Rahm Emanuel sent James River Rice, one of his top flunkies, over to see me today. Mr. Rice nervously proffered a thumb drive as he sat down next to me at my desk and gestured anxiously at the computer monitor.
“Go ahead,” he prompted, “put this in and listen to the sound file.”
“No problem,” I assured him, slipping the drive’s connector into a USB port. “What sort of sounds are on it?”
“You know, I’m sure,” he explained as the Real Player splash screen appeared, “how Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times blind-sided the President at his press conference on July twenty-second?”
“Oh sure,” I affirmed. “She drew him out with a question about the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and he went right for the bait, swallowing the hook, line and sinker, to boot. Now, instead of health care, all the press can talk about is what President Obama said when he answered that question.”
“What’s worse,” Rice wailed, “the Republicans are saying that if they can sink Obama on health care, they’ve destroyed him, so now, they’re out for blood, salivating as their lobbyists tear the President’s health care bill to shreds; and all the while, the press ignores it – all because of this stupid business with Gates and that Cambridge Police sergeant! We did our best to stay cool about the situation, waiting for it to blow over, so the White House could focus on affordable health care for all Americans again, but this damn story just wouldn’t go away! So we brainstormed all night, and came up with the idea of inviting Gates and Crowley to the White House for a beer with the President. And when they both accepted, and we announced their visit, which is going down Thursday night, by the way, we thought we finally had this issue licked! But then, we got this!”
“Which is what?” I inquired, my finger poised above my left mouse button.
“A recording of the conversation between Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley,” Rice moaned, “recorded by some geek from MIT who lives across the street, using a long-range parabolic dish microphone.”
With that, my finger fell on the mouse button and the audio file began to play.
First Voice: Hey, you! Cambridge Police! Freeze!
Second Voice: What the [expletive] you talkin’ about? I don’t have to freeze for nobody when I’m standin’ in my own God damned house!
First Voice: What are you doing in there?
Second Voice: Get that [expletive] light out my eyes, you dumb cracker – it’s daytime! What the [expletive] you tryin’ to do, [expletive] blind me? Can’t you [expletive] see I’m already disabled, you idiot white-[expletive] pig?
First Voice: Step outside!
Second Voice: Why? Because I’m a black man in America? Is that why I got to step out of my own [expletive] house when some Howdy-Doody-lookin’ shanty Irish cop tells me to?
First Voice: I said, step outside! I need to speak with you!
Second Voice: I be steppin’ outside to speak with yo’ momma down on her knees for two [expletive] raggedy-[expletive] dollars, you bog-trottin,’ slope-headed, fetal alcohol syndrome South Boston white-trash piece of Gaelic [expletive]!
First Voice: Listen, you drooling old porch monkey, I’m all out of [expletive] bananas, okay? So you’re gonna have to step out here without me giving you one! Now!
Second Voice: Chuck you, Farley! You know who you be messin’ with, huh?
First Voice: Looks like Magilla Gorilla on angel dust from here, Ubangi lips! How’d you like a taser stuck in your fat black [expletive]? Step outside!
Second Voice: You’re dealing with the first African American to receive the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, a Distinguished Jefferson Lecturer to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Harvard University Alphonse Fletcher Professor of Letters, and Director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African-American Research, that’s who, you nose-pickin’, Guinness-swillin’, semi-literate, freckle-[expletive], stiff-leg clog dancin’, shillelagh-swingin’ melanoma farm! I just got back from [expletive] China, you no-account Paddy-whacker! I was hosting a documentary for PBS about the ancestry of Yo-Yo Ma! I bet you couldn’t even find China on a [expletive] map, you pathetic, ignorant honky [expletive], much less tell me who the [expletive] Yo-Yo Ma is! And oh yeah, did I forget to mention, I’m personal friends with the President of the [expletive] United [expletive] States of [expletive] America? What do you think of that, [expletive] Fearless Fosdick? Huh? You wanna mess with the man [expletive] Micheal Kinsley called “America’s foremost black scholar?”
First Voice: Right now, mister, all you look like to me is America’s foremost inflamed pickaninny! The gentleman says he resides here, but uncooperative; keep the cars coming.
Second Voice: Well, well, [expletive] listen at that [expletive]! What’s the matter, Pillsbury Dough Boy? I scare you? You need some [expletive] backup? Does an angry black man frighten you so much, you about to [expletive] in them big, baggy policeman’s pants? Hey! Back off, whitey! What the [expletive] you think you’re [expletive] doin’? Get the [expletive] out my [expletive] house, you [expletive] sweaty pink pig! Hello? Cambridge Police? This is Professor Gates of Harvard University, and I have one of your officers here in my home with no warrant, behaving in a racist manner, and want you to get me the chief! Yeah, the chief of police, who the [expletive] do you think I’m talkin’ about, you stupid New England hillbilly whore? No, I will not [expletive] hold! Damn! Is this [expletive] what I pay all those [expletive] outrageous Massachusetts taxes for? And you! I said get the [expletive] outta my [expletive] house, [expletive] Dudley Do-Right! You ain’t got no [expletive] warrant!
First Voice: Yeah, and while you’re waiting to [expletive] about that to my boss, Super Spade, may I point out that you ain’t [expletive] proved this is your [expletive] house yet?
Second Voice: Yeah? Well suck on this, [expletive] Officer Mickey [expletive] Rooney!
First Voice: A [expletive] Harvard employee ID? What the [expletive] are you, Sambo, some [expletive] drunk janitor trying to break into a professor’s home?
Second Voice: [Expletive] you, you [expletive] red-necked piece of South Boston gutter trash!
First Voice: Ah, can you also send the Harvard University Police this way?
Second Voice: That’s right, you go right ahead and send them! Because this is a [expletive] Harvard faculty ID, you ignorant, half-witted, white-lace altar boy fondlin’, Blarney-stone kissin’, Old Bushmills-swiggin’, potato-stuffin’, mackerel-snappin’, narrow-back Paddy mucker, and the Harvard cops all know me!
First Voice: Well, all right, you Bantu-nosed, blue-gummed, Brillo-headed, bingo-bongo boogie-woogie Buckwheat – do you, by any chance, happen have a [expletive] driver’s license on you, Professor Malcolm X?
Second Voice: As a matter of fact, you turf cuttin’, pot-lickin’, coal-crakin’, Pope-kissin’, fumblin’ Dublin tater-tot, you can just pogue mo thoin, ‘cause I got a nice, legal Massachusetts driver’s license with my [expletive] name, and my [expletive] picture and the [expletive] address of this [expletive] house on it, right [expletive] here!
First Voice: Up against the wall!
Second Voice: You don’t [expletive] tell me what to [expletive] do in my own [expletive] house after you [expletive] barge in here with no [expletive] warrant! What’s your [expletive] name, you [expletive] jism-skinned, inbred Irish retard? And what’s your [expletive] badge number?
First Voice: Shut the [expletive] up, Satchmo! I said, up against the [expletive] wall!
Second Voice: I ain’t gettin’ up against no [expletive] God damn wall in my own [expletive] house, you sheep-shaggin’ [expletive] leprechaun! Get back in yo’ [expletive] box of [expletive] Lucky Charms and stuff a God damn shamrock up yo’ lily white [expletive] Irish [expletive]!
First Voice: Put down that [expletive] cane, Kunta Kinte, before I take it away from you and [expletive] knock you all the way back to the stinking [expletive] jungle in the filthy [expletive] Congo, where you [expletive] belong, up in the [expletive] trees picking the [expletive] lice out of your [expletive] nappy hair!
Second Voice: First, you put down that [expletive] night stick, that [expletive] Glock, that [expletive] taser, that [expletive] can of [expletive] mace, and those [expletive] brass knuckles you got in your [expletive] back pocket special for us black folks, you [expletive] raggedy-[expletive], fire-crotch, pikey peckerwood!
First Voice: Listen here, you mossheaded, spear-chucking jungle bunny, I’m a sworn officer of the law, and the local neighborhood residents reported you and another tar baby coon breaking into this building!
Second Voice: What the [expletive]? You talkin’ about that crazy old ofay [expletive] who live up the [expletive] street? All she want is her name in the [expletive] paper so she can get some [expletive], ‘cause she so ugly, she can’t get nobody to pay no attention to her – man, woman or dog! And then you [expletive] come down here to my God damn house…
First Voice: Up against the wall, powder burn!
Second Voice: … and [expletive] with me after I just spent nineteen [expletive] hours on a [expletive] airplane…
First Voice: I said – up against the wall, macaca!
Second Voice: … ‘cause it ain’t nothin’ but [expletive] spite, that’s [expletive] all it [expletive] is! I must’ve done turned that creaky, rattle-boned old hooptie [expletive] down at least a half dozen times! That [expletive] got one nasty [expletive] [expletive], I tell you!
First Voice: Up… against… the wall… [expletive]!
Second Voice: Did you just call me the N-word, you [expletive] banjo-pickin’, penny-whistle-tootin,’ bagpipe-blowin’ cousin-[expletive] ginger-snap Mickey Finn?
First Voice: [Expletive] is as [expletive] does, distinguished [expletive] professor of [expletive] studies!
Second Voice: That [expletive] does it! You come in here with your big, bright shiny Cambridge Massachusetts white-[expletive] pig badge and try to [expletive] with the most intelligent black man who has ever lived and think you can [expletive] get away with it? I’ll show you a [expletive] thing or two out of the vast [expletive] universe of stuff Irish cops don’t know jack [expletive] about, you [expletive] Moron Prince of the [Expletive] Emerald Isle! Oh, look, your backup’s here, you sorry-[expletive] Hibernian [expletive]-sucking coward!
First Voice: Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., you are under arrest for disorderly conduct…
Second Voice: And what’s this [expletive] bull-[expletive]? Ain’t that cute? You sent over a black police officer to lead me out of my own [expletive] house!
First Voice: Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of a law…
Second Voice: Yo, bro! You be Tommin’! Yeah, you be Tommin’ [expletive] big time! You be Tommin’ so [expletive] bad, you make [expletive] Clarence Thomas look like Stokely [expletive] Carmichael, you do! Yeah, you, I’m [expletive] talkin’ to you, bro! [Expletive]! Why you got to put those [expletive] handcuffs on so [expletive] tight?
First Voice: If you cannot afford a lawyer…
Second Voice: [Expletive] you, [expletive]! I’m gonna get [expletive] Alan Dershowitz to defend me! You know who the [expletive] he is, you [expletive] idiot potato-head flatfoot? Huh? He’s the [expletive] Distinguished Felix Frankfurter Professor of [expletive] Constitutional Law at [expletive] Harvard University, [expletive], and when that [expletive] slick Jew [expletive] gets through with your sorry [expletive] Irish [expletive], you’re going to be working [expletive] parking tickets in [expletive] Central [expletive] Square, that’s where the [expletive] you’re going to [expletive] be!
First Voice: Please get in the squad car before we have to put you in it, sir. Do you want this Harvard maintenance man to secure your house while we take you down to the station and book you?
Second Voice: Oh, right! Now that the other [expletive] cops show up, you start calling me “sir,” and actin’ like you give a [expletive] about leavin’ my house wide open while you abuse your power by arrestin’ me when I ain’t done nothin’! How [expletive] professional of you! Yeah, sure, let him nail the [expletive] door shut so I can come back and break into my own [expletive] house again – after all, it was so much [expletive] fun this time, wasn’t it? Come on, you [expletive] blue-eyed devil – why don’t you call me a [expletive] some more? That’s right, bro, he called me a [expletive]! That make you proud to work for the [expletive] Cambridge Police? Ow! What the [expletive] you [expletive] trying to pull? I didn’t do nothin’, God damn it! I didn’t do nothin’! I’m tellin’ y’all I didn’t [expletive] do nothin’, you God damned [expletive] [expletive]! I didn’t [expletive] do nothin’! [Expletive]!
[Car door slams]
[Sirens]
[Sound of departing police cruisers]
“That’s it,” Rice whispered, his upper lip trembling slightly. “Tom, tell me – what is the Obama White House going to do when this recording hits the Internet?”
“Just what Gates said he did – nothing,” I confidently asserted.
Rice’s eyes went wide as saucers. “Nothing?”
“That’s right,” I assured him, “nothing at all.”
Rice leaned forward, his entire body tense with trepidation. “But why? How? How could we just… do nothing?”
“Because that recording,” I confidently proclaimed, “is a fake.”
“But… but,” Rice’s eyes darted around like frightened sparrows. “What makes you so certain of that?”
“Five things,” I explained. “First of all, I know what Professor Gates’ voice sounds like, because I’ve heard him speak at length, in person, several times. Secondly, I’ve heard enough of Sergeant Crowley on television to know what he sounds like, too. Third, Crowley’s not Irish. Finally, fourth and fifth, I definitively recognize the actual voices of the two clowns who did those lousy imitations of Crowley and Gates, because I was at the party where they both got stinking drunk and performed them.”
“Then who…” Rice could scarcely finish his question.
“That’s Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele doing Professor Gates,” I revealed, “and House Minority Leader John Boehner doing Crowley. Obviously, some Republican wag recorded the whole thing on his cell phone and then sent the file to you guys at the White House, probably just to see how gullible you guys really are.”
“Not so gullible,” Rice declared, “that we wouldn’t check with you first – and it’s certainly a good thing we did! But who,” he wondered aloud, “is a big enough scamp to record that crap and try to bamboozle us with it?”
“Mitch McConnell,” I confided. “He’s such a card, there’s no way he could resist a practical joke like that!”
“Well,” Rice sighed, “this is definitely a real relief! I guess I better get back to the White House with the good news.”
“Sure,” I agreed, “and if you happen to get a moment with the President, could you ask him a favor on my behalf?”
Rice blushed at the flattering prospect of perhaps having a minute or two with President Obama as a reward for his efforts this morning. “I… can’t guarantee anything, of course, but sure… what would you request?”
“That the next time some wiseacre reporter tries to trip him up while he’s giving a press conference about health care – or any other important national issue, for that matter – he keep his half-baked, uninformed opinions concerning trivial stuff beneath his high office to himself.”
“Ah… I guess so,” Rice conceded. “But I don’t have to put it quite like that, do I?”
“No,” I told him. “By all means, feel free to phrase the request any way you [expletive] like.”