American Freak Show (4 page)
Read American Freak Show Online
Authors: Willie Geist
Now if you’ll excuse us, my 18 million votes and I are going down to the hotel bar for another round of piña coladas and video poker.
A
fter her most recent arrest on charges of DUI and possession of a controlled substance, actress Lindsay Lohan authored a series of Tweets from her temporary holding cell at the jail in Santa Monica, California. In the spirit of a similar manifesto written by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during his confinement in Birmingham nearly half a century earlier, Lohan’s Tweets serve as a mission statement, a call to action, and a loud cry for justice not just here at home, but around the world.
lindsaylohan
SUX! Just got arrested for Dooey. Why peeps constantly want to tear LL down?! Not cool. Someone bail me out! Usual spot. ONE LUV, y’all . . .
lindsaylohan
Obv. not psyched to be in this cell, but seriously you guyz, policemen are the real heroes. Remember 9/11. Officer here a huge Freaky Friday fan. LOL.
lindsaylohan
BTW, wasn’t kidding about bailing me out. Supposed to be at after-party for Cash Warren’s cologne launch in like 15 mins. Hurry, plz.
lindsaylohan
OMG! Courtney Love is 2 cells down. So love her personal style. We’re communicating by banging our chow pans on the floor. Total Shawshank right now!
lindsaylohan
U can’t even understand unless you’ve been here the racial disparity in our jails. So messed up. ReTweet to everyone you know & let’s change the world.
lindsaylohan
Ewwww! Courtney just tried to sell me to some super-sketchy chick for a pack of cigarettes. Not cool. Such a reminder: be good to each other, guyz . . .
lindsaylohan
Hate myself for saying this, but DYING to give this one guard a LiLo makeover! Can tell she’s HOTTT underneath her off-the-rack police costume . . .
lindsaylohan
I honestly can’t remember why I’m in jail. Kinda f’d up. Does anyone know? Check TMZ. It’s hotter than Criss Angel’s ballz in here! Not that I’d no ;)
lindsayfan54 @lindsaylohan
We LUV U Lindz!!!! Cops say U wr arrested fr driving 120 mph wrng way down PCH. Also bag of coke in ur glove comprtmnt. Stay strng, grl!
lindsaylohan
Thx, LindsayFan54! Celebrity is a dbl-edge sord. Media/cops out to get LL again. Would normal person be in jail for speeding tickt? Think about it, guyz.
lindsaylohan
So much time to reflect in here. Want to live/love better. Plus so much suffering in world. So sad. Also, thinking about going back to brunette? Yay or nay?!
lindsaylohan
Been here 30 mins & starting to feel hopelessness other celebs—Mandela, Gandi, O.J.—must have felt. They take evrything from you (excpt BBerry
)
lindsaylohan
Is it possible Im getting more f’d up as i sit here? Took weird green pills right before cops pulled me. So proud of this country for electing black man president.
lindsaylohan
Guyz, it’s up to our generation to stop global warming. Do your part, OK? Had so much fun working on Parent Trap. RIP, Natasha Richardson (aka “MOM”).
lindsaylohan
Seriously, guyz. Anyone coming to get me? TP in here is mad harsh. So much of the 3rd world lives in terrible poverty while we drnk champagne. THINK.
lindsaylohan
My designer friend Joaquin Calebra has sick new line of bags. Check out: http://tinyurl.com/3rsfg. Small % of proceeds to orphanage in N. Korea. Heartbrking.
lindsaylohan
Anyone remember how Tango & Cash escaped from prison? Need 2 get the f out uv here. Hair/makup not allwd in cell. Total deprivation. Cherish what u have, guyz.
lindsaylohan
Check out this
TwitPic
of me in here. Not prtty, but the wrld has to no what prison does to a person. If my example frees 1 person frm death row its worth it.
lindsaylohan
How 2 keep faith/hope/sanity in here? Closing eyes & remembring St. Barts with Kate Moss on Jerry Bruckheimer’s yacht ovr MLK weekend this yr. Tru happiness.
lindsaylohan
Every minute I rot in here, a thousand more acres of rain forest r cleared by big business & Halliburton & LL can’t do anything about it. No blood 4 oil, Cheney!
lindsaylohan
!!!! Some random stalker-dude just bailed me out!!! Looks drty & crcked out, borderline homeless, but in hott young Keith Richards way. YUM!
lindsaylohan
Learned so much about myself in jail. Definitely changes U & ur priorities. Want to work w/ poor/fat people . . . but first Cash’s after-party! PEACE & LOVE, guyz!
TRUE STORY . . .
“IT’S MY LAWNMOWER. I CAN SHOOT IT IF I WANT TO”
Drunk man arrested for shooting lawnmower
57-year-old Keith Walendowski was minding his own business one spring morning, drinking beer, basking in the warm sun, and shooting his lawnmower with a sawed-off shotgun, when officers from the Milwaukee Police Department arrived to question him. Turns out a nosy neighbor had called to report shots fired from the direction of Walendowski’s backyard.
According to the criminal complaint, Walendowski explained the noise very simply. “I’ll tell you the truth,” he told police. “I got pissed because my lawnmower wouldn’t start, so I got my shotgun and shot it. It’s my lawnmower and my yard, so I can shoot it if I want.” Damn right.
Despite his seemingly flawless constitutional defense, Walendowski was charged with a felony count of possessing a short-barreled shotgun and a misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct while armed.
Keith Walendowski’s is a cautionary tale. A country where a man cannot get liquored up at 9:30 in the morning and shoot a lawnmower in his own backyard has come unmoored from its founding principles of individual freedom and inebriation. First they came for the sawed-off shotguns, America.
P
resident Barack Obama is jolted awake by the sound of a crash. He sits up in bed and waits in still silence to hear it again, but nothing. The president turns to see the first lady sleeping, unfazed by the noise. Maybe it was just the sound of the overnight staff moving about downstairs, he thought. Or perhaps it was nothing more than the drafty old White House whistling its two-hundred-year-old song. Whatever it was, Obama resents having been woken from a wonderful dream in which he was riding a bicycle built for two along Lake Michigan with his beloved friend and unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayres.
The clock on the nightstand in the president’s White House bedroom reads 3:37 a.m. He puts his head back on the pillow.
Then, before he can slip back into unconsciousness, an even louder crash—the unmistakable sound of a plate smashing on a hard floor. Obama springs up from bed. This is no dream. The first lady rolls over, looking up at her husband.
“Did you hear that?” he asks.
“Did you lock the back door before you went to bed?” she whispers.
“Damn it!” Obama smacks himself on the forehead.
Exasperated by the president’s recent negligence of basic household responsibilities, the first lady shoots back, “Well, get down there and see what it is.” She rolls back over on her pillow. “And sort the recycling while you’re down there—like I asked you yesterday.”
The president peels back the covers and climbs out of bed. He is wearing the “I ♥ Big Government” pajamas given to him as a birthday gift by his old Republican colleague in the Senate Dick Lugar. (Lugar, as you may know, is Capitol Hill’s king of gag gifts. In the midst of the Lewinsky scandal, he sent Bill Clinton a box of exploding cigars with a humorous note reading, “This one really blew up in your face, didn’t it?! Yours, Big Dick.”)
Obama grabs a 7-iron out of the golf bag left in a closet by Dwight Eisenhower and tiptoes his way out of the room to confront whomever—or whatever—is making the noise. As the president slides down the grand stairwell with his back against the wall, he sees a faint light reaching into the hallway from under the kitchen door. A couple of delicate, bare footsteps closer and he hears low murmuring—a man’s voice. The president clutches the club tighter and suddenly reconsiders his position on gun control. A loaded semiautomatic handgun would be great right now, he thinks.
With the loud clanking of silverware now just on the other side of the kitchen door, the president braces himself, with both hands on the club, to face the intruder who has violated the sanctity of the American People’s home. He closes his eyes and counts quietly, “1 . . . 2 . . . 3!”
“Hey!” the president shouts as he springs into the kitchen ready to fight.
The silhouette of an older, heavyset man standing at the kitchen’s island is lit from behind only by the small light of the microwave. The man throws up his hands, dropping a butter knife from one and a sandwich from the other.
“Whoa! Whoa! Easy there, Tiger Woods! It’s me!”
The president, with the golf club still poised, squints to see the man, but the room is too dark. He reaches behind him and turns on the overhead light. Standing there in the middle of the White House kitchen, wearing only a T-shirt and extraordinarily small white
J
ockey underwear, is Dick Cheney.
“What the f**k?” the stunned president mutters under his breath.
Cheney breaks into a crooked smile. “Can I put my hands down here, officer? You already ruined my sandwich, and I don’t mind telling you, you ruined this pair of underwear, too.”
Obama lowers the club. “What the hell are you doing here, Vice President Cheney? It’s three-thirty in the morning. And you’re wearing your underwear. Jesus Christ, you scared the crap out of us.”
Cheney lowers his arms. “First things first: call me Dick. Everybody else in your socialist party does,” the former vice president quips with a laugh.
The look on Obama’s face suggests that Cheney’s attempted icebreaker has failed to break the considerably thick ice.
“Aw, phooey, did I wake you up when I dropped that plate? I apologize. I’m just having a little late-night snack here in my kitchen. That’s my bad on the noise. Hey, how great is this T-shirt?”
Cheney pulls down his shirt to reveal the words
I’M WITH STUPID
and a photograph of President George W. Bush.
“Lugar gave it to me,” he says with a chuckle.
Obama does not laugh. “Why are you in the White House, Dick? This is not your kitchen.”
Cheney has turned back to his sandwich, spreading mayonnaise on a slice of bread. “I live here, Barack-Attack! We don’t like to make a big fuss about it on account of the press would go batshit, but, yeah, got a little underground setup downstairs here. You wanna go check it out? I’ve got Xbox on the big screen and everything. Only downside is that we have to ride the dumbwaiter to get down there.”
Obama puts the club down on the island and walks toward Cheney. “You live in the White House?! This is an outrage!”
Cheney takes a bite of the sandwich, stuffing a loose piece of lettuce into the side of his mouth. “Oh, spare me, Obama! I’ve been running the United States government since I got Scalia to give Slappy the Clown that 2000 election. Would you believe that whole crazy thing was decided over a late-night game of pinochle at Newt’s place? You tell anybody that, I’ll have you sent to a black site in Siberia. No shit. I will do that.”
Obama shakes his head as Cheney continues.
“Don’t look so shocked, my man. Have you happened to notice that your foreign policy looks exactly like Slappy’s? Well, you can thank your old Uncle Dick for that. Yes, sir. Still calling the shots down there.”
Obama is stunned. “Good God!”
Cheney turns and opens the refrigerator, takes a swig of milk directly from the gallon jug. “And, look, I’m sorry for being an asshole to you all the time.” Cheney wipes away the milk around his mouth. “I have to do that every now and again to throw everyone off the scent. I start praising you and people wonder what the hell’s going on between us. That’s why all the ‘dithering’ and ‘He’s making us less safe’ ranting and raving. Are you mad at me?”
Obama does appear to be mad now.
“ ‘Mad’ is not the word, Dick. You are running my presidency from a room underneath the White House—”
Cheney jumps in, “Not just yours, Obama-Rama. Remember, I ran Slappy’s, too. He started sobbing like a little girl on 9/11 and I took the wheel from there. Every time he got his courage up and asked to be included in a big decision, we’d tell him, ‘The grown-ups are talking,’ and send him to Crawford to clear brush for a couple of weeks. I know how that sounds, but trust me, it was better for everybody.”
Obama speaks slowly and in a stern tone: “Mr. Cheney, I think you should finish that sandwich, go downstairs, pack up your things, and be on your way before I call the Secret Service.”
Cheney lets out a hearty laugh. “The Secret Service?! Those guys love me. Besides, you’re not gonna tell anyone. You want the world to know you’re not really the president? Sure, let’s go ahead and give
The Washington Post
the scoop right now. Who should I call, Woodward or Bernstein? Come on, Bam-Bam, get real!
“Plus, I ain’t going anywhere until my bacon and cheddar Hot Pocket’s done in the microwave. That is non-negotiable.”
Obama concedes the condition. “Very well. You can wait until your Hot Pocket is ready.” The president folds his arms and stares at Cheney as the Hot Pocket rotates in the soft light of the microwave over his shoulder. Cheney smacks his gut, looks up at the ceiling, and exhales. “Sooooo, this is awkward. How ’bout those Bears! Butkus is having another good year, huh?” Obama remains expressionless.
Cheney’s face lights up with a thought. “Hey, do you know about
The Book
?”
Obama shakes his head. “What book?”
Cheney throws up his hands. “You seriously don’t know about
The Book
? Oh, you’re in for a treat. Have you ever seen the movie
American Pie
with that babe Tara Reid?”
Obama shakes his head again. “I have not.”
Cheney breaks into a wide smile. “Oh, it’s a really terrific coming-of-age story. You oughta rent the tape. So there’s this part in there where the high school seniors pass down a book full of secrets and advice every year to the next class. Well, the outgoing class here at the White House does the same thing. It’s all in
The Book
. Just like in
American Pie
.”
Obama is mildly intrigued. “Is Tara Reid the one who’s had the ongoing struggle with her personal body image?”
Cheney points at Obama. “That’s her!”
Obama nods. “Oh yeah, she’s very good.”
Cheney ignores the microwave, whose beeping indicates the Hot Pocket is ready. “I think you’re ready to see
The Book
, Tommy Barama. Technically, you are a president, I guess. Even if you
were
born in some terrorist hotbed.”
He walks toward a shelf full of cookbooks and pulls away two of them. He reaches into the gap left by the books and comes out with a beautiful, red leather–bound volume embroidered in gold. Cheney wipes away a thin layer of dust on the book’s cover to reveal the title
The Book
.
“Here it is, BO:
The Book
! Wisdom from all the presidents who have lived in this house. Unfortunately we only have the volume from the last one hundred years or so because that cocksucker Grover Cleveland took the first one home with him when he left office. You become the only guy to serve two non-consecutive terms and suddenly you think your shit doesn’t stink. The whole ‘I’m the twenty-second
and
twenty-fourth president’ thing went straight to his head.”
Cheney hands the book to Obama and walks back to the microwave to retrieve his snack. “If it’s just the same to you, I’m gonna take my snack back downstairs and catch the lottery drawing. I played the Pick Six tonight with the nuclear codes. Feelin’ lucky! Hey, enjoy the book. There are some gems in there.”
With that, the former vice president, wearing his T-shirt and snug tighty-whities, takes his Hot Pocket and stuffs himself into the dumbwaiter, descending slowly into the bowels of the White House from which he controls the United States government.
President Obama, standing in his pajamas in the darkness of the kitchen at four o’clock in the morning, opens
The Book
and, by the light of a microwave still warm from Dick Cheney’s bacon and cheddar Hot Pocket, meets the ghosts of the White House past.
WILLIAM “BILL” M
C
KINLEY
J
UNE 14, 1897
For the record, the last asshole, Grover Cleveland “Steamer,” stole the first volume of “The Book.” That’s okay, Grover, I’m sure future presidents would have no interest in the wisdom of Washington, Jefferson, or Lincoln. Dick move, man. Dick move.
D
ECEMBER 14, 1898
Get out the sunblock and fire up the margarita machine because I just took Puerto Rico, a bunch of the West Indies, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain! They call it the Spanish-American War, but trust me, it wasn’t much of a war. More like four months of looking at island property in the Caribbean. See you in San Juan!
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
S
EPTEMBER 15, 1901
Well, I guess McKinley isn’t gonna get to chill in San Juan after all. He’s chillin’ in the morgue right now. Some crazy anarchist popped a cap in him. Fuckin’ anarchists. Anyway, guess what this means? I’m president! I have no idea what I’m doing. Seriously. Don’t tell anyone!
A
PRIL 22, 1903
If you’re reading this book it’s too late for you, but this job kind of blows. I used to do tons of cool stuff—I was police chief in New York City, governor of New York, I led the Rough Riders up that hill—but this is boooooooring. I think I might go dig a canal for shits and giggles.
N
OVEMBER 7, 1906
Okay, started the canal. It’s gonna be kick-ass. Now they want me to get excited about the Meat Inspection Act. Meat Inspection?! I don’t mean to big-time anybody, but do they know who I am? BTW, that would be a hilarious name for a porn film—
The Meat Inspection Act
. Ha! I’m so not running for reelection. I’m going to shoot elephants in Africa instead. Smell ya L8TR!!!!!
WILLIAM H. TAFT
J
ANUARY 1, 1913
It’s been a heck of a ride here in the White House, but I just have to say, I did NOT get stuck in the goddamned bathtub! Seriously, you guys. That’s an ugly smear spread by opponents who would rather focus on my weight than on the issues. Could I lose a few pounds? Sure. Could I stand to skip a few trips to the buffet? Of course. Does that mean I get stuck in bathtubs? Absolutely not. I’m gonna be SO pissed if the spurious bathtub story overshadows the legislative achievements of my historically great presidency. Do you think the Sixteenth Amendment passed itself?!