“Of course. That’s what friends are for.”
Losing Your Identity
ONE OF THE THINGS people worry about these days is losing their identity. There is something frightening about someone stealing your name and using it to charge everything from bedroom sets to Lexus convertibles.
This is how it is done. You order a camera and give your credit card number to a clerk. Someone in the store steals the number and sells it to a gang of Russian thieves in Los Angeles. They, in turn, sell your name to a group of con men in Nigeria, but your identity doesn’t stay in Nigeria long. It is traded to a master of forgery in Marseilles, who trades it to a gang in Buffalo.
Now your identity is in play.
The Buffalo gang works on the telephone. One of the members says he is you and orders a motorcycle, a trip to Tahiti, theater tickets to La Boheme and gifts adding up to thousands of dollars.
He has a post office box in Ottawa in case someone is trying to track him.
When you get your bill, you call your credit card company.
The credit card contact says, “How do we know you’re you?”
You say, “It wasn’t me and you can’t charge me for all the things I didn’t order.”
The contact man says, “You are a victim of identity theft, one of the greatest crimes in plastic history. Why didn’t you tell us at the beginning that someone else was using your name?”
“That is a poor excuse. I didn’t know until I got my statement,” you reply.
“If we issue another card, you have to promise not to tell anyone what the number is.”
“How can I charge anything if I can’t give anyone my number?” you ask.
“You can, but if you use it there is a good chance you could lose your identity again. But not to worry. We will be on the lookout for the person using your card.”
“Well, at least I can get back the real me,” you say.
“Yes and no. Someone may steal the number on your new card and pretend he is the real you.”
“Suppose I get a card in the name of another person so I would have someone else’s identity?”
“The people in Buffalo would soon find out about it and you would be swimming with the fishes.”
“This must be happening all the time. Isn’t there some way you can stop it?”
“People pretending they are other people is one of the oldest scams of the human race, but it has never been more profitable than it is right now. At least your family knows who you are.”
“I’m not so sure. The joker with my card charged a mink coat to my account, and when the bill arrived home my wife wouldn’t believe me that someone else bought the coat for his girlfriend.”
Whose Reality Is It?
TELEVISION KEEPS GETTING BETTER and better. At one point, it was just an entertainment medium, but now it deals with all the problems of our society.
You can find a wife on TV and also a husband. You can get therapy for any difficulty—from depression to bed-wetting.
The network shows feature couples who have committed adultery and daughters who hate their mothers.
If that isn’t enough, there are shows where you can get a divorce and ones that have a judge decide a legal dispute between a claimant and his landlady, or determine if someone got diddled by his car mechanic.
There are child custody shows and programs for people with bulimia.
And there are, of course, reality shows.
Where do the producers get the people who appear on their shows?
We have to assume the people want to air their troubles for their fifteen minutes of fame. Also, it’s cheaper to wash their dirty linen in public.
There are talent agents who book people for these programs.
I sat in the office of Sam Starquest, one of the hottest flesh peddlers in the business.
A secretary came in and asked, “There is a lady outside who was abused by a priest and is willing to talk about it on the air. Do you want to see her?”
“No, I’ve already got too many people abused by priests. They’re very hard to place now.”
The phone rang. Sam, on his end said, “You need two women who hate each other and want to tear out each other’s hair on the Jerry Springer show? I have a pair. One woman accused the other of stealing her husband. They won’t be faking it. Right. I’ll send them over, but have your bodyguards on call in case anything happens.”
The secretary came back in, “Maury Povich is doing a show on incest. What can we offer him?”
Sam said, “Tell him we’ll get back to him. I know a brother and sister who may be willing to talk about it.”
I said, “You’re one busy guy.”
“You better believe it. I am now looking for twenty beautiful girls who want to win a guy who they think is a millionaire. They all have to be beautiful. The theme of the program is how greedy women can be.”
“I like the shows where the judge sternly chews out both the plaintiff and the defendant in the courtroom,” I said.
“TV is overloaded with those kinds of shows. I have a stable of judges in the waiting room.”
The secretary reappeared. “There’s a couple outside who want to get a divorce on the air, and they have a lady with them who committed adultery with the husband.”
Sam said, “I’ll call the divorce court. In the meantime, stick them in separate offices in case they lose their tempers.”
“I can’t think of anything they won’t put on TV,” I said.
Sam replied, “Not as long as it appeals to the 18-to-45-year-old age group.”
The Fight for Duct Tape
I NEVER REALIZED that duct tape would play such an important role in my life.
I was in Weaver’s Hardware Store in Georgetown, and apparently Mr. Weaver knew why I was there. Without saying a word, he pointed to a shelf that said DUCT TAPE.
There was only one roll left, and just as I grabbed it a lady tried to wrestle it out of my hands.
“It’s mine,” she said. “I need it for homeland security.”
“So do I. I need four gallons of water, a flashlight, and duct tape. There is only so much duct tape to go around, and it is allotted by your value to the country, in case we are attacked.”
I then asked, “What does your husband do?”
“He’s a lawyer,” she said.
“He’s way down on the food chain. In time of war, lawyers don’t count for much.”
This made her angry, and she continued to fight for the tape.
Finally Mr. Weaver came over and said, “What’s going on?”
I said, “I saw the duct tape first, and she’s trying to grab it from me. Besides, her husband is a lawyer and I’m a newspaperman. Who gets the duct tape first?”
Weaver said: “I prefer not to get into that. I expect to get more tape in on Thursday. Can’t one of you wait until then?”
“Suppose there’s an attack tomorrow?” I said. “I won’t have anything to cover the cracks in the doors and the windows.”
A customer watching all this said, “You shouldn’t panic. I remember during the Cuban missile crisis we were all told to build bomb shelters in our back yards. I put $50,000 into mine. We had Persian carpets, leather chairs, running water, a radio scanner and the complete recordings of Frank Sinatra.
“The real problem was that my wife and kids started to brag about it and pretty soon everyone in the neighborhood knew about our shelter. The people around us decided that as long as we had such a nice bunker there was no reason for them to build theirs.
“During one scare, a dozen people showed up. When I wouldn’t let them in, they started banging pots and pans. I brought out my shotgun and said I was going to shoot them. Fortunately the crisis was called off.
“I tell you this story because Americans act differently when the heat is on. This time it’s a duct tape shortage. The next time it could be Aunt Jemima’s pancake flour.”
After hearing this story, I was ashamed of myself. I
said to the lady, “Do you want the tape? We’re going to need lawyers after the fighting stops.”
“No,” she said. “We are going to need newspapermen more than lawyers to tell us what mistakes we made. Here, take the tape.”
The man who told us about his bomb shelter said, “If either of you don’t want the duct tape, I’ll take it.”
I said, “I thought you didn’t believe in civil defense anymore.”
He replied, “Better safe than sorry.”
Mr. Weaver said, “You have to pay cash for the tape. I am not accepting any charges in case the balloon goes up.”
Yelling at the TV
CROMWELL IS MY FAVORITE inventor. He is the one who came up with the idea to put people on hold for twenty minutes and then cut them off before they get to speak to their party. The airline reservation people called him a modern-day Alexander Graham Bell.
So when he called me up the other day and told me to come over, I knew I would become a part of history.
Cromwell was in the cellar working on a large TV set.
“What do you think?”
“I think it is a nice television set.”
“But this one is different. You can yell back at it.”
“Wow. I’ve never seen a TV set that you could yell at.”
“People have been dreaming of something like this for years. But no one knew how to do it. I came up with the idea to have two woofers, a digital receiver and an inverted thingamajig, which you don’t plug into a wall. Who do you want to yell at?”
“How about Joe Millionaire?”
Cromwell hit his clicker. “Go,” he said.
I screamed: “You may be a hunk, but you are a lying, cheating impersonator. And just because you chose a girl doesn’t mean you’re not going to lie and cheat and break her heart! Go away! I never want to see your face on TV again.”
Evan Marriott, aka Joe Millionaire, didn’t know where my voice was coming from, and later on I heard that the producers fired four technicians, because they had to blame somebody.
“Not bad,” Cromwell said. “But if you’re going to yell at reality shows, you have to get more vitriol in your voice. Which of the talking heads have you ever wanted to yell at?”
“That’s a long list. I have always wanted to yell at Bill O’Reilly and, of course, Robert Novak, Don Imus, John McLaughlin, Chris Matthews and Rush Limbaugh, for starters.”
“Well, my invention makes it possible to scream at them as much as they scream at you. Have you ever wanted to yell back at politicians?”
“Of course. Doesn’t everybody?”
“Have you ever tried to yell at President Bush?”
“Yes, but so that people don’t think I only yell at Republican presidents, I have always wanted to talk back to President Clinton, the first Bush, Reagan and Jimmy Carter.”
Henry Kissinger came on CNN with the Capital Gang.
Cromwell said: “That is a tape of the show. Do you want to practice yelling at Kissinger?”
I said, “I’ve been yelling at him on the TV set for twenty years. It hasn’t done any good.”
“Now you can yell back at him for real if he decides to bomb Cambodia again.”
“Cromwell, you are going to change the viewing habits of every American. You are also making it possible for people to let the steam out so they don’t have to yell at their spouses and children anymore.”
“Would you like to yell at Michael Jackson?”
I told him honestly, “I wouldn’t waste my breath.”
The Tip of the Iceberg
PRESIDENT BUSH keeps referring to the discovery of Iraq’s missiles as “the tip of the iceberg.”
There are some, not many, who feel that if weapons are the tip of the iceberg, then Mr. Bush is captain of the Titanic.
Let us suppose it is so. The captain speaks. “Mr. Rumsfeld, stay on course, straight ahead.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Mr. Ashcroft, in the crow’s-nest, rings his bell and says, “Hard rudder right. Iceberg straight ahead.”
The captain says, “Full speed astern!”
A passenger and large donor to the captain’s steering campaign asks, “What have we struck?”
“An iceberg, but don’t worry. My father ran into them in these waters all the time. Alert damage control. If there is an inquiry, we will testify we only saw the tip of the iceberg.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Mr. Rumsfeld says. “I tried to steer around it, but it was too late.”
The captain says, “Close all the watertight doors and don’t let the passengers know that anything is wrong.”
Chunks of ice are flying all over the deck.
The captain orders Mr. Powell to go below to see how much damage there is. He reports the ship is taking on water, but the damage can be repaired.
Quartermaster George Tenet reports to the bridge that his crew will go along with the captain’s tip-of-the-iceberg story, but they are still worried there could be a large gash in the hull.
Mr. Rumsfeld gets on the loudspeaker and says, “Attention, passengers, we are prepared to run into any iceberg any time, anywhere, before it runs into us.”
Mr. Ashcroft says, “I have a thousand people in the brig. What should I do with them?”
The captain says, “Keep them there. They may have information on icebergs that we don’t have. Mr. Powell, are there any foreign ships in the area?”
Mr. Powell responds, “A French freighter, a German tanker, a Russian tugboat and a Chinese junk, but none of them will acknowledge our SOS. The only one responding is a British destroyer.”
The captain says, “Keep trying. Maybe the Bulgarian navy will answer our call.”
Mr. Rumsfeld, how are we fixed for lifeboats?”
“We have the most modern lifeboats in the world, as well as the most powerful flares. I have assured the passengers that if we don’t destroy the iceberg now, we will have to destroy it later.”
The captain asks, “Where is Mr. Cheney?”
“We don’t know, sir. He is hiding on the boat somewhere, but he has been ordered not to go near the bridge in case something happens to you.”
The captain says, “How much water are we taking in now?”
“So far the only complaints I’ve gotten are from the first-class passengers, who hope to get a rebate in case the ship goes down.”
The captain says, “Lower the lifeboats.”
“Yes, sir.”
His order could not come at a better time. The orchestra starts playing “Nearer My God to Thee.”
The War Over Abstinence
LONG BEFORE IRAQ, there was AIDS. President Bush declared war on AIDS, but now it’s on the back burner. Long after Iraq is gone, AIDS will still be with us.
In the past, Bush has said that his government would not finance contraceptives for any foreign country. Federal money could not be spent for anything that would contribute to family planning or birth control.
The president was backing up the conservatives and the Christian right, who don’t want their tax money used to encourage sex of any kind.
The main solution the right has for avoiding pregnancy is abstinence. And “Just Say No” is the only way to avoid getting AIDS, according to them.
Everyone knows that I have a reputation for abstinence, and all the women I know think the same way. When I asked them why, they said, “Our president is for abstinence and so is 84 percent of the Bush White House. That’s up from 56 percent under Clinton.”
When I asked all my lady friends why they are against sex, they replied, “Get your hands off me.”
I talked to someone at the White House after Bush’s announcement.
“Is the president still against issuing condoms to the world?”
“He still believes people should control their sex drives. That’s the Christian way.”
“But in some African countries, making love is the only indoor sport they have. If we are going to give them American movies, why can�
�t we also supply them with contraceptives?”
“When you give them contraceptives, you are playing into the hands of Planned Parenthood, the sworn enemy of the Right.”
“President Bush said in his State of the Union speech in January that he is going to give $10 billion to fight AIDS. How is he going to do it?”
“No one knows. He wants to fight HIV, but he doesn’t want people to think he encourages promiscuity.”
“The president is tough on the World Health Organization when it comes to family planning and condom use for AIDS prevention. U.S. delegates at an international conference in Bangkok even requested the deletion of a recommendation for ‘consistent condom use’ to combat HIV and sexually transmitted diseases.
“Why is the conservative Right so dead set against condoms?”
“Because it’s a religion with them. Using any contraceptive to prevent babies is a sin. The president is much too busy to think about contraceptives. He’ll leave that to his FDA adviser, W. David Hager, who leads the antiabortion faction in the administration.”
“Will the military in the Middle East be issued prophylactics to protect themselves?”
“No, they are not there to make love, they’re there to make war.”
Bumper Stickers
THE LATEST WAY TO PROTEST the war is by e-mail. The advantages are that you don’t have to go out into the cold, you won’t go hoarse yelling, and you don’t have to lie on the sidewalk. When you protest the White House by e-mail, you don’t have to get a permit.
E-mail can also be used for counter-protests, which the president can read out loud when he is giving a speech.
Here are some samples of protest by computer:
“Hell no, we won’t go!”
“How many people do you have to kill in Iraq to save it?”
“I didn’t vote for you, cowboy.”
“Go back to Crawford in 2004.”
Here are some pro-war e-mails:
“Right on, Mr. Bush! We didn’t elect Martin Sheen president of the United States.”
“Saddam Hussein should be six feet under.”
Beating Around the Bush Page 6
