It’s that time of year again, when the shad are running, and, consequently, my brother Rob Roy and sister Rose Lotus start dropping hints about being invited over to my house in Great Falls, Virginia, for lunch. So today was it – Rose brought her husband Hank and Rob brought his wife Katje, who is a vegan. But Rob got her to promise not to lecture the rest of us about the immorality of eating some poor fish’s eggs if I fixed her a nice tofu dish, which I did – extra firm cubes sautéed in organic peanut and roasted sesame oils with bok choy, miniature shiitakes, fermented black bean sauce, julienned scallions and shredded ginger.
Rob requested shad roe Chesapeake, which involves wrapping a roe sac in smoked bacon and roasting it at 350 degrees for about an hour. Rose asked for a shad roe omelette, which I created in minutes with a couple of duck eggs, grated shallots and finely chopped blue foot mushrooms. Hank said he would have whatever I was having, so that’s what he got – baked shad roe wrapped in shad fillet with anchovy sauce, gratin Languedocien and garlic golden fingerling potatoes with chived Pinot Grigo beurre blanc. Since it’s still pretty cold here in Washington, I served a nice hot butternut squash bisque first instead of a salad. And since shad roe is, technically speaking, seafood, I opened a bottle of Drouhin Grand Cru 2006 Chablis les Clos. That went pretty fast, so I subsequently uncorked some Il Poggione di Montalcino 2004, because shad roe goes quite well with red wine, too, actually. That Montalcino is fourteen and one-half percent alcohol, though, which didn’t occur to me until well after I had served everybody a bottle of 2001 Chateau Guiraud Sauternes with my homemade pistachio and white chocolate kataifi drenched in lavender blossom honey. In retrospect, I suppose I should have served coffee with dessert; even though that Chateau Guiraud, poured at precisely fifty-six degrees Fahrenheit, proved a quite remarkable paring with the kataifi.
“Looks like,” Rob opened with a condescending nod toward Hank, “you Republicans got nailed red-handed this time.”
“Doing what?” Hank demanded defensively. “Being patriotic?”
“That’s a good one” Rob sneered. “You call depicting the President of the United States as a demented comic book villain patriotic? You call portraying the Senate Majority Leader as Scooby Doo patriotic? You call drawing the Speaker of the House of Representatives as Cruella DeVille…”
“Who the hell,” Rose interrupted, “is Cruella DeVille?”
“A wicked woman who kidnaps puppies,” Katje declared indignantly, “and makes coats out of their fur!”
“Aw, come on, she’s not real,” Hank protested. “She’s in Lady and the Tramp, okay?”
“No,” I corrected, “she’s a character in One Hundred and One Dalmatians.”
“Whatever,” Hank countered, waving his hands dismissively. “Some kind of Disney movie about dogs. The point is, she’s not real, so it doesn’t count.”
“What doesn’t count?” Rose asked, clearly puzzled.
“The Republican National Committee’s PowerPoint presentation,” Rob thundered across the dining room table, “that’s what!”
“PowerPoint?” Rose was clearly confused. “You mean, the slide shows you present on personal computers? That PowerPoint?”
“Yeah,” Rob confirmed with a vehement tone, “that PowerPoint. Rob Bickhart, the RNC finance director, put together a PowerPoint presentation aimed at raising funds for the Republican Party.”
“Actually,” Katje added, “it’s intended for presentation to Republican fund raising staff.”
“Right,” Rob confirmed, “and it says, ‘What can you sell when you don’t have the White House, the House, or the Senate? Sell saving the country from Socialism.’ How about that, huh?”
“And,” Katje elaborated, “it also says, ‘If your target is rich, kiss their [expletive] and play up to their ego, but if they’re not, then appeal to their fears.’ See? That’s how Republicans do things when they get behind closed doors!”
“Well,” I interjected, “I don’t think the PowerPoint presentation actually says ‘kiss their [expletive],’ Katje.”
“Yeah,” Hank complained, “you liberals are always doing that!”
“We are?” Rob fulminated, gesticulating so expressively with his glass of 2001 Chateau Guiraud, he almost spilled some of it, “Look who’s talking! Since when did the Democratic National Committee try to raise money by drawing pictures of prominent Republicans that look like Lex Luther, the Warner Brother’s Tasmanian Devil or the Wicked Witch of the West?”
“And then,” Katje embellished, “telling their fund raisers to push the idea that the Democrats are ‘saving America from Republican fascists?’”
“Anybody at the DNC who tried anything remotely resembling that,” Rob proclaimed, “would lose their job in a New York minute!”
“All right,” Rose remarked in an astounded tone, “maybe somebody at the RNC might be moronic enough to produce a PowerPoint presentation like that, but I can’t believe the RNC could possibly be dumb enough to make it public!”
“They weren’t,” Rob declared. “But they were stupid enough to leave it lying around the hotel where that cretin Bickhart gave the presentation!”
“And then,” Katje snickered, “guess who found it? A Democrat!”
“Who sent it,” Rob continued in a triumphant tone, “straight to the DNC!”
“Oh, really?” Hank replied, trying his best to adopt a skeptical tone. “In that case, then I’d say it’s up to the DNC to prove the whole thing’s not a Democrat hoax!”
“Well, in fact, Hank,” I pointed out, “the RNC has admitted that Bickhart produced the PowerPoint presentation as Rob and Katje described it. I mean, really, Hank, I know, as a loyal conservative Republican, it’s your duty to apply double think and plausible denibility wherever possible, but holy smokes – there were over a hundred witnesses – the people in the fund raising strategy meeting the RNC held in Boca Grande, Florida, last month. Nice try, but there’s simply no way the RNC could possibly stonewall something like this.”
“You ought to check out the minority and black Republicans,” Rob gloated. “They’re as mad about it as the Democrats!”
“Ah, who cares about them?” Hank grumbled. “Bunch of dumb [expletive] and wet-back [expletive] [expletive] who ought to be [expletive] Democrats anyway!”
“I’ll thank you not to call me and my wife ‘[expletive] Democrats,’ you ignorant Neanderthal Polack!” Rob shot back.
“Apologize to my brother!” Rose stormed at Hank.
“I… I’m sorry,” Hank muttered into his Sauternes. “I meant, ‘present company excepted,’ of course. But none of you even gave me time to say it.”
“Now,” Rose glared at Rob, “you apologize for calling my husband a Polack!”
“Okay,” Rob sighed, “I’m sorry, Hank. But that doesn’t change what was in that RNC PowerPoint presentation, not one bit!”
“Hey,” Hank rationalized, “it just told the truth, that’s all. It said that the little guys in America are all motivated by anger, fear, bigotry and prejudice and that the rich guys are all motivated by ego gratification and a desire for access to power. What – are you telling me the Democrats don’t know that, too?”
“That is absolutely not,” Katje insisted, “how the Democrats think about their donors at all…’
“You’re just saying that,” Hank volleyed back, “because some Democrat wasn’t dumb enough to leave a PowerPoint presentation on DNC fund raising in his hotel room for a Republican to find!”
“No Republican,” Rob huffed, “will ever find a presentation like that!”
“Rob’s probably right,” I offered. “I mean, there’s no way somebody on the DNC would characterize Democratic Party supporters as ‘radical, bleeding-heart do-gooders,’ for instance, the way that RNC presentation characterized Republican Party supporters as ‘reactionary,’ ‘ego-driven,’ and ‘calculating.’ Democrats have a highly developed sense of euphemism, after all. They would say their Democratic contributors are ‘progressive, concerned, social activists,’ or something like that.”
“Yeah,” Rob nodded with an air of supercilious satisfaction. “A little respect for your constituents can go a long way, Mister Grand Old Party!”
“Well, it’s all over with, anyhow,” Hank pontificated. “I hear the RNC has renounced the whole thing.”
“You hear from who?” Katje challenged. “As far as I know, there’s been no apology or renunciation whatsoever from the Republican Party in general or the RNC in particular!”
“No [expletive],” Rob exclaimed. “And the responsible parties all still have their jobs! After an outrage like this, still no dismissals!”
“Times are tough,” Hank pleaded. “How’s Bickhart going to find employment if they fire him? He’s a family man! Why should his children have to suffer just because he did something idiotic?”
“Good question,” Rob chuckled as Hank turned red as a beet. “Now, maybe that – what did you call black Republicans? Oh, yeah, that dumb [expletive], Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican National Committee – maybe he will explain to everybody why material like that PowerPoint presentation is offensive today, while the Republican Party has been, at the very least, tolerating that kind of thing, if not actually encouraging it, ever since Barack Obama and the Democratic Party won the last election!”
“Listen,” Hank growled, “no matter how much you Democrats yell about that PowerPoint presentation, the Republicans are still gonna clean your clock come the next election, just you wait and see!”
“With what money?” Katje prodded. “Republicans haven’t been able to raise squat lately!”
“That’s all going to change,” Hank murmured stubbornly.
“How?” Rob demanded. “Through the anonymous corporate donations recently approved by the conservative majority you Republicans created on the Supreme Court?”
“Could be,” Hank nodded with obvious satisfaction. “Just like that PowerPoint presentation says, the GOP is putting the FUN back in FUNd raising!”
“Jesus Christ,” Rob gasped. “I can’t believe it! The RNC PowerPoint presentation actually says that?”
“You bet,” Hank proudly replied. “And can you two smarty-pants liberals tell me, just how is the DNC going to compete with events like dinner with Bill Kristol at the Russian Tea Room, tickets to an Ultimate Fighting match in Las Vegas and a good old-fashioned Texas quail hunt with Dick Cheney?”
“Omigod,” Katje sighed sarcastically, rolling her eyes and turning to her husband, “what on earth could the Democrats come up with to compete with donation incentives like those? What could we possibly offer our wealthy potential donors?”
“Gee,” Rob pondered in a mock quandary, “I don’t know. Maybe we could offer not to bore them to death over borscht and zakuski; not to insult their intelligence with a grotesque spectacle consisting of two guys in shorts locking legs and humping each other; and… promise not to shoot them in the face. Let’s ask the expert,” he suggested, turning to look at me. “What do you think, Tom?”
Only the ring of my unlisted land line telephone rescued me from having to reply. Grateful for an excuse to leave the dining room, I made for the den and answered it.
“Hello, Tom,” echoed the anxious voice on the other end, obviously on a speaker phone in a room filled with other people, “it’s me – Michael Steele. Sorry to disturb you at home on a Saturday, but this is urgent.”
“No problem,” I assured him. “As a matter of fact, you called at just the right time. How can I help you today, Mr. Chairman?”
“It’s this [expletive] thing with that fool Rob Bickhart’s PowerPoint presentation. I swear, that [expletive] [expletive] [expletive] don’t have no more sense than a [expletive] ant! The Democrats are tearing us a new [expletive] all over the political talk shows, the press and the Internet! Have you heard about it?”
“Yes,” I told him in my most matter-of-fact voice, “I certainly have.”