Yesterday, a fellow barged into my office. I have a standing order with my private secretary, that, should anyone simply burst into her office, ignore her presence, and make for my door, she should go ahead and let them; and, if circumstances allow, press the red button on the underside of her desk as soon as they close the door leading to my office.
That works pretty well, because there is a fifteen foot corridor between her office and mine. It’s seven feet wide and features not only a striking Belgian machine-woven wool hallway rug tacked very securely to the oak board floor, but also two acceptable but not particularly notable Ethan Allen vestibule chairs, with a matching semi-circle vestibule half-table, upon which sits, regardless of season, a decorative Macy’s crystal vase filled with fresh-cut flowers.
The reason the stuff I have placed in this intermediate zone is so cheap, dear reader, is that, along with the walls, it often gets destroyed. Pinhole cameras located redundantly throughout the vestibule convey a security guard’s view of the area, and, presuming she is quick enough, pressing that red button on her desk allows my private secretary to lock my rude visitor(s) in. So, once my uninvited Monday morning guest tried the door leading to my office and discovered it locked, the in situ assessment process began.
First, he demonstrated that he was not a lunatic. After trying the door to my office and finding it locked, he tried the door back into my private secretary’s office and discovered that to be locked, too. Then he sat down on one of those cheap Ethan Allen chairs and hung his head in his hands, no doubt assuming that I had called the police and he would have plenty explaining to do, most of which would get him in serious trouble with his boss. After giving him a good sweating of about five minutes, my private secretary’s voice, delivered by speakers hidden in the ceiling, rescued him from his sorrows with the opportunity to behave himself.
“Thank you for waiting,” she intoned, in that female authority figure style she saves for just such occasions, “Mr. Collins will see you now.”
Slowly and resignedly, like a prisoner on death row rising from his bunk for what he knows will be the last time, my caller, not six minutes ago the perfect portrait of a nasty, pushy Fed, got up. It is interesting to note that the first door handle he tried was the one attached to the way out – back through my private secretary’s office. It was still locked, as both you and I, dear reader, would have expected – so, after a wrenching shudder, he made his way to the other door and opened it.
I was seated at my desk, my feet up on the table, a copy of that day’s Washington Post obscuring me, my right front desk drawer open to provide access to several useful object which the laws of the District of Columbia preclude me from describing. As he opened the door, I watched my rude guest carefully, using not only cameras stationed around the room displayed on my desk laptop, but also a pair of good old-fashioned concave shoplifter’s mirrors, strategically positioned high and behind my visitor’s line of sight.
“It is customary business practice, sir,” I sneered in mock congeniality, “for people to wait in the private secretary’s anteroom, or, should the establishment not be able to afford that, the so-called ‘reception area’ prior to being admitted to business meetings. What possible urgency could exist, sir, for you to abrogate social rules of such long standing and irreproachable repute?”
As it turned out, I might as well have been addressing an extra-terrestrial, or, perhaps, a Hottentot. He just stood there, staring at me. Slowly, I put the paper down and looked him over with studied deliberation.
“¿Usted habla español?”
“Sprechen Sie Deutsches?”
“Parlez-vous français?”
Nothing. He was sweating profusely and breathing like he’d finished a 100 yard dash, but – nothing.
“Parlate italiano?”
“Spreekt u het Nederlands?”
“Você fala o português?”
Finally, I could see him summon something up from the depths of his character, something he probably had never even known that he had. At last, my rude young visitor spoke.
“I don’t appreciate your sense of humor, Mr. Collins,” he whispered, menacingly. “I would advise you to consider, that I represent the Government of the United States!”
“Oh, well, in that case, sir,” I shot back, “I would advise you to consider that my taxes are paying for whatever jerkoff’s errand, upon which your superiors have chosen to dispatch you,” leaning forward and looking him in the eye, I added, “and I think, at least, that I can appreciate their sense humor, what with them choosing someone such as yourself to visit me in the name of the American people!”
Now I know, those of you who watch a lot of television and motion pictures out there in the rest of America, you must think me completely mad for having acted in such a manner, because you have been taught that government minions like this guy are quite formidable, not to mention that they are invariably backed up by heavily armed teams of Delta Force operatives akin to nothing less than Rambo himself, usually conveyed around in fleets of black SUVs and helicopters. Well, what can I say? At those words, my rude, pushy, cock-sure, intentionally intimidating, obviously self-important federal visitor fell down on the floor and had what appeared, to a layman such as myself at least, a grand mal epileptic fit.
Being trained in first aid, my private secretary and I managed to stabilize him and arrange for his admittance to a local hospital, where, I might add, I used my credit card to secure him a private room, since, it transpired, he carried no identification whatsoever on his person.
Today, I received a visit from that young fellow’s boss. For the record, he waited outside until my private secretary admitted him to my office, and behaved in a perfectly professional manner throughout our entire encounter.
“To what,” I began, fully recognizing this person, but, knowing that, for reasons of national security, I should not reveal his name in my Web log, “do I owe the unique pleasure of this visit?”
“Your deliverable concerning the use of electronic mail over the Internet by appointed federal employees, Tom,” he replied, trying his level best to be as intimidating as possible, both in tone and demeanor, while not inadvertently allowing his performance to slip so far over the top as to betray his utter helplessness in the face of prevailing circumstances, “it’s absolutely outstanding, as usual, but…”
“You want me to change reality for you,” I impertinently (and, considering his subordinate’s previous visit, with, I dare say, nothing less than Mosaic justification) interrupted, “so that all the idiotic mistakes the Bush Administration has made with emails over the last seven years and four months will all just – go away – poof! Like that. Right?”
“Are you telling me,” he persisted, “that there is no place, inside the Beltway, to purchase a viable set of policy recommendations to do so; or delineating one or more courses of action designed to work toward, and eventually achieve that goal; or, at least, to propose a viable remedial strategy assessment to mitigate the effects thereof, Mr. Collins?”
“I am telling you, sir,” I replied, with decidedly marked fervor, “that anyone who purports to be capable of delivering such a product, and responds to any Administration proposal or solicitation to prepare and deliver it in return for payment from the Treasury of the United States, is either a psychotic, a sociopath, a fraud, a charlatan, an unqualified narcissistic poseur, a hopeless masturbatory sycophant, or; the pathetic victim of recent, as-yet undiagnosed, massive and frank organic brain damage. If the Administration wishes to squander a million or so dollars on such a person, I invite the Administration to be my guest. As a matter of fact, Washington, DC is so thickly littered with such sorry specimens as those whom I have just described, it would be my distinct pleasure to recommend oh, say, about thirty or forty of them to you – provided, of course, that I have your word as a scholar and a gentleman that you shall not, under any circumstances, tell them that I sent you.”
Dear reader, I’m not exclusively a one-man shop – my team of sailors, navigators, hunting grounds masters, harpoon throwers, lance men, flensers and boilers varies, depending on the size of the whale I intend upon and the length of the Nantucket sleigh ride my instincts tell me the client can afford. But, even though I could have assembled, provisioned and outfitted as fine a crew of whalers as any captain for this voyage, I would no sooner hunt this gentleman’s quarry than anyone but Ahab himself would pursue Moby Dick. For there have been many times, dear reader, in my career as a federal government consultant, that I smelled land – and there was no land; and there are better ways to make a living than that.
“So, Collins,” my powerful, famous, wealthy, well-connected and requisitely anonymous visitor persisted, quite pointedly, and just a bit louder, “after all the money you’ve accepted from the Bush Administration since we came here in 2000, you’re telling me we’re screwed and you don’t want our money anymore?”
“Oh, perish the thought! By no means, sir,” I responded – somewhat humbly, a bit theatrically, slightly Zen and seasoned with a soupcon of undiluted irony – “I very sincerely want more of your money, make no mistake about that. I am, however, not God; and, as near as I can tell, only He or a Republican-lead military coup can fix y’all’s little red wagon at this point, mountain of half-witted emails or not.”
At that, my visitor shifted gears. He adopted an obviously counterfeit, but nonetheless impressive attitude of camaraderie and mutual concern. Any useless popinjay accustomed to getting their way barking badly constructed, half-baked orders which convey nothing more than crudely expressed eruptions of their obscene, malformed Id and hideously distended, monstrous Ego; when confronted with someone, such as myself, who can readily deduce their customary methods, immediately falls back and attempts to befriend such an unusual adversary. It happens all the time. As a matter of fact, it’s standard operating procedure for the Kennedys. “Tom,” he implored, “I apologize. You can obviously see through the usual bull we feed them out there. But gimme a break. You and I both know that they crave it, they need it, they revel in it, they rejoice in it…”
“Speak for yourself,” I interjected.
“… okay, okay, forgive me for attempting to put words in your mouth. Let’s get down to brass tacks, then. How much for a well-structured plan outlining a publicity campaign of mass deception, like we did back in 2002?”
“Like for the Iraq war? Or the Niger yellow cake character assassinations? Jesus Christ on a crutch! I showed you how to do that stuff not once, not twice, but three times – and now, you’re saying you can’t figure out on your own how to do something similar that will clean up the subsequent inevitable mess?”
“I’m not talking about an inevitable mess!” My visitor leapt from his seat and began gesticulating wildly towards the window, through which the White House was visible – “I’m talking about the survival of this nation and the will of its leader! Damn it, Collins! We rented your mind to construct this monster! You gave your brain cells to this thing! Now it’s out there, running amok, and you won’t take one single action to excuse what it has done!”
“That’s because,” I slowly explained, “what this thing has done is totally inexcusable, no matter what basis the apologist elects to employ.”
At those words, my hugely powerful, awesomely influential, extremely cleared for ultimate confidential information federal visitor fell down on the floor and had what even a mere layman such as myself could see was a massive heart attack. Since I knew who he was, all I had to do was buzz my private secretary and request that she dial DC 911 and tell them that this very, very, very important person, whose name I (and my private secretary) took extreme care to mention – and spell out, twice – had about five minutes to live, and could they please get up here with some oxygen, cardiac jump-start toys and a suite of appropriate pharmaceuticals ASAP? Then, I waited another ninety seconds and buzzed my private secretary again, this time instructing her to convey the same information to the Secret Service.
Two minutes and forty-five seconds later, a Secret Service ambulance arrived and spirited my guest away to – what – rescue, redemption, salvation? He’s alive, anyway, and my credit card was not required in order to get him a private room, either. Two hours and forty-five minutes later, the District of Columbia was on the scene with their ambulance. I was just checking, for the sake of comparison. In any case, I thought the incident was ended. Little did I know. Because about three in the afternoon, I got an email:
Tom, we’ve sent two guys over to meet with you in the last two days and Karl tells me that both of them landed in the hospital. Will you please lighten up? You must know by now that members of the Administration always feel inadequate, unqualified and stupid when they deal with you. Of course they’re a bunch of ignorant dolts – you think someone like George W. Bush wants to be surrounded by geniuses? I’m just a regular guy myself, Tom, otherwise the Big G couldn’t tolerate having me around all the time, either. That’s just the way it is, so please stop rubbing it in how dumb we are down here, okay? It’s not good for our self-esteem, and keeping our self-esteem up is vital to the Nation we both know and love. I’ve heard that you advised everyone concerned with our various projects over the years not to put anything in an E-mail that they would not want to read on the front page of the Washington Post the next day, but dadgummit, when your fingers get flying on that keyboard, stuff happens. My point is, we got a serious problem here at the White House and the American people, as represented by that White House, need your help. So don’t you dare send any more of our people to the hospital by revealing to them how lame they are. And what’s more, I want you to do something about this E-mail thing. If you don’t, I’ll pull some strings with GSA, DOJ and OPM and get you debarred from doing business with the federal government. You know as well as I do that we here at EOP can make something like that happen, no matter how honest and ethical our victims are. Trumping up bogus charges against a federal contractor is a piece of cake. What makes you think you are so special? We can do anything we want, we’re the executive branch of the federal government. We’ve got trillions of bucks under our control, we’ve got nuclear weapons, commandos, FBI agents, spies, and surveillance equipment straight out of Star Trek. Spit-polished Marines in dress blues snap to attention when I walk in the room, buster, so who the hell are you? Sure, we ain’t the sharpest tools in the shed, but Big G is president and we’re his buddies, so eff-you! I want your raggedy, no-account federal contractor butt down here in my office at eight thirty tomorrow morning or I’ll use all the power of my public office to ruin your consulting business, smear your personal reputation and run you out of town!
Oops… there they go again. Seriously, folks, how in hell am I supposed to fix something like that? No, please, don’t email me with suggestions. That was just a rhetorical question.