"Boy, what a beautiful balmy day," said Chuck Heston. "Aren't we lucky!"
Beaming triumphantly from the helm of his new comfortably affixed yacht-like sailboat, William Francis Buckley, Jr. nodded like a man positive he had the (not-California) Angels on his side.
"I would say the first 100 days were a remarkable success, wouldn't you, Robert?" Newt said to Bob Novak.
But before Bob could answer Newt; sitting alone and aloof at the stern, William Francis Buckley, III--sipping a Gin Fizz out of a Dixie cup while wistfully staring at his Dad skillfully adjusting the Newt's mast to smoothly accord with wind velocity and direction--said:
"Well, procedurally, yes, it was a cyclonic meteoric unprecedented political coup de grace. But, substantively, I'm afraid you lost your two biggies in the balanced budget amendment and term limits this congress. So while you might have batted 800 in the liberal national press's eyes, the fact is baseball games are won AFTER the game starts, not before. But those scum don't know baseball from shinola..."
Nobody was paying attention to JrJr, however.
"Bob, you're a member of the national press, aren't you?" said Heston.
"Of course not! Don't be ridiculous, Chuck. Columnists like Pat and me are strictly outsiders and don't belong to the establishment and never did..."
"Fred Barnes called me the Michael Jordan of politics," Newt glowed proudly.
"I like Fred," said Heston. "He kind of reminds me of the Buster Brown of journalism."
"I'm beginning to wonder about JrJr's conservative credentials," SrJr said sotto voce, arching his left eyebrow way up past his medulla oblongata.
"Why wasn't John Sununu or Rush Limbaugh invited?" asked Newt.
"Well Newt," said the elder Bill, sliding around to the tiller, "this is a small boat; you get the picture."
"Well Bill, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for naming it after me."
"And to think Dad could have named it the 'Jenny' or the 'Francois Mitterand'," said JrJr.
"Thanks Newton. I would have invited more fellow contractual conservative Republicans if the Newt could hold us all comfortably."
"Why didn't you invite any Afro-American Republicans, Dad?"
"Well, you know the answer to that son, now, don't you.
"First of all, Thomas Sowell, who always has an open invite to any boating outing of mine, refuses to be seen in public with me without fellow libertarian Charles Murray present. Now I couldn't invite Charlie, could I, with his race and IQ book still hot in the public's and press's ears? And if I did that, notwithstanding, either Bob or Pat would have been mighty chagrined from being excluded!
"Secondly, Walter Williams asked to be excepted of his own rational utilitarian laissez-faire volition.
"Thirdly, Clarence Thomas being a supreme court justice has to be careful about politicizing in public.
"Finally, Alan Keyes told me he doesn't like to be seen outside with fellow conservative white people on balmy days like this, preferring to argue with Liberals and Democrats inside, or start in-party fights."
"He must be Heideggerian or something," said JrJr.
SrJr ignored his son's existential quip.
"Well, that's all very well and good, Bill," said Newt, "but I must admit, I'm disappointed that you didn't invite a conservative Jewish American. I'm sure either Pat or Bob wouldn't have minded relinquishing his seat for one of our fine Jewish friends aboard."
"Well Newt, I did invite Dennis Prager and Irving Kristol but neither would come on a Saturday, so Bob took the Jewish guy's place."
"I thought that was my role," said Buchanan winking at SrJr.
"Well," said Bill, "you and Robert are both fungible commodities in that regard.
"Moreover, I wouldn't invite any reformed Jew or Jew who would do anything on his sabbath but be with his own kind..."
"Which is why you would only christen your boat on a Jewish sabbath," said JrJr.
Masterfully holding the tiller at its center of gravity now, guiding the yacht's course and destiny, Buckley looked surreptitiously over his shoulder and said, "Touche, son. Touche..."
"While I'm not against private masturbation per se," Newt was saying to Buchanan, "I'm with you one-hundred and ten percent on Elders wanting to make it an immoral public policy issue."
"As a rational objective Roman Catholic," said Buchanan, "it's a sin in any context, public or private."
"Yeah," said Novak chuckling to Heston, "Pee Wee Herman would have gotten a Surgeon General's commendation if Joycelin had her druthers..."
"Do you masturbate?" Pat asked Chuck.
"No, Patrick, I've never masturbated in my life. I had my first woman when I was 3 years old. She was a Nubian maiden-princess adopted by Hittites from Rehoboth Beach in Delaware who fell madly in love with me one day when my father and I were playing catch. She was walking by our house and asked if she could be my baby sitter. She said she'd be eternally grateful, and offered to do it for just free milk and cookies. After that, any time I felt the urge to Amo, Amas and Amore, I merely gave her a ring and she'd come over pretending to teach me geography.
"I have perfect self control. I don't desire women, they desire me..."
"Wow!" said all the other conservative Republicans present in awed envy and admiration.
"What happened to her?" said SrJr.
"Well, she never married, Bill, and when I became a young man I had to stop seeing her, having an interest in girls my own age. This devastated her, of course. She returned to her homeland to become a nutritionist for a consulting firm started by David Stockman. Or else she got a job in a nuclear power plant. I'm not sure which..."
"The Tofflers are remarkable people," Newt said to Novak and Buchanan. "They've taught me all I need to know about the future, and I believe their ideas and theories of it should be adopted by all serious conservative Republicans careful to not repeat the tragic mistakes of history."
"Alvin and Heidi?" said Heston.
"Yes," Newt nodded.
"They sound like Chipmunks," Buchanan whispered grinning to Novak.
"If I recall my modern history correctly, professor," JrJr said softly, "some otherwise respected futurists in 1933, when the world was in a very precarious situation as now, invested their abstract intellectual capital in another history buff with a recidivist vision of the future..."
But everyone heard him and gave him a hard censorious look...
Speaking now in iambic pentameter, SrJr said:
"For God we live, not Marx or Galbraith;
The Newt and Lord are one in Americ-us..."
"God is no respecter of yachting parties, William," Heston said reprovingly.
Slowly recoiling while tilting his head back and pointing a finger up at the clear blue gorgeous sky, the bard of New Haven rejoined:
"Eschatologically speaking, that may be so. But epistemologically, the neo-Platonic gravitas of cognitive dissonance vis-a-vis our temporal substance, sui generis and juris, must tilt its gossamer wings relatively in the Newt's pristine favor than any other worldly context extant..."
"The Angels are on Dad's side."
"Touche again, Son!"
"Speaking of them," said Novak, "I'm getting a new oligopolistic CPA firm to start handling my perfectly competitive capital gains."
"What's wrong, Bob," said Newt winking at SrJr, "the Angels aren't for capital gains tax reductions anymore?"
"No, I meant Touche, not the Angels."
"What about Dupers and Lybrand?" asked Buchanan.
But before anybody could answer, Novak, who was monitoring activity on the mainland through a pair of binoculars, shouted: "Hey! Isn't that Sam Donaldson, Mike Kinsley, Alan Dershowitz, and Morton Kondracke over there spying on us behind those bushes?"
"Let me see!" barked SrJr, leaving the helm.
JrJr took it in his stead.
"Let's all give them the finger!" said Newt.
"That won't be necessary," said SrJr giving the binoculars back to Bob. "As soon as they realized we knew they were there watching us, they ran away like the sniveling despicable valueless liberal poltroons they are.
"Too bad this boat isn't MIRVed..." he grinned menacingly.
SrJr gruffly pushed JrJr away from the tiller.
"Wasn't Francis a World War 2 nautical mascot?" said Novak, whispering to Buchanan. "You know, that donkey or jackass Donald O'Connor made a few movies with."
They didn't realize it but SrJr overheard Bob. Irate, the Sea Wolf lurched the boat hard from starboard, sending everyone but he and his son at the stern holding on to a spar, flying to port, almost dumping them all over the side.
Petrified, after they recovered from the horrifying shock, each one apologized for insulting SrJr or hurting his feelings.
Gritting his teeth, he said, "My middle name is Frank."
"Dad was named after St. Frank of Assisi."
"Watch it, son. I could harpoon you if I wanted..."
"Whatever you say, Ahab..."
"Ya know son, if George Will weren't so afraid of getting his hair mussed up and suit a little wrinkled, I'd have invited him in your stead..."
"Well, one thing I'll say for you, Dad," JrJr mumbled under his breath. "Your IQ has to be at least 10 points higher than Forrest Gump's. But Murray's another story..."
"And you had to talk me out of inviting Pat Robertson. Because he'd make the atmosphere 'too sticky', you said. I could kill you now for that..."
Heston, who was at the bow by himself gazing onto the rapidly approaching horizon, suddenly spun around and, striking a rugged individualist pose, said:
"We're all men around here
Republican conservative guys
Who don't ask for more
Than that you pull your own weight
And don't rock our boat
'Cause we manage to float
Amidst life's rocky waves
Smoothly on our capital gains
With monetary dividends to boot
Supplementing fiscal loopholes a-full.
"So don't be jealous
If Newt got a book
And Bill got a boat
And Bob got a portfolio
That could choke a hungry dead bull."
The sky immediately started to darken whilst gray rain clouds slid across the sun, pushing away the picture-book day.
"Oh well, I guess we're gonna have to call it a day now, hunh, Bill," said Heston looking up at it.
"Yep. This wasn't in the forecast."
"It's these liberal meteorologists, if ya ask me," said Newt.
Buchanan and Novak concurred, but the others expressed bemused skepticism.
SrJr steered the boat around back toward harbor.
"Tomorrow is Sunday, the Christian sabbath," Buchanan noted solemnly.
"That's right," said Heston "and you know what that means?"
"What?"
"Why that,
The sun will come out
Tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar
It's tomorrow..."
All joined in a chorus as the Newt headed back to dock after it's first short aborted day afloat.
The End
Written on April 7, 1995.
Copyright 1995, Robert Basso
Robert Basso's essays and stories may not be published, broadcast, or otherwise distributed in any fashion without the prior written authority of Robert Basso.
Robert Basso
700 Lower State Rd. #25C3
North Wales, PA 19454-2167
I can also be contacted e-mail on CompuServe where my ID number is 76017,1462.
