Around Washington, anyway, black helicopters almost always fly around in pairs. Rarely, I have seen one, and even less commonly, three of them at once. Therefore, I must confess, when strolling down K Street early this afternoon, I was astounded to see more than dozen of them, flying west-south-west, no more than five hundred feet above the ground. So yes, I admit it, I gawked up in the sky at them instead of watching where I was going.
My key mistake, however, was not rubbernecking at what must be twenty percent of our Government’s black helicopters roaring overhead, but rather, failing to stop strolling down K Street as I watched. That’s why I tripped over the gentleman lying on the sidewalk, near the end of the alley next to Legal Sea Food.
As I got up off the pavement, I looked him over, and noticed how well-dressed he was: Prada loafers, Armani suit, Hermes tie – had he been mugged? No, I concluded, not likely, because he was wearing a platinum Rolex that any mugger worth his lead pipe would have taken. Heart attack?
I leaned down and took his pulse – normal, if a bit slow. Then I noticed his breath and realized exactly what this fellow’s problem with verticality was – he stank with an aroma that, I imagine, would have been what the gutter outside the 21 Club would have smelled like, had Eliot Ness and his cronies ever managed to confiscate their top shelf liquor and make, as they so dearly desired, a grand and public example of the place. Dead drunk, that’s what this guy was, and not from a single drop of anything cheap, either. That, at least, was consistent with his fashion sense.
Now, I’m no saint, and I have been like that myself, but, Lord Almighty, that was when I was nineteen. My new acquaintance was obviously much older than that, and presumably should have known better than to end up in such a sorry condition.
“Wha?” His eyelids fluttered as I picked him up, then maneuvered him into a sitting position, propped up against the wall of a nearby building.
At first, the phrase “Are you okay?” leaped into my mind, but, obviously, that was not quite right. “Are you injured?” I asked instead.
He turned his head, looking himself over, trying his arm joints, wiggling his fingers. “Nah, nah, I’m fine,” he assured me with a string of wet and slurred syllables.
“Pardon me for inquiring,” I continued, “but what on earth drove you to get so ridiculously snockered?”
“[Expletive] Fannie…” he mumbled, waving his right hand in a dismissive arc at the passing traffic.
“Fannie?”
“[Expletive] Freddie…” he blurted out vehemently.
“Your girlfriend Fannie ran off with a guy named Freddie?”
“No! No,” he protested, “Fannie Mae! Freddie Mac!”
“Oh them,” I nodded, “yeah. You’re a stock holder?”
“No! No!” He stared up at me with bloodshot eyes. “I’m a lobbyist!”
Suddenly, he turned a slight but quite genuine shade of green, pitched his head between his knees and tossed a huge fan of vomit all over the sidewalk in front of him. “That is…” he confessed, as tears ran down his cheeks, “I was a lobbyist.”
“Oh, oh, yeah,” I realized, “you’re one of the lobbyists that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can’t hire anymore.”
“Tha’s righ…” he sighed, dejectedly, “New… hic… new [expletive] law. Those [expletive] sucking… hic… CEO’s get twenty [expletive] million dollar… hic.. golden parachutes, and I’m… hic… totally [expletive].”
“Gee whiz,” I commented, “I guess I should have known. Judging by the way you’re dressed, you either had to be a lobbyist or a pimp for Ivy League male prostitutes.”
“Wha’s… hic… th’ difference?” he demanded.
“Oh, well,” I explained, “gay Ivy League pimps have vastly more integrity, of course – no offense.”
“None taken,” he moaned, holding his head with both hands.
“But see here, good sir,” I admonished, “what folly is greater than that of those who fall upon the thorns of life and bleed? To thrive inside the Beltway, my good man, one must be made of considerably sterner stuff. What about your other clients? I bet they wouldn’t want to see you like this!”
“Didn’t… hic… didn’t have any other clients,” he wailed softly. “And now, nobody else wants me.”
“Oh, come, come now,” I gently chided, “are you telling me that there aren’t plenty of trade associations, special interest groups, religious organizations, commodity cartels, foreign governments, financial consortiums and covert political organizations in this town that would love to have someone like you plying the American people’s duly elected federal representatives with campaign contributions, off-the-books junkets, cosy real estate deals, absurdly profitable inside business deals, handsome, vigorous whores, primo drugs, top-shelf liquor, insanely expensive entertainment, incredibly priced gourmet meals, attache cases full of precious metals and suitcases stuffed with cold, hard cash?”
“Not me,” he muttered, “not anymore. I lobbied for Freddie and Fannie, and the word is out – don’t hire those people – they’re bad luck. Damn it,” he spat, “those [expletive] all think we’re jinxed!”
“Jinxed?”
“Well,” he grumbled, “that’s what I figure.”
“Might it be, instead,” I suggested, “that they are blaming you for the results of your work?”
“What results?”
“Oh, you know,” I related dryly, “keeping Congress and the Executive away from the mortgage industry for all those years.”
“Hell,” he protested, “that’s what the executives at Fannie and Freddie wanted – they wanted us to keep the government off the back of free enterprise.”
“You don’t really expect me to accept,” I shot back, “the idea that Fannie and Freddie are credible examples of free enterprise, do you?”
“Why not?”
“Because they aren’t,” I explained. “They never have been.”
“Huh?”
“Look,” I went on, “maybe they appeared to be something like free enterprise organizations, because they sold stock, had a board of directors and a CEO…”
“Stinking [expletive] eating [expletive] CEOs!”
“Let the odor and diet of the former chief executive officers of the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation be whatever they may. Smelling like you do, sir, and what with your having obviously subsisted off a diet of nothing but flammable liquids lately, I would venture to say that you are in no position to criticize them. Neither institution has, or ever has had, anything to do with free enterprise! Both of them are sponsored by the United States government, and, now that you and your fellow lobbyists have done such a crackerjack job of perverting Congressional and Executive oversight of their activities, our entire economy is in the toilet!”
“They told me,” he whimpered, “plenty of times, ‘just keep Congress and the federal auditors where they belong, and let us do our jobs,’ that’s all they ever asked.”
“What?” I demanded. “Was it their job to promote behavior that reamed the bond markets, crashed the equities markets and ruined the dollar?”
“Ah, [expletive],” he complained, “they never put it like that, okay?”
“And you never bothered to examine what your client was doing?”
“Look, buddy,” he dissembled, “there’s no way a lobbyist can make it in this town if he questions his clients’ motives or actions.”
“But you should be aware of what they are, don’t you think?”
“Why?”
“What do you mean,” I queried in a beseeching tone, lightly seasoned with a few pinches of sarcasm and a quarter teaspoon of irony, “that you, by some chance, profited by ignoring the fact that your clients’ strategic plans were going to ruin them? That they would totally screw up mortgage finance, national economics, international debt markets, foreign exchange and global equities?”
“I didn’t know anything about… “ he paused, trying to gather his clouded thoughts. “About… mortgages, economics, debt markets… whatever. I’m a lobbyist. I go to the marks… I mean, the people in Congress, and the Executive Branch, and I make nice-nice, I spout the spiel Fannie or Freddie gave me to memorize, I answer any objections with the prepared talking points… you know… then, I find out what it is they want that they can’t get, or not getting enough of, anyhow, and I see that they get some of it, or more of it… hic… all right?”
“But don’t you see?” I pointed out. “You needed to conduct some sort of de minimis ethical assessment – not for their sake, but in order to save your own miserable hide!”
“I’m sorry,” he flatly spoke, “but ethics and lobbying don’t mix – not even… hic… a little bit. Everybody knows that. Look at the other lobbyists here in Washington. Do you see them worrying about the ethics of the National Rifle Association, the Tobacco Institute or the United States Chamber of Commerce?”
“But those organizations only represent continuing, senseless slaughter; the promulgation of rampant, needless disease for corporate profit; and naked, unprincipled exploitation of impoverished labor,” I replied, “not the American real estate industry!”
“Which is what – much more evil than all that other [expletive]?”
“No,” I elaborated, “which had the potential for something much, much more evil than all those things combined – the total collapse of the United States economy!”
“And I…” he choked, “You’re… hic… saying I… hic…”
“And the other lobbyists like you,” I clarified, “yes, all of you…”
“We are to blame?”
“Hey,” I pointed out, “didn’t you just get through telling me that everybody’s doing just that?”
His face went ashen as his foggy brain slowly grasped my point.
“So… hic… I… hic… deserve to…”
“What’s wrong with him?”
I looked up to see one of DC’s Finest, peering down at the hapless, unemployable former lobbyist. The cop picked him up, performed a quick visual survey, and spoke authoritatively. “Sir, you’re under arrest for public intoxication. Come with me, please.”
With that, the cop started to drag the poor fellow toward a waiting police cruiser.
“You don’t understand,” the drunk protested, “I was a lobbyist for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac!”
With that, he pointed his right index finder at his temple.
“Don’t arrest me! [Expletive] shoot me!”
“Sir,” the cop brusquely informed him, “if I weren’t absolutely sure that would cost me my job, I would.”