My eight o’clock telephone consultation today was a scheduled appointment, and I must say the hour certainly impressed me. That’s because my interlocutor, Meg Whitman, was calling from California, where it was only 5:00 a.m., and from the sound of her voice, she had obviously been up a while, too. Speaking with her, I had the definite sensation of talking to someone who had risen, clear-headed and welled rested, partaken of a healthy, nutritious breakfast, run a five mile jog, performed her morning ablutions, spent a very ladylike period of time doing her hair, choosing just the right designer fragrance, putting on makeup, selecting all the components of a perfectly coordinated outfit, and then had spent at least an hour working already. Obviously, you have to get out of bed pretty early in the morning to best Meg Whitman – shortly after midnight, I would estimate.
Whitman: Tom Collins?
Tom: Yes ma’am. How can I help you today?
Whitman: You’re familiar with me and my brilliant career, I assume?
Tom: Yes, ma’am.
Whitman: So – are you with me?
Tom: As with all of my valued clients, ma’am, I’m starting out backing you one thousand percent.
Whitman: Really? One thousand percent? Excellent! Well, then, I suppose you’ve heard what my fellow Republicans have been saying about my gubernatorial bid.
Tom: I’ve heard your opponents, grousing to the many-headed media, long and loud, that you have no business running for governor of California, if that’s what you mean.
Whitman: It most certainly is! Can you believe it?
Tom: Madame, when it comes to California politics, I can believe almost anything.
Whitman: Okay, seeing as how you’re out there in Washington, on the East Coast and all…
Tom: But you were born on Long Island, attended Cold Spring Harbor Academy, matriculated at Princeton and got an MBA from Harvard Business School. So it’s not like you’re exactly a descendant of the Forty-Niners yourself, is it? I mean, there are, in fact, a lot of people in California whose ancestors were genuine pioneers; some who came to the Golden State when it was a province of Mexico, not to mention the Hispanic Californian families that were there even before that.
Whitman: Not to worry, Mr. Collins, if there’s one thing I know for sure, Californians don’t give the south end of a northbound rat about history.
Tom: So you don’t think your rather short total time of residence in California will be an impediment to a political career there?
Whitman: Mr. Collins, if there’s one thing a sophisticated, extremely wealthy person with a lavish prep-school upbringing and fancy Ivy League education can tell almost immediately when they arrive in California, is that hardly any of these bozos out here know the difference between their dingleberry-infested fundaments and a hole in the ground.
Tom: Interesting that you would say that, ma’am – I’ve heard it from other people whose fathers, like yours, Hendricks Hallett Whitman, were good, old-fashioned Wall Street tycoons and not the least bit apologetic about it, I might add.
Whitman: That’s right – they made their money the old-fashioned way.
Tom: You mean, they stole it from widows and orphans?
Whitman: What? No! They earned it!
Tom: Oh – of course, yes, right, why, sure they did. I can’t imagine what I was thinking just then. So, anyway, you aren’t concerned that your detractors are going to get any mileage out of the “carpetbagger factor,” then?
Whitman: On the contrary; I think it’s obvious that Californians love carpetbaggers. They elected Ronald Reagan governor, and he was from Illinois, wasn’t he? And they even elected Arnold Schwarzenegger, didn’t they? And he’s from Austria, and he was an illegal immigrant, too, and nobody cared a hoot in Hades about that, either!
Tom: Arnold Schwarzenegger was a Caucasian from a Western European country who had boyish good looks, disarming but down-to-earth, accessible Continental charm, and the kind of charisma that comes naturally to anybody whose father was a bona fide Nazi and must keep that a secret. It didn’t hurt that he was also Mr. Universe, either. Now, I’m pretty sure you and the rest of the California Republican Party know exactly what kind of illegal immigrants you want to forcibly throw out of the United States, and Mr. Schwarzenegger is hardly an example of one.
Whitman: Exactly my point – if Californians didn’t even consider Arnold Schwarzenegger to be a carpetbagging, interloping alien opportunist, how could any of them think that about me?
Tom: Well, for starters, Reagan became a California resident in 1937, when he got his big break with a contract at Warner Brothers; and Schwarzenegger moved to California in 1968. You, ma’am, on the other hand…
Whitman: “On the other hand” what? I moved to California in 1982, when I quit Proctor and Gamble in Ohio and went to work with Bain and Company in San Francisco!
Tom: Yes, but there are two flaws in that claim. First, like most Americans, the majority of Californians don’t consider San Francisco to be part of the United States, much less California. Second, you left California in 1984 to work for Stride Rite in Massachusetts…
Whitman: Where I single-handedly revived the Keds brand!
Tom: And that’s significant because?
Whitman: Because it proved I can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and sell it to anyone with a mental age of fifteen!
Tom: Which is relevant to becoming governor of California because?
Whitman: Because the average mental age in California is fifteen!
Tom: That’s what I like about my line of work – you learn something new every day.
Whitman: Then I moved back to work for Disney! Disney! How much more Californian can a person get than working for Disney?
Tom: But then you moved back to Rhode Island to work for Hasbro…
Whitman: Where they put me in charge of Playskool and Mr. Potato Head! What could better prepare an executive to be governor of California than intensive experience with Playskool and Mr. Potato Head? Damn it, Mr. Collins, after that, I intimately understand how the average Californian thinks!
Tom: I know what you’re saying, ma’am, and I sincerely believe that, in my assessment, you have a very valid point there. But, as it is my duty to provide my clients with the best advice possible, I would, accordingly, very strongly advise that you not cite that particular qualification in that manner when addressing the voters of California.
Whitman: No, no, of course not, I never would. I was just saying that my executive experience is perfectly congruent with what makes a successful California governor.
Tom: So, in that case, do you feel that having worked for Disney also lends additional qualification?
Whitman: Feel? Take it from me, Mr. Collins, I know! If ever there was a goofy, Mickey-Mouse bunch of Dumbos, Bambis, Tinker-Bells, Pistol Petes and Grumpies it’s the California electorate!
Tom: Now, there’s a point on which I’m sure nearly every California poltician, regardless of their philosophy or party affiliation, can wholeheartedly agree.
Whitman: You can bet your last E-ticket on that, buster! So, look, can you tell me why anybody in California would care about how long I’ve actually lived here? Most of them aren’t sure they live there, for Christ’s sake – it’s not like they can find it on a map, you know.
Tom: Then with respect to that issue, ma’am, I would say if you don’t let it bother you, it won’t bother anybody else.
Whitman: Good. Glad to hear it. Now, about that voting business…
Tom: You mean, the fact that you never bothered to register as a Republican voter in California until 2002?
Whitman: Yeah. Why would anybody care about that, either?
Tom: I would expect, ma’am, that your opponents and detractors might try to construe it as evidence that you are not politically engaged, as it were.
Whitman: Anybody who says that is full of baloney, that’s what they are! Of course I’ve been engaged in the political process! I’ve been engaged in it for decades! What they’re conveniently overlooking with that kind of criticism is that rich people like me don’t bother to vote because, damn it, that’s only one stinking vote isn’t it? Rich people don’t bother going down to the precinct on Election Day to pull a lever or mark a ballot or whatever, because their time is way too valuable for that kind of penny-ante stuff. What they do is spend huge amounts of money on political campaigns, that’s what they do. And believe me, if Joe and Jane Sixpack had my kind of money, that’s the kind of engagement in the political process they’d be doing, and by golly, and they wouldn’t bother registering to vote, either!
Tom: It seems you have a very deep understanding of the common man and woman in the street.
Whitman: What do you mean, “In the street?” Are you kidding? This is California! The only thing you’re going to see in the street out here is cars! They don’t even have sidewalks! No, Mr. Collins, what I have is an intimate understanding of the man and woman on the Internet, and these days, that’s the kind of thing that really counts!
Tom: You’re referring to your background as the CEO of eBay, I presume?
Whitman: And you presume right, Mr. Collins. I know the public for what they are!
Tom: Which is?
Whitman: Legions of ignorant, barely literate, slack-jawed, glazed-eyed idiots who stay up all night participating in endless, expensive auctions for logo monogram towels stolen from mediocre foreign hotels, cartoon character TV trays, vintage 1970’s pet rocks, Prince’s chewed-up gum, shoestrings from Shaquille O’Neal’s sneakers, George Lucas’ dandruff, Cher’s used Kleenex, an empty crack vial allegedly having Vanilla Ice’s fingerprints on it, velvet paintings of Elvis Presley, velvet paintings of Liberace, velvet painting of Charles Manson, velvet paintings of Jesus Christ, Pez dispensers, Star Trek lunch boxes, hand-knit cat-hair Chihuahua sweaters, a hand-thrown clay art deco glazed vase made with Rin-Tin-Tin’s cremation ashes with the original certificate of authenticity, lumps of coal, hand-crafted micro-miniature beer can hats for ferrets with refillable micro-miniature beer cans, boxed black “Oreo Barbie” dolls, U.S. Olympic-Committee-certified super balls, Spiro Agnew campaign buttons, eight-track tape players, belly button lint, forty-year-old cases of Tab cola made with the original cyclamates, factory-defect discount parachutes, high-wire-rated antique unicycle parts, wind-up chattering teeth, patched whoopee cushions, old Yahtzee games with no dice, old Monopoly games with no money, old Parcheesi games with no boards, over-used snow shoes, never-used Ab Masters, the complete discography of Tiny Tim on vinyl LPs, glow-in-the-dark hula hoop collections, solar-powered electric ear hair trimmers, fourteen-carat gold-plated Kohoutek Comet commemorative coins, Chinese forgeries of Korean imitations of Japanese copies of ceramic German Hummel figurines…
Tom: Okay, okay, ma’am, I think I get the picture there…
Whitman: No you don’t, because – do you know what our server statistics told us at eBay? More than half of those drooling cretins live in California!
Tom: And you figure, therefore, that your experience with toys, juvenile entertainment and fools with personal computers and too much time on their hands is an adequate background for becoming governor of California, despite the fact that you have never, ever held any kind of elective office before in your entire life?
Whitman: Did Hillary Clinton let the fact that she’d never been elected to anything stop her from becoming a United States senator? Of course I can do the job! Who needs decades of experience in the state legislature when you’ve got a billion dollars? And besides, since I’m independently wealthy, I won’t need to accept money from special interests. I can finance my entire campaign out of my own pocketbook. That way, the voters will know I can deliver what I promise!
Tom: Which would be?
Whitman: Just a few practical conservative Republican initiatives, really. There would be the total elimination of all taxes for people with incomes in excess of one million dollars a year, of course – just think of the incentive to earn that will create! And there’d be a final solution to the welfare state question – I think Arnold might have gotten some useful suggestions from his Dad on that issue, actually – maybe I’ll put him in charge of it. Making vagrancy a felony will be a must, since we’re going to stimulate booming growth in the business sector by using convict slave labor, and we need to be sure we have enough of it to go around. Then there’s nipping socialized medicine in the bud by the simple expedient of arresting anyone advocating it; dismantling of all those burdensome regulations, you know, getting government off our backs and eliminating frivolous fire and police services from neighborhoods where people don’t have anything worth stealing and their houses are too worthless to worry about them burning down. Along those lines, I will also make absolutely sure that all law-abiding, employed, property-owning Caucasian Californians with a positive net worth can have all the firearms – including automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers – they want. Then there’s shipping all those dirty, disease-carrying, drug-pushing, thieving, raping illegal immigrants back where they came from, unless they’re, you know, white, handsome and obviously nice, like Arnold Schwarzenegger. My administration would extend the War on Terror to its logical conclusion, with practical day-to-day implementation of sensible martial law throughout the state, such as random strip searches of suspicious individuals in designated danger zones, like Watts, Compton or East Los Angeles. It goes without saying that we’re going to need a massive prison and internment camp building program to make sure we don’t have some crazy federal judge telling us who we can and can’t lock up to make the streets safe again. Extending use of the death penalty to all those terrorist-subsidizing recreational drug users and environmental extremists would be another important goal, and if we use it enough, we won’t have to build an excessive number of new prison cells and work camps. Then, there’s turning control of the Internet over to the big telecommunications companies like Comcast and AT&T. With them in charge, they can make sure everybody not only uses eBay, but, more importantly, also ensure that the public can’t use anything else; and in return, they can help us use the Internet to monitor everybody so they don’t do anything wrong. Then there’s the drilling, Tom, lots of drilling – drilling and drilling and drilling, all up and down the California coast, to get at all that patriotic American oil!
Tom: A very impressive platform, to be sure, ma’am.
Whitman: Thank you. The way I see it, the people of California made me a billionaire, so now that they have done that, they obviously want me to rule them.
Tom: I would advise, ma’am, that you say “lead” them.
Whitman: “Lead” them? Hmmm. Yeah, okay, I can see that. “Lead” them. Good point. I’ll make a note of it. Thanks.
Tom: You’re welcome. What else do you have on your mind, then?
Whitman: Well, actually, I just called so I can tell certain people that I spoke with you about my candidacy and that you agree with everything I said and believe in.
Tom: Madame, you may tell them that I agree one hundred percent with everything you say and believe.
Whitman: One hundred percent?
Tom: Absolutely. One hundred percent.
Whitman: Only one hundred percent?
Tom: One hundred percent. Not a point more or less.
Whitman: That’s all you can manage?
Tom: I do have my reputation to consider.
Whitman: You mean, I’ve lost nine-tenths of my credibility with you just since we began talking?
Tom: That’s why I started out at a thousand percent.
Whitman: Oh. I see. Well, thank you, Mr. Collins.
Tom: My pleasure. And there’s no need for you to pay me if you don’t want to.
Whitman: There isn’t?
Tom: Of course not. I desire to have only satisfied clients – my reputation again, you see.
Whitman: Okay, I’ll think about it.
Tom: By all means, do.
Whitman: Sure. Have a nice day, Mr. Collins.
Tom: You, too.
Whitman: ‘Bye.
Tom: Good day, ma’am.