Our Gang (22 page)

"-the flotsam and jetsam of the universities, the

fairies, the folk singers, the fairies, the freaks, the

fairies, the free-loaders on welfare, the fairies, the

free-speechers with their favorite four-letter word,

the fairies-"

We switch you to our correspondent at Walter

Reed Army Hospital.

THE ASSASSINATION OF TRICKY
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53

"Ladies and gentlemen, this terrible news has just

come to us from a highly reliable source within the

hospital. The President of the United States was

assassinated sometime in the early hours of the

morning. The cause of death was drowning. He was

found at seven A.M., unclothed and bent into the

fetal position, inside a large transparent baggie filled

with a clear fluid presumed to be water, and tied

shut at the top. The baggie containing the body of

the President was found on the floor of the hospital

delivery room. How he was removed from his own

room, where he was awaiting surgery on his upper

lip, and forced or enticed into a baggie is not known

at this time. There would seem to be little doubt,

however, that the manner in which he has been

murdered is directly related to the controversial

remarks he made at San Dementia on April 3, in

which he came out four-square for `the rights of the

unborn.'

"Right now, hospital officials seem to believe that

the President left his bed voluntarily to accompany

his assailant to the delivery room, perhaps in the

belief that he was to be photographed there beside

the stomach of a woman in labor. The recent Scout

uprising, and yesterday's nuclear bombing of

Copenhagen, seemed to those of us here in

Washington to have taken something of an edge off

his campaign in behalf of the unborn, and it may

well be that he had

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decided to seize upon this fortuitous circumstance

to revitalize interest in his program. Doubtless,

with the destruction of Copenhagen and the occupation

of Denmark successfully accomplished,

he was anxious to return to what he considered our

most pressing domestic problem. Rumor has it that

he intended, in his next major address, to use his

new upper lip to outline his belief in `the sanctity

of human life, including the life of the yet unborn.'

"But now there will be no speech on the sanctity

of human life with the new lip he would have been

so proud of. A cruel assassin with a macabre sense

of humor has seen to that. The man who believed in

the unborn is dead, his unclothed body found

stuffed in the fetal position inside a water-filled

baggie on the floor of the delivery room here at

Walter Reed Hospital. This is Roger Rising-to-the-

Occasion at Walter Reed."

Quickly now to the White House, and the latest

bulletin from the Bilge Secretary.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have a few more facts

for you now about the President's hip, including

the x-ray I promised earlier. This gentleman in

white that you see beside me in his surgical gloves,

gown and mask is probably the foremost authority

on
the left-hip in the world. Doctor, will you

comment on this x-ray of the President's left hip

for the members of the press. I'll hold it for you so

you don't dirty your gloves."

"Thank you, Blurb. Ladies and gentlemen, there is

just no doubt about it in my mind. This is a left

hip."

"Thank you, Doctor. Any questions?"

"Blurb, the report from Walter Reed is that the

President has been assassinated. Stuffed naked into

a baggie and drowned."

"Gentlemen, let's try to keep to the subject. The

doctor here has flown in from Minnesota right in

the middle of an operation on a left hip, to verify

this X-ray for you. I don't think we want to keep

him longer than we have to. .Yes?"

"Doctor, can you be absolutely sure that the left

hip is the President's?"

"Of course I can."

"How, Sir?"

"Because that's what the Bilge Secretary said it

was. Why would he give me a picture of a hip and

say it was the President's if it wasn't?"

(Laughter from the Press Corps)

"-the gadflies, the go-go girls, the geldings, the

gibbons, the gonadless, the gonorrheacarriers-"

We interrupt the Vice President's address to i I is

National Association for the Advancement

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of Color Slides to switch you to our correspondents

around the country.

First, Morton Momentous in Chicago:

"Here in the Windy City the mood is one of

incredulity, of shock, of utter disbelief. So stunned

are the people of this great Middle Western

metropolis that they seem totally unable to respond

to the bulletins from Washington that have come to

them over radio and television. And so from the

Gold Coast to Skid Row, from the fashionable

suburbs of the North to the squalid ghettos of the

South, the scene is much the same: people going

about their ordinary, everyday affairs as though

nothing had happened. Not even the flags have

been lowered to half-staff, but continue to flutter

high in the breeze, even as they did before the news

reached this grief-stricken city of the terrible fate

that has befallen our leader. Trick E. Dixon is dead,

cruelly and bizarrely murdered, a martyr to the

unborn the world round-and it is more than the

mind or spirit of Chicago can accept or understand.

And so throughout this great city, life, in a manner

of speaking, goes on-much as you see it directly

behind me here in the worldfamous Loop. Shoppers

rushing to and fro. The din of traffic continuous.

Restaurants jammed. Streetcars and busses packed.

Yes, the frantic, mindless scurrying of a big city at

the rush hour. It is almost as though the people here

in Chicago

THE ASSASSINATION OF TRICKY
157

are afraid to turn for a single second from the

ordinary routine of an ordinary day, to face this

ghastly tragedy. This is Morton Momentous from a

stunned, incredulous Chicago."

We take you now to Los Angeles and correspondent

Peter Pious.

"If the people in the streets of Chicago are

incredulous, you can well imagine the mood of the

ordinary man in the pool here in Trick E. Dixon's

native state. In Chicago they are simply unable to

respond; here it is even more heartrending. The

Californians I have spoken withor tried to speak

with-are like nothing so much as small children who

have been confronted with an event far beyond

their emotional range of response. All they can do

when they learn the tragic news that Trick E. Dixon

has been found stuffed in a baggie is giggle. To be

sure, there are the proverbial California wisecracks,

but by and large it is giggling such as one might hear

from perplexed and bewildered children that

remains
in
one's ears, long after the giggler himself

has (lived off the high board or driven away in his

sports car. For this is Trick E. Dixon's state and

these are Trick E. Dixon's people. Here he is not

just the President, here he is a friend and a

neighbor, one of them, a healthy child of the

sunlight, of the beaches and the blue Pacific, a wan

who embodied all the robustness and grandeur of

America's golden state. And now that

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golden child of the Golden West is gone; and

Californians can only giggle to suppress their sobs

and hide their tears. Peter Pious in Los Angeles."

Next, Ike Ironic, in New York City.

"No one ever believed that Trick E. Dixon was

beloved in New York City. Yes, he lived here once,

in this fashionable Fifth Avenue apartment building

directly behind me. But few ever considered him a

resident of this city so much as a refugee from

Washington, biding his time to return to public

office. Nor did New Yorkers seem much impressed

when he assumed the powers of the Presidency in

1969. But now he is gone, and all at once the very

deep affection, the love, if you will, for their former

neighbor, is everywhere apparent. Of course, you

have to know New Yorkers to be able to penetrate

the outer shell of cynicism and see the love

beneath. You had to look, but you saw it today,

here in New York: in the seeming boredom and

indifference of a bus driver; in the impatience of a

salesgirl; in the anger over nothing of a taxi driver;

in the weariness of the homebound workers packed

into the subway; in the blank gaze of the drunks

along the Bowery; in the haughtiness of a dowager

refusing to curb her dog on the fashionable Upper

East Side. You had to look, but there it was, love

for Trick E. Dixon .. .

THE ASSASSINATION OF TRICKY
159

Only now he is gone, gone before they could, with

their boredom and indifference and impatience and

anger and exhaustion and blankness and

haughtiness, express to him all they felt so deeply in

their hearts. Yes, the bitter irony is this: he had to

die in a baggie, before New Yorkers could tender

him that hard-won love that would have meant so

much to him. But then it is a day of bitter ironies.

Ike Ironic from grief-stricken and, perhaps, guiltridden

Fifth Avenue in the city of New York, where

he lived like a stranger, but has died like a long-lost

son."

Reports coming in from around the nation

confirm those you have just heard from our correspondents

in Chicago, Los Angeles and New

York, reports of people too stunned or heartbroken

to be able to respond with the conventional tears or

words of sorrow to the news of President Dixon's

assassination. No, the ordinary signs of grief are

clearly not sufficient to express the emotion that

they feel at this hour, and so they pretend for the

time being that it simply has not happened; or they

giggle with embarrassment and disbelief; or they

attempt to hide beneath a gruff exterior, the deep

love for a fallen leader that smolders away within.

And what of the madman who perpetrated this

deed? For that story, we return you to the

headquarters of the FBI in Washington.

"That's right, we're pretty sure now it was a

madman who perpetrated this deed."

"And the Scouts? The knife? The Louisville

Slugger?"

"Oh, we're not ruling out any of the hard

evidence. I'm talking now about the brains behind