it serves the people it succeeds only for a very short time.

Your multi-trillion-dollar Ponzi schemes dwarf Madoff’s. He only conned gullible people to pay off his investors. You’re forcing everyone in the country to support your favored friends – and that’s everyone including the as yet unborn and their children.

“This congressional election is not your typical race between a Democrat and a Republican. It is a referendum on Barack Obama, on his presidency, and on what we think of what he’s done to America.

“Tell your friends, your family, and your co-workers to say no to the takeover of America. Let’s let the world hear us tell this administration: ‘No you can’t!’”

With a deep bow, the snake’s tail protruding from the tip of the conical coil, Mercy holds out her arms, creating a large blue and orange striped rectangle, then drops them back to her body and strolls off-stage. Now the entertainment will begin, the food will come down the rows of tables, and the alcohol will flow.

And who is that we see, sitting at a table surrounded by members of the other party? Well if it isn’t Adele, who has volunteered to come and hear what the opposition has to say for itself.

And she is furious! Mercy Alexander is nothing but a Republican puppet, sent out to discredit Obama. They think they can get away with it because she’s black. Well she’ll show them, Brenda Shapiro has a black spokesperson too, and she’s it. Next time there’s a public appearance, she’s going to be ready to defend her team.

Outside, the limo slips away. In fifteen minutes, the dashiki will be back in the closet, and Mercy will be asleep in the big bed, emotionally exhausted from the strain of having to fight for her country and finding an African in her sights.