It was pretty late on Friday afternoon – I was in the office by myself, getting ready to call it a week, when the phone rang. It was Fuhrberger, over at Treasury. He’s the type, who populate Washington like mosquitos on the summer Taiga, that usually goes home around 4 o’clock, so I figured something important, to him, at least, must be going on.
Fuhrberger: Collins, I need a telephone consultation.
Collins: Sure, half-hour minimum. Billed on the Davos job?
Fuhrberger: Ah, yeah, it’s not exactly about the Davos job…
Collins: Yeah, well, and I’m certainly not about to hang up on you just because you said that, either – although federal regulations state I must not perform services which aren’t related to tasks for which I’m contracted. I know that exceptions prove rules, however… what do you think I should do?
Fuhrberger: I think you should not, ah, not hang up on me, and that you should help me out, because I work for the United States Government; and what’s more, you don’t; and nobody knows about this besides us, anyway, and it’s just a few minutes of advice I need and I’ve got a wife and three kids and a seven hundred thousand dollar mortgage in Springfield, and I’ve been with the Civil Service for eighteen years and just kept sucking up to my overbearing, moronic boss and they just kept sending me to these training classes that I didn’t understand and they just kept promoting me, and here I am and of course I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and everybody in the Civil Service knows that guys like you are here to justify my existence, and, what’s more, by golly, I’m not ashamed to admit it.
Collins: Impeccable Inside the Beltway reasoning. Continue.
Fuhrberger: So yeah, take the money off the Davos contract. Just tell me what to do, okay? Besides, Bixby over at Commerce recommended that I call you…
Collins: Oh, in that case, don’t you worry about a thing. Bixby is the Contracting Officer for the Davos job. What’s he going to do – write a misconduct letter to his own personnel file?
Fuhrberger: Okay. But he did say to keep it under thirty minutes, too.
Collins: On one hand, I doubt there is a civil servant in the federal Government, whose immediate predicament I could not solve in less than half an hour. And on the other, I’m not that fond of talking on the telephone, anyway. So, if it isn’t about the Davos project, what is it?
Fuhrberger: The Michael Moore thing.
Collins: Michael Moore the film director – the one who made “Bowling for Columbine” and “Fahrenheit 9/11?” The one who weighs about 400 pounds and got himself declared persona non grata at the Academy Awards?
Fuhrberger: Yeah, that guy.
Collins: So what did he do to get Treasury on his huge behind – not pay enough taxes on the two hundred million dollars he made with his last picture?
Fuhrberger: I think he’s fine with that, Collins – but he did something much worse.
Collins: GZPZ, what in the world could the Treasury Department consider to be worse than not paying one’s taxes?
Fuhrberger: Going to Cuba, that’s what!
Collins: Moore went to Cuba? Why?
Fuhrberger: He’s working on another film, one about the health care industry.
Collins: He did? That’s great! It’s about time somebody took on the lying, thieving health insurance oligopoly, the marketing morons who hijacked the pharmaceutical industry and those greedy, mendacious, egotistical twits at the American Medical Association. Hell, I say good for him…
Fuhrberger: Well, yeah, anyway, he went to Cuba with some 9/11 rescue workers who are sick and, well, this is what the movie says, apparently – they can’t get health care here in the United States. So Moore escorts them to Cuba, where health care is free.
Collins: Sounds like the kind of stunt he’d pull, that’s for sure. But don’t plenty of people from the US go to Cuba every year?
Fuhrberger: Yeah. They have to ask the United States Government for permission first, though.
Collins: Moore didn’t ask?
Fuhrberger: No, he asked. The Government just never said “yes.” So he waited a while, then he went anyway.
Collins: Are there any circumstances under which he could go to Cuba without asking permission?
Fuhrberger: Journalists are allowed without permission.
Collins: And now he claims to be a journalist?
Fuhrberger: I think that’s what he’s maintaining at the moment, yes.
Collins: Well, I certainly am not a lawyer, but it seems to me, just as an ordinary person, that maybe a guy who makes documentary motion pictures could be considered a journalist – probably some kind of journalist like a guy who does stand-up news reports in front of a camera in the Green Zone. Except instead of Administration propaganda like that guy, Moore does his own propaganda instead…
Fuhrberger: Commie propaganda!
Collins: No doubt some people call him a Communist, but having read Das Kapital and most of Lenin and Mao, I’d say…
Fuhrberger: You read those things?
Collins: Sure. It’s a free country, you know. First amendment and all.
Fuhrberger: Yeah, but freedom of speech doesn’t give a person the right to yell about socialized medicine in a crowded theater!
Collins: There’s where I think Mr. Moore and the Administration differ. He thinks it does, and, I bet they think it doesn’t – otherwise, I doubt you would be calling me so late on a Friday afternoon.
Fuhrberger: They’re overboard, Collins, totally overboard on this!
Collins: Who?
Fuhrberger: Who do you think? The Administration! Violations of 31 CFR 515.201(b) carry up to two hundred fifty thousand dollars in fines and/or ten years in federal prison. The usual thing is a fine – we opened a civil investigation on Moore for just that purpose, to fine him. But the White House says he’s so wealthy, even fining him the maximum amount is a joke…
Collins: That’s Moore’s business, isn’t it – jokes? So what?
Fuhrberger: They’re pressuring us to make an example out of him! The want us to request DOJ to open a criminal investigation, then arrest the guy!
Collins: And you’d rather not do that?
Fuhrberger: Much rather not.
Collins: Why?
Fuhrberger: There are lots of reasons, but the first one that I thought of was the what the Government fined Steinbrenner.
Collins: Steinbrenner? George Steinbrenner?
Fuhrberger: Yeah, him.
Collins: The guy who owns the New York Yankees went to Cuba illegally?
Fuhrberger: Yep – he broke the same law and got fined seventy-five thousand dollars.
Collins: You know, this is not the first time it has occurred to me, that if Fidel Castro had gotten into major league baseball, he never would have bothered leading the Cuban Revolution.
Fuhrberger: Fidel Castro played professional baseball?
Collins: Sure – and he was great at it, too – and why else would George Steinbrenner visit Cuba? Those guys are right up there with the Dominicans, you know; down there, you can’t spit without hitting a baseball player. Every village has at least one triple-A contender who wants to be in the World Series someday.
Fuhrberger: If the Cubans like baseball so much, how come they hate us?
Collins: No, you have it backwards. We hate Cuba.
Fuhrberger: Because they’re Commies, right?
Collins: Sure. Every true, red-blooded American hates Commies and loves baseball. But while all Cubans love baseball, some Cubans love Communism and other Cubans hate Fidel. With Cuba, it’s like an old family feud that’s been going on so long, nearly everybody who started it is either dead or about to keel over, but the next generation feels like they have to keep it going in order show respect for their elders.
Fuhrberger: Gee, that’s kind of sad, touching, tragic, and ridiculous, all rolled up into one…
Collins: Yeah, just like Cuba – and Castro’s funeral, I’m so sure.
Fuhrberger: And pretty soon, hopefully…
Collins: I wouldn’t bet the farm on that. Cuba may be poor, but it has a very, very good health care system.
Fuhrberger: Yes, it does, unfortunately.
Collins: Don’t those guys at the White House realize that arresting Moore will provide him with an amount of free publicity that he couldn’t buy – even for fifty million dollars?
Fuhrberger: So what’s that supposed to mean – that fifty million dollars is considered to be a lot of money in Hollywood?
Collins: Fifty million dollars is considered to be a lot of money anywhere but Washington.
Fuhrberger: Oh.
Collins: And arresting Moore will be like giving him fifty million dollars to advertise his movie!
Fuhrberger: Ah-hah! Now I get it. You’re saying – “Don’t argue to the White House that starting a criminal investigation against Moore is inappropriate enforcement, argue instead that arresting him will give his movie nationwide advertising at Government expense…”
Collins: … and also considerably increase the number of people who will see it.
Fuhrberger: Right! And telling that to the White House will work?
Collins: Not necessarily.
Fuhrberger: I mean, it will allow the Government to fine Moore a hundred thousand dollars or something, and we here at Treasury won’t have to look like a bunch of idiots being unwilling parties to a totally absurd criminal case against him and all that stuff, won’t it?
Collins: Can’t guarantee that.
Fuhrberger: But it makes perfect sense!
Collins: You are correct, sir.
Fuhrberger: Oh, I get it. It makes perfect sense, and, therefore, based on your previous experience with this Administration, and considering the additional factors involved with it being a lame duck, then because it makes perfect sense, they aren’t likely to do it.
Collins: Yes.
Fuhrberger: Then what, in your estimation, is the current Administration actually likely to do in this situation? Will they continue their push to arrest and imprison him?
Collins: Nope.
Fuhrberger: Holy Hanna, Collins! Neither? What will they do, then?
Collins: Because it contains forbidden content, the Administration will try to suppress exhibition of the film in the United States. But Moore is not stupid. Consequently, he will see to it that at least one copy of the film is sequestered outside of US control. So there will be two versions of the film – one, available in the United States, with the Cuban footage deleted, and another, available elsewhere, that contains it.
Fuhrberger: And so Treasury is off the hook?
Collins: The United States Department of the Treasury is always off the hook, homie. Would that it were that simple. Moore will sue to show the uncut version in the United States.
Fuhrberger: Will he win?
Collins: Sorry, I’m not the Supreme Court, but it will be completely immaterial whether he wins or not, in any case. What will matter is the fact that he has to sue in order to get his film shown in its uncut entirety, in this, the Land of the Free.
Fuhrberger: What consequences can we expect from that?
Collins: About fifty million dollars worth of publicity for Michael Moore.
Fuhrberger: So this fat Socialist funny man has the United States Government by the short hairs, and is about to force it to provide him with fifty million dollars of free publicity, and all just because he had the courage to tell the truth?
Collins: In a nutshell, yeah.
Fuhrberger: That’s just not fair! Everybody knows you’re not suppose to tell the truth in the United States Government – how the hell were we supposed to know he would do that in the real world, and for some stupid, frivolous reason like justice for his fellow human beings? Doesn’t he realize that there are more important things, like protocol, agency organizational structure, administrative rules, sustenance of the immortal bureaucracy and career advancement…
Collins: No, I’m sure he doesn’t.
Fuhrberger: Then what, in the name of all that’s holy, is the matter with that man? We work so hard here inside the Beltway…
Collins: No, you don’t – you’re a bunch of lazy incompetent bozos who can’t get real jobs anyplace else, and you know it!
Fuhrberger: What?
Collins: I said, “No, you don’t – you’re a bunch of lazy incompetent bozos who can’t get real jobs anyplace else, and you know it!”
Fuhrberger: Uh… Ah… Yeah… Okay, granted, but we don’t elect those bumpkins who come here to govern the greatest nation on earth, the greatest nation that has ever been, in all of history; with their seats in the House of Representatives! We don’t elect the rotten, corrupt captains of industry and inbred millionaires who occupy the Senate! And we certainly don’t choose the Head Honcho Big Kahuna A-Hole Almighty in the White House!
Collins: No, much greater fools than you do that, and, consequently, there’s no reason to blame yourself. Yours is simply the sad and terrible fate of those who complete the SF-171.
Fuhrberger: Collins, I rue the day I joined the United States Civil Service!
Collins: Nice job security…
Fuhrberger: No! No!
Collins: Great benefits…
Fuhrberger: Stop! Please stop!
Collins: Early retirement available…
Fuhrberger: What…
Collins: Early retirement available…
Fuhrberger: Hot damn it, Collins! You’re so absolutely, positively right! Early retirement! That’s what I need!
Collins: And that’s why I make the big bucks. Have a nice weekend.