When I got to the office for my first consultation appointment this morning at nine, Gretchen indicated that when my client arrived, she had shown him, at his request, directly into my office. When I entered, I noticed he had chosen the chair immediately to the right of my desk.
Based on my extensive previous experience with the seating arrangements in my office, people who choose that chair usually want to have a secretive conversation about something very private. But I must say that, quite uncharacteristically, Tyrone Cabbot, senior assistant to Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, wished to discuss matters most public, indeed.
“As you probably know, Mr. Collins,” be began, leaning close, “my boss has an awful case of chronic foot-in-mouth disease.”
“Not to worry,” I consoled, “plenty of folks here in Washington have that – Senator John McCain, Representative Barney Frank, Vice President Joe Biden…”
“Yes,” Cabbot nodded, “I know. But this time, it wasn’t just a case of him shooting his mouth off with some random nonsense. This time, it’s much more… serious.”
“He didn’t…” I began, aghast.
“I’m afraid he did,” Cabbot interjected with a distinctly agitated tone. “This time, when he forgot to engaged his brain before putting his mouth in gear, he… told the truth.”
“Oh, my God,” I gasped. “He told the truth? In Washington?”
“He did,” Cabbot sadly affirmed. “And a very significant truth, at that!”
“Incredible,” I replied, still in shock. “We have extreme respect for the truth here in Washington…”
“Absolutely,” Cabbot agreed. “In the capital city of the greatest nation on earth, everybody holds the truth in the highest regard…”
“Yes, yes, in the greatest esteem…” I concurred. “That’s why we only use it on special occasions.”
“Exactly,” Cabbot sighed in a dejected tone. “But there was nothing special about this occasion, unfortunately. Michael was on Washington Watch with Roland Martin last Sunday. Roland was observing that ninety-five percent of black Americans voted for Obama and asked Mike to tell him and his cable TV audience what, if anything, the Republicans can do to change overwhelming statistics like that. So Mike comes back with some pretty good stuff about education, small business, jobs and the economy, then Martin says, ‘But your candidates have to talk to them, and one of the criticisms I’ve always had is, Republicans are almost all white and they’re all scared of black folks.’ And Michael, he says, ‘You’re absolutely right – I’ve been in the room, and they’ve been scared of me! And I’m like “hey, I’m on your side,” so I can imagine them going out there to talk to someone like you!’”
“Referring,” I supposed, “to Roland Martin’s liberal credentials?”
“I guess so,” Cabbot shrugged. “Ain’t neither of ‘em all that scary lookin’, that’s for sure. Roland Martin’s this pudgy little guy who looks like he’s always thinkin’ about what’s the right wine to go with his dinner, and Michael looks like a haberdasher or a shoe salesman or somethin’, you know? Ain’t neither of ‘em is all that dark, either. I mean, really, you take some of these Republican crackers I got to work with all day long, and you put them up in Ward Eight in one of them neighborhoods off South Capitol Street, and then I can understand them bein’ scared. [Expletive], man, I be scared to go down in one of them neighborhoods, and, as you can see, I’m blacker than Marcus Garvey. Seriously, I know what kind of bad [expletive] black mother [expletive] there be in places like Anacostia and Northeast, but – damn! Here’s Michael and me, and Roland Martin, too, dressing like them, acting like them, even talking like them. You go listen to the video of that interview, for example, with your eyes shut, and you can’t even hardly tell there’s two brothers havin’ a conversation!”
“Especially,” I noted, “Chairman Steele. He sounds quite genuinely white almost all the time.”
“Right,” Cabbot agreed, himself shifting back into his best (and, I might add, completely flawless) Caucasian accent. “So it’s not like Mike sounds scary or anything. But I’m afraid what he told Roland Martin is… well… incontestably true.”
“Which is,” I summarized, “that white Republicans, which is to say, nearly all Republicans, have an uncontrollable, irrational fear of black people, a fear that haunts them to the point of gibbering insanity, regardless of the circumstances?”
“Precisely,” Cabbot vouched. “It doesn’t matter what we black Republicans do. There’s simply nothing – nothing at all – that will keep those [expletive] honkies from [expletive] their underwear canary yellow with fright the moment they see us. And, as, Mike pointed out, it doesn’t matter that, intellectually at least, they know, at some level, we’re on their side. I’m beginning to suspect that it’s a completely visceral reaction.”
“And you and Mike,” I surmised “and, I suppose every other black Republican, would very much like to come up with some kind of solution to this problem.”
“You can say that again,” Cabbot grumbled. “Most of the time, the white Republicans are so frightened, they aren’t even really listening to us.”
“Well,” I remarked, “the fact that Michael spends a lot of time talking like a street thug in a gangster rap video probably doesn’t help. Look at what happened because of that – RNC Treasurer Randy Pullen started worrying that Mike was going to get paid, big time, and brought in a bunch of accounting weenies to audit the books so he could be sure Mike wasn’t stealing.”
“Okay,” Cabbot conceded, “I know Mike’s being really stupid showing off his Ebonics in front of the biggest bunch of clueless ofays this side of the Ku Klux Klan, but damn it, he’s trying to appeal to the youth vote! Do you have any idea how old the average white Republican is, Tom?”
“Old enough to join the AARP,” I quipped, “but so convinced it’s a bunch of welfare-state Commies, they won’t do it!”
“Exactly,” Cabbot confirmed. “And you and I both know what young people – white, black, Asian, Hispanic, you name it – really, really, like, don’t we?”
“Masturbating while they play video games?”
“Yeah,” he shrugged, “that actually happens to be Number One, as far as any of our highly-paid demographers can tell; but what’s Number Two on the list?”
“Hanging around in baggy clothes with a baseball cap on backwards,” I ventured, “talking like Fifty Cent?”
“Right,” Cabbot came back, smiling with satisfaction, “and so if Mike talks like Fifty Cent, that’s going to attract young voters to the Republican Party!”
“Given the stuff Mike says when he’s talking like Fifty Cent, however,” I suggested, “maybe you’d have better luck passing out free copies of Grand Theft Auto and jumbo tubes of personal lubricant with the Republican Party elephant logo on them.”
“Yeah,” Cabbot admitted with a hefty groan, “I know… I know. Mike talks some pretty whack [expletive].”
“Like when he said,” I offered, “’I tried to present why I am pro-life while recognizing that my mother had a “choice” before deciding to put me up for adoption.’ Thinking about that statement, you can’t help but wonder what the weather is like on whatever planet it is he comes from.”
“True,” Cabbot muttered. “I wondered almost exactly what you just said when I heard that.”
“And then,” I continued, “there was that time he said: ‘I’m in the business of ticking people off. That’s why I’m chairman of the Republican National Committee.’”
“Yeah,” Cabbot shuddered. “That one gave me nightmares for a week.”
“More nightmarish by a mile,” I proposed, “was when he said, in reference to global warming, ‘We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I use my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process.’ Considering that we’ve got flowers blooming here in Washington during November at the moment…”
“Point taken,” Cabbot grumbled, grudgingly. “Global warming, yeah – that was… absurd, indefensible. But look at it this way: at least he’s not a Holocaust denier.”
“Thank the Lord for small favors,” I solemnly intoned. “Then there was that time he said ‘You can have all the gun control laws in the country, but if you don’t enforce them, people are going to find a way to protect themselves.’ I guess you’d call that the Carl Rowan defense, huh?”
Cabbot flashed me a puzzled look. “Who’s Carl Rowan?”
“A prominent black DC liberal gun-control advocate,” I related, “who pulled out a hand gun and shot at some punks who were having sex in his backyard swimming pool in the middle of the night.”
“Holy [expletive]!” Cabbot exclaimed. “At least Mike doesn’t do off-the-hook, crucial, psycho, retarded, 911 dope like that!”
“True,” I allowed, “but how about the time Mike said ‘…you just can’t simply say, oh, like, “Tomorrow morning I’m gonna stop being gay.” It’s like saying, “Tomorrow morning I’m gonna stop being black.”’ Sheesh! I think anybody whose brain waves can jog the needles on an EEG better than a bowl of Jello did a double-take when he said that. I mean, really, for God’s sake, what does it mean?”
“Beats me,” Cabbot murmured, shaking his head dejectedly.
“And if somebody had paid me,” I pointed out, “to come up with a statement with the potential to offend not just blacks, not just gay people, not just conservatives, not just liberals, but, by Holy Mother Mary’s glow-in-the-dark menses, offend everybody who hears it, I swear, I couldn’t have done any better than that.”
“Mike Steele is,” Cabbot chuckled morosely, “some kind of genius, anyway.”
“I will tell you what he is,” I whispered with just a hint of drama. “He’s like that fellow who was the second best general the Confederacy had.”
Cabbot knit his brow, reviewing his knowledge of Civil War history. “What? You mean, Michael Steele is like Stonewall Jackson?”
“No,” I explained, “not really. You see, Tyrone, the second best general the South had during the Civil War was George B. McClellan.”
“What?” Cabbot’s eyebrows did a moon walk over his forehead. “How the [expletive] do you figure that?”
“Because George B. McClellan,” I elaborated, “was the initial supreme commander of the Union Army. But he screwed up so bad and for so long, the South nearly won.”
A long silence ensued as Cabbot absorbed my analysis. “You know what?” he finally asked.
“What?”
“I’m sick and tired of being a black Republican. You’re right, Tom – Michael Steele is nothing but the very public expression of the white Republicans’ secret death wish. And you know what? I hope they all die and go straight to hell tomorrow morning before [expletive] Wal-Mart opens! [Expletive] this [expletive]!”
And with that, Mr. Cabbot got up and left. I don’t think I’ll be sending Mr. Steele a bill, though. Because sometimes, honestly, I feel like I ought to be paying somebody to watch this totally whack, crucial, off-the-hook dope go down.