Christmas in New York

Uh-oh, who’s that standing on the steps of the New York Public Library, equidistant from the two lions, dressed in one of those long black overcoats revolutionaries used to wear? He’s waving papers, and exhorting people as they go by. It isn’t… is it? It’s hard to tell. The weather is a mess; there’s slippin’ and a-slidin’. He’s yelling over the general honk of thick traffic, and nobody’s stopping to listen except a few old ladies who admire the cut of his jib, and a little group of bored adolescents, hoping to see some action.

A lot of people rant and rave in the privacy of their own family, but rarely does anyone take it out on the street.

These streets are packed with tourists taking the excursion down Fifth, from The Tree at Rockefeller Center, to 34^th, then to Macy’s windows at Herald Square. Suddenly, a bunch of them stop – three girls and a guy, in their New York thirties. Free, independent beings.

They march up the steps four abreast, laughing, looking more at each other than at the object of their quest. And they are quite something to look at. One is white, one is black, one is somewhere in between, and the guy is Asian. Hard to tell what denomination: Handsome. Big, and handsome. All dressed, as my mother used to say, “to the nines”. (I never knew why, but now you can look it up.) The girls are be-furred and be-sparkled; the guy’s wearing a top-hat: on him it looks good.

They’re coming from the office Christmas party, which has been getting earlier every year, and they are full of it. Full of Christmas cheer. They’re mounting the stairs to see what the nutcase up above is waving his arms about. As they get close, the shouter spots them, and finally has an audience to focus on.

“How could you not know that the global warming issue is a fraud? Fake data, politicians making billions on it, gearing up to cut you down, to let other nations – not Western nations – ‘catch up’. Pollution is the worst thing in the world, but only if the US does it. These other guys are entitled to ruin the earth. You had your turn. Now it’s theirs.” The three girls titter. That’s what girls do. They titter.

Our man – yes, we’re sure now… it’s our man all right, loose in the city and gone berserk. Our man is glowering down from five or six steps above them, pointing a finger.

“You and the goddamn You-En! They hate you, wherever you are on the poverty scale in America, because they know, even if you don’t, that no matter how low you are on the poverty scale in America, you’re better off than they are. You’re better off than some of their kings.”

“I’ll drink to that!” one of the girls shouts back. He can’t tell which one; they’re in a cluster and they all have their mouths open, laughing.

He comes down a step toward them, an intense expression on his face.

“You girls… and you” – he turns to the top-hatted male, who is clearly enjoying himself – “Have you woken up to the fact that Obamacare is just a swindle, to have the people who work pay for people who don’t? You work, don’t you? You want to pay for all these people? You…” he's still talking to the guy… “You want to pay for maternity insurance, in case you get pregnant? That’s what you’re going to do!”

He grabs the guy’s arm, but the guy is mellow. He sees Wayne swaying, but actually, he’s the one who’s not quite steady on his feet. It was a good party.

“Do you understand that they don’t know what they’re doing, and they don’t care? All they want to do is get you by the balls. And the boobs. Free this; free that. Well, it’s not free for you Buddy; not if you have any income.”

He steps back from his target, and peers closely at him. “Oh… you don’t have an income? You just have a billion dollar trust fund you draw from, and a mansion you live in? Oh. Then I made a mistake. It’s free for you, too, Buddy. And for Congress. And all the rest of Obama’s cronies who’re being excused in one way or another.”

He takes his eyes off the guy, and peers down at the three lovelies, through their feathers and fur, into their smiling faces and gives them the big, broad smile he was famous for in school. They shimmy a little – or are they shivering in their heels despite their furs? Wayne gives them a moment’s silent approval, then pulls himself together and goes on.

“Obamacare is a scheme to rob the not-so-rich to pay the not-so-poor, and gain control over your entire life, because what are you without your health? And that, now, is their business, not yours. You think they care about it as much as you?”

A few more people have stopped. Why not? Take a rest from pushing through the crowds: something’s happening here. Wayne notices the increase, and looks in its direction. “Everyone’s excused but you – you ordinary person, you.” He stares hard at a man with red ears above a green scarf. The man laughs nervously. He doesn’t titter. Men don’t titter. Most men.

“Everyone thinks somebody else is getting the benefit, but we’re getting collectively screwed.”

He screeches the word “screwed”, and it’s heard over the other noises. His audience gains another ring of watchers. It’s the Christmas spirit to listen to madmen. One of them turned out to be Jesus.

In the Christmas spirit, Wayne exhorts his ever-enlarging crowd. He looks taller. His voice is louder, as he shouts, “We can’t all be treated the same, because we aren’t all the same. Why does everybody have to take their shoes off at the airport? We’re told all the time we aren’t the same – divided up into as many races and genders as they can manage to divide us into in order to conquer us. Only not at the airport. There everyone is exactly the same – the ninety-year-old nun, and the nineteen-year-old terrorist.”

There’s a stir through the crowd for that one. A lot of these people have traveled to get here. To get a taste of Christmas in New York. They’ve forgotten how bad the airport experience was, but now they’re reminded. They’re grumbling – not just to their companions – some of the tourists are talking to locals, a lot of whom have come from Christmas parties and still spirited, are inviting their new-found foreign friends to dinner.

“We’re in for it now, people. Obama has nothing to lose. He’s going to go for broke, get as much changed as he possibly can, then Hillary will run for President with the promise to fix some of his changes, so she will win.”

A heckler yells, “You’ve got it wrong! It’s Michelle! Michelle’s the next president! It’s Michelle who’s going to fix it. Just like she’s going to fix him for kissing that blonde.”

Wayne doesn’t know what’s going on in the Middle East, but he knows all about the selfie of Barack and the babe at Mandela’s funeral.

He’s not going to be distracted. “Nobody’s going to fix it! Here’s what you’re doing. You’re supporting the transformation of a country that used to revere the individual – that’s you, Buddy, whether you’re rich or poor. That means we no longer give a good goddamn what happens to you; we care only about what you can and can’t do for the rulers. You don’t matter anymore. We’re all the same, equal.

Well the only equality is in poverty. The Republicans, who you hate, don’t want to make everybody equally poor. They want to make everybody rich, even if it’s unequally rich. And they understand how to do it. But you hate them and won’t listen to them. It’s no big secret either. Everybody used to know it.”

There are cheers for this. A good many of these people come from the Midwest. They’re people who know what work is. They’re Republicans.

But Wayne isn’t thinking anymore. He rarely meets Republicans. He’s still talking to his enemies. And now he’s going to make some more. He’s heard the magic word, even if he did say it himself, and he’s off on one of his favorite themes.

“The goddam Republicans… morons! Morons! Don’t they know how to talk? They should be out there shouting… look at what they did to all of you in the middle of the night, passing a bill that no one read nor understood. Not one of us voted for it. They should bring out some of the failings and pound them home, like everyone losing their insurance, what the new deductibles are, and which of your doctors aren’t covered anymore. And on the up side, come out with things that will bring down the cost of health care. There’s no need to destroy the whole system. Bill Clinton has come out against Obamacare. He’s setting the stage for Hillary to sweep in and change things in 2016.”

There are shouts of “Hillary for President!” It’s a high-pitched chorus of the faithful, the people whose dream of a woman president, Barack Obama stole. They don’t love the wunderkind half as much as they pretend to.

Wayne gazes out over these ladies, and takes a stand against them. He brings his big black-clothed arms before him and clasps his hands in prayer. “And please, please, Republicans, keep Hillary in the spotlight with Benghazi, and her role in that whole mess.” He now looks out at the people gawking at him, and pronounces, very carefully, “That totally… fake… thing… blaming the video no one had even seen – and the guy’s still in jail. They took him Gestapo style in the middle of the night. You know about that? How can you stand yourself for defending these people? I know, I know… you can’t! That’s why you beat up on Republicans. That’s why bullies pick on people… they can’t stand themselves, so they have to prove they’re bigger and better than everyone else.”

Watch that, Wayne. Bully is a bad word. You can call people a lot of things. But not “racist” and not “bully.” Then they know they’ve been insulted.

But wait. He’s going to clarify and make it worse. “Don’t think I love Republicans. It’s just that these guys running the show are tinhorn tyrants.

“We all know that the IRS stole the election. The Republicans lost, even though it seemed impossible that Obama could win. They couldn’t figure out why. Then it turned out that their base didn’t turn out. Republicans didn’t vote. ‘The base! The base! They lost their base!’ The base they lost was the silenced Tea Party, the people who needed to be told, ‘Vote for Romney even though he isn’t one of us. He isn’t a Commie; he isn’t one of them.’ The disheartened base, who wanted to overthrow the Republican establishment, and so was routed by both sides. Because the establishments of both sides are in it together!”

“Down with them all!” someone yells, and others join in. It’s this, rather than anything Wayne has said, that finally brings the cops. The yeller, now leading the chant… he’s a cool dude. Black, it so happens. (The guy’s a black tea partyer. But only you and I know that.) His eyes are twinkling, his voice big, his goatee devilish. He’s inspiring.

Too inspiring. Remember those bored teenagers lurking below stairs? They’ve got their action, and they’ve started pushing each other around in their excitement. Like puppies. They don’t mean any harm. They’ve oblivious to content. They wanted stimulation, and here it is. But they’re stronger than they know, and they’re bumping into others.

Here come the cops! They see the melee, then they look up and see Wayne presiding over it. They rush the stairs, grab him, and ohmigod, Wayne has been stopped and is being frisked. That’s what you get, Wayne, for going out on Friday the Thirteenth and calling attention to yourself. You and that black cat. They’re frisking him, too. This is way too embarrassing for us. We’re going to leave old Wayne, wish him well, and a Merry Christmas besides, in case we don’t see him before then.