Yesterday, July 4th 2008: “Press, not mess. It’s called Meet the Press,” explained Tim Russert, the recently deceased journalist.
His subject removed a finger from his mouth. “I’m sorry. It’s these wooden dentures,” said George Washington. “Why would respectable Americans want to meet the press?”
“They don’t. They watch public figures meet the press,” the reporter explained.
“On the box with the glass window? Powered by that stuff Ben Franklin was always boring me about?” asked America‘s first president. Russert nodded. “And when it tells entertaining stories at night, the national birth rate falls?” The journalist regretted having explained that part.
Unlike many new arrivals, Russert had adapted quickly. The cumbersome wings went straight into the dumpster, and a friendly pawnbroker swapped his harp for a used laptop. Being Heaven, it ran advanced software: Vista 3.5 Million. His boss looked tough: he hadn’t heard of an archangel named Max, but newsroom scuttlebutt said he’d been copy-editor for the Ten Commandments.
General Washington called for two more glasses of ginger shrub and handed one to the newsman. “Sounds as if you modern Americans kept my advice on freedom of the press,” he said pleasantly. “I hope you’ve kept faithful. Remember in my 1796 farewell address, when I said “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” The journalist tried to explain teenage pregnancies and how trial attorneys had Christmas expunged from town squares.
The general frowned and took a healthy swig. “Well, I’m sure you remembered to avoid what I called “those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty.” Tim haltingly explained the extremes of the Patriot Act, torture and wiretapping, and how US military spending was greater than everywhere else on earth combined.
“This time, I think we’ll need two noggins of mimbo,” said President Washington, “and make ’em doubles.” He sat silently for a while before asking, “do you still, as I said, ‘cherish public credit…use it as sparingly as possible… avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt …(and) to discharge the debts… not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear?'” The journalist stared into his drink and began to explain about budgets, earmarks, debt and the declining dollar.
“So you guys put my picture on the currency then abuse it? Washington asked. He shook his head sadly and ordered two large tankards of syllabub.
“Well, I’m sure you’re taking my advice on foreign policy,” he said. “I can remember that part by heart: ‘The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns.”
Tim Russert swallowed hard. Then he described the enormous number of countries against which America has punitive sanctions; even more with trade barriers; the dozens of American invasions, attacks and incursions in the past sixty years; and the tax-funded global empire imposed by America’s centurions, and often resented by the local public.
“But we love you,” the reporter explained. “You symbolize America.”
George Washington raised his finger to attract the waitress. “Charlene? Let’s move onto snagarees. Better leave the bottle.”
S.J. Masty is a former Washington, DC, speechwriter now based in London as an international communication adviser.
