Anyone Got a Match?

by Max Shulman

  The second hand on the wall clock approached the figure 10. Ira’s practiced glance made a rapid circuit of the stage: everything in order. The sets were lit; cameras and booms were on their marks; performers were stationed where they belonged. Clendenon sat in the control booth, and along with him, safely out of the way, sat a gathering of important personages.

  A small red light beneath the lens of Camera No. 1 flashed red; simultaneously, the assistant director cued Ira with an outthrust forefinger.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” said Ira, speaking directly into the camera. “Tonight, live from the campus of Acanthus College, we are going to take a very hard look at a very controversial question: have we Americans gotten to be the biggest, strongest, healthiest people on earth because of the food we eat—and many say we have; or are we slowly, bit by bit, day by day, digging our graves with our knives and forks—and many say we are.… My name is Ira Shapian. In exactly sixty seconds we will begin our investigation.”

  At this point the first commercial took over the screen. Muscular young men and busty young women cavorted strenuously on a seashore, all the time smiling strenuously, all the time strenuously singing the Tatum Cigarette jingle. During these jolly antics, Camera No. 2 rolled silently into place about five feet to the side of Camera No. 1. As the commercial ended, Camera No. 1 flashed red and Ira was cued to resume.

  “A lot of people,” said Ira to Camera No. 1, “will wonder why we picked Acanthus College to conduct an inquiry as complex as the one we are carrying on tonight. You don’t automatically think of Acanthus when you think of scholarship; at least, you didn’t in previous years. There used to be another word, not scholarship, that came more quickly to mind when Acanthus was mentioned. The man sitting across from me knows more about it than anybody.”

  The red light switched on beneath the lens of Camera No. 2. Seated on a stool near Ira was a large, wide, lugubrious, slack-jawed man, wearing a collar one size too big and blinking porcinely into the camera.

  “Your name, sir?” said Ira.

  “Nineteen Meyers. Edward Plenart Meyers, actually, but they used to call me Nineteen on account of that was my collar size. No more though. I doubt if my neck is even eighteen now. Everything’s gone to hell.”

  “I understand football has been dropped at Acanthus.”

  “And a good thing. You see them specimens walking around campus? They couldn’t beat a deef and dumb school.”

  “How was it when you were coach, Mr. Meyers?”

  A nostalgic smile lifted the corners of Nineteen’s pendulous lips. “I had material, friend. Wasn’t a kid in the whole school couldn’t lift five hundred pounds. Fact is, some of ’em weighed pretty near that. You know, mister, we never lost one single game all the time I was coaching?”

  “I do. I also know the Association of American Universities said Acanthus scored the lowest average student I.Q. in all history.”

  “Can’t have everything,” shrugged Nineteen.

  “Also the lowest average faculty I.Q.,” added Ira.

  “They was good old guys,” said Nineteen loyally.

  “But gone now?”

  “Teachers gone, students gone—all gone. New bunch now—mess of students with arms like twigs, passel of bald-head profs with vests.”

  “Who rank—again I quote the Association of American Universities—among the first five in the nation, both in student and faculty intelligence. As an old Acanthus man, Mr. Meyers, don’t you take any pride at all in the fantastic intellectual jump that’s been made here?”

  “Some,” admitted Nineteen. “Seems like every college you can name has got a hard-on for education lately. Well, if that’s the way it is, I suppose you might’s well be on top of the dunghill like we are.… Sure, I’m proud of Acanthus—except on them afternoons in October and November when I can still hear them big old boys slamming off-tackle—thud! crunch! bang!—six yards, eight yards, sometimes all the way! And them silly, happy kids standing in the end zone just flinging the ball up in the air with pure joy while the stretchers came out to pick up the defensive linemen.… Call me sentimental, but I got to be honest: I miss it!”

  Nineteen took out a bandanna and blew his nose loudly.

  “Off-tackle plays were kind of your specialty, weren’t they?” asked Ira.

  “Had to be,” replied Nineteen. “My boys couldn’t remember hardly nothing else.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Meyers, for a colorful picture of Acanthus as it used to be. We switch you now to a round table discussion between Virgil Tatum, president of the college, and some of the new department heads.”

  “Do I have to watch?” said Nineteen.

  “Not if you don’t want to.”

  “I sure-God don’t.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Meyers. Take it, Virgil Tatum.”

  Three new cameras went to work in another set, a grouping that consisted of a low oval table and a dozen comfortable swivel chairs. Virgil Tatum sat at the head of the table. Around him, all drinking coffee, most puffing pipes, were the heads of the various departments. (The only department head absent was Linden-Evarts of cultural anthropology.) Virgil moderated the conversation with easy firmness. He let each man trot out his erudition, but briefly and without abstruseness. He leavened the talk with wit; he scotched obscure words and precious phrases immediately they were uttered.

  Ira stood and admired Virgil’s skill for several seconds. Then suddenly Ira could not stay. The sight of Virgil abruptly, without warning, released a flood of murderous rage—a compulsion, almost maniacal, to run, howling, onto the set and strangle, on camera, with all America watching, the man who had made him a cuckold.

  With a huge effort of will, Ira tore himself away from the set. He would figure out what to do about Virgil later; right now there was more pressing business. He walked to the control booth, ramming down his temper with each step. Calmly he opened the door and entered.

  A double row of easy chairs was in the rear of the booth. Here sat important personages—Clendennon, Robert E. Lee Owens, William Ransom Owens, Dr. Andrew McAndrews, brass from the ad agency—comfortably viewing the show on the monitors above the control panel. But the most important of all the personages present, Jefferson Tatum, was not sitting, not viewing comfortably. He was on his feet, pacing and purpling the air with profanity. He descended on Ira like a Mongol horseman.

  “Goddammit, Shapian, I’m paying a jillion dollars for a show about food poisons. Who gave you license to do all this crap about art, science, and the learned disciplines—whatever the hell they are!”

  “Now, now, Mr. Tatum,” said Clendennon, smiling whitely.

  “Shut up, you New York pimp!” snarled Jefferson.

  “Pimp?” said Ira, tilting his head thoughtfully toward Clendennon. “No, Tatum, I don’t believe pimp has quite got it. To my way of thinking, he looks more like the leading man in a stag movie.”

  “Jokes!” yelled Jefferson, outraged to the point of disbelief. “Jokes! I’m going bankrupt and he tells jokes! Shapian, you shitepoke, when you going to start doing what I’m paying for?”

  “Depends on how soon you start being polite,” answered Ira, staring hard at the old man.

  Clendennon quaked. Jefferson gathered himself for a major explosion, then saw the steeliness in Ira’s eyes and quieted at once. “Yes, sir,” he said meekly.

  “I’m giving Virgil ninety seconds more,” said Ira. “Then comes a commercial. After that Dr. Silenko goes on.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Jefferson. “That sounds real nice.”

  “Dr. McAndrews?” called Ira.

  “Yes, young man,” answered McAndrews from the rear row.

  “When Dr. Silenko finishes, there will be another commercial, then a station break, and then another commercial. I’ll come fetch you while all that is going on.”

  “Excellent.”

  Ira left and walked quickly to Dr. Silenko’s set. There stood three tables, each bearing cages of lab animals and racks
of equipment. Dr. Silenko, handsome in a crisp smock and her tv makeup, was at the center table. Flanking her, at the other tables, were several colleagues. Cameras covered the set from three different angles.

  “Good evening, Doctor,” said Ira. “Fine makeup job they did on you.”

  “Oh, splendid,” she said. “I’m wearing enough arsenic on each cheek to destroy a middle-sized city.”

  “It’ll wash,” Ira assured her. “Did you get all your experiments completed?”

  “Just barely. In fact, the final report arrived less than a minute ago. And it’s a beauty! Listen, Shapian, you couldn’t by chance give me a few extra seconds tonight, could you?”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, of course not,” she said bitterly. “After all, the poison industry deserves equal time to rebut. That’s the American way, isn’t it?”

  “Please, Doctor,” said Ira, “you’re on in a few seconds. I haven’t bothered you with rehearsals because I know how frantic things have been at the labs. So now, very quickly, let me tell you how it goes. When I cue you to go on the air, feel free to say whatever you like. If you want to move, the cameras will follow you. When I hold up one finger, it means you’ve got one minute left. When I cross fingers like this, it means you’ve got a half-minute. When I do this—” he made a throat-cutting gesture—“you’re off the air. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Dr. McAndrews will follow you with his rebuttal. Then comes a commercial. Then, to finish the show, I want you and McAndrews face-to-face while I ask a couple of questions. Clear?”

  “Perfectly.”

  The assistant director whispered in Ira’s ear. Ira nodded.

  “I’ll introduce you in just five seconds,” he said to Dr. Silenko. “You take it from there.”

  The camera nearest Ira blinked red and the assistant cued him to start. “This,” said Ira into the camera, “is a program about the possible dangers in the food we eat. So far we haven’t mentioned food because first we wanted you to know the people who teach at this college are out of the very top drawer in the academic world. We’re not asking you to accept opinions from any second-raters. The Acanthus faculty would do credit to any university anywhere, and I want particularly to include Dr. Clara Silenko, M.D. and Ph.D. She is director of Acanthus’s School of Nutrition and Public Health. Her professional reputation is immense; her opinions about the American food industry are violent. Dr. Silenko, you’re on.”

  “Thank you,” she said. Her manner was crisp and level, not so much fervent as positive beyond the possibility of refutation. “I’m here to tell you flatly—and I proposed to prove it—that the American food industry, mad for profits, and the federal government, afflicted with incompetence, laziness, venality, and insufficient funds—possibly all four—are engaged in a giant conspiracy to poison you and your neighbors.… A large accusation? Well, let’s see. Dr. Nylet, step over here please.”

  A thin, bespectacled, balding man of forty, dressed in a white smock, joined Dr. Silenko. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Dr. Nylet is a member of my staff,” explained Dr. Silenko. “What did you do before you came to work here?”

  “Well, first I spent two years at Northwestern getting a Ph.D. in biochemistry. Before that I was an inspector with FDA.”

  “Tell us what FDA is.”

  “The Food and Drug Administration. A federal agency, part of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.”

  “Its duties?”

  “To inspect all foods and drugs used by the public and reject those that are dangerous to health.”

  “Admirable. Now, Dr. Nylet, how did you happen to go to work for FDA?”

  “Well, actually, I wasn’t a doctor then. I had a B.S. in chemistry, and my grades weren’t good enough for a scholarship, and I didn’t have enough cash to go ahead on my own. I needed a job real bad, and, to be honest, there wasn’t anyone much interested in a foul ball like me—except FDA. Man, how they wooed me! You’d of thought I was Robert Oppenheimer or somebody! Well, anyhow, with nobody else bidding, I finally joined FDA as a food inspector for $4,525 a year.”

  “After you became a member of FDA,” asked Dr. Silenko, “how often, on the average, did you inspect a typical food processing plant?”

  “You’re talking about an ordinary company with a good record? Not somebody who was always in trouble with the law?”

  “Yes. A standard, reputable food processor, a firm whose label people automatically trusted. How often did you inspect such a plant?”

  “On the average,” said Nylet, “I’d drop in for a day about once every two years.”

  “And you’d open a few cases at random, and unless you actually found the food stinking with ptomaine or crawling with vermin, you’d give them a clean bill and stay away for another two years?”

  “Look, Doctor,” said Nylet pleadingly, “I didn’t like it any better than you, but there just wasn’t time to do any more. Most of my days were spent in the FDA labs checking the thousands of new food additives that the processors kept sending in for approval.”

  “Ah, yes, approval. Under the law, no additive can be used without FDA approval. What tests, Dr. Nylet, determined whether you granted or withheld approval?”

  “Well, we’d try the stuff on lab animals, and if they didn’t die, we passed it.”

  “So,” said Dr. Silenko, “the criterion was, in fact, that the new additive did not have to be beneficial to humans; it had only to be nonpoisonous to rats.”

  “Correct,” said Dr. Nylet. “And I wish you wouldn’t glare at me. I did quit FDA, you know. I did go back to school and wait on table for two years until I learned some chemistry. I did end up smart enough to get a job with you.”

  “Sorry, Doctor,” she said contritely. “I am filled with admiration for your courage and your talent, and I’m proud to have you aboard.”

  “Thank you,” he said, mollified.

  “You’re welcome. Let’s talk a bit more about food additives. Every day, you say, a flood of applications would come in from food companies asking FDA to approve some new additives. Had any research been done on the additives before FDA received them?”

  “Oh, yes. We always got long reports on each additive from some independent lab.”

  “And who paid for these long reports?”

  “The food companies.”

  “Very reassuring … Don’t pout, Dr. Nylet. I am not glaring at you. I am simply wondering whether FDA accepted these outside reports or whether you ran some tests of your own.”

  “Well, we ran some tests, but, of course, we didn’t have too many people and, more important, we didn’t have too much time.”

  “How much time?”

  “The law says we have to complete our tests in 180 days or else the product is automatically approved for market.”

  “This is the law passed by Congress and signed on September 6, 1958, by President Eisenhower with the full concurrence of the Food and Drug Administration?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “In the brief period of 180 days, what kind of tests can you run?”

  “Just experiments to find out how poisonous the stuff is.”

  “No tests for cancer?”

  “Oh, come now, Dr. Silenko. You know cancer tests usually take years. FDA doesn’t have the staff or the money or the equipment, and besides, the law says 180 days is all you get.”

  “One final question, Dr. Nylet. Since you left FDA, have you kept in touch with any of your friends? Have you heard of any recent laws or regulations that would protect the American consumer more effectively?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I have kept in touch, and no, ma’am, there have been no new laws or regulations whatsoever.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Nylet … Will the cameras please follow me to the table on my right?”

  With the cameras in accurate pursuit, Dr. Silenko moved to the next table, where a pair of identical jars with large, uncapped mouths lay side by side. One jar was partia
lly filled with coarse dark flour; the other jar was completely filled with snowy white flour, so completely filled that some of it was spilling out of the open mouth.

  “The largest single item of foodstuff sold in America,” said Dr. Silenko, “is white bread. In order to make white bread white—I speak now of common commercial-grade white bread, not of French, Italian, or other crusty breads—the flour must first be chemically emulsified, oxidized, hydrogenated, neutralized, stabilized, and, most significant, bleached with chlorine dioxide. I have just this evening completed an experiment, and I would like to show you the results. Several weeks ago I laid these two jars down in a room in my laboratory. The jars were not covered. One jar was filled with ordinary bleached white flour. The other jar was filled with unprocessed natural whole wheat flour. Please observe.”

  She took a scoop, dipped into the jar of white flour. The camera moved in close as she sifted the flour slowly through her hand. Not a bug, not a dropping, not a speck of filth, marked the whiteness of the flour.

  “Now,” said Dr. Silenko, “let me apologize in advance to the squeamish, but watch this.”

  She took a scoopful of the dark flour and sifted it slowly through her fingers. The flour was riddled with roaches, beetles, ants, and vermin.

  “Not an appetizing demonstration, but a revealing one. The bugs had precisely the same access to the bleached flour as to the whole wheat flour. They ignored the white flour and concentrated totally on the whole wheat. Why? Because, my friends, in order to prepare the kind of flour that makes our ordinary daily bread you first have to strip away all the nourishment. It pains me to say it, but sometimes bugs have more sense than people.”