Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin (21 page)
Read Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin Online
Authors: Calvin Trillin
2008
Massachusetts Governor, Contender for the
Republican Presidential Nomination
Yes, Mitt’s so slick of speech and slick of garb, he
Reminds us all of Ken, of Ken and Barbie—
So quick to shed his moderate regalia,
He may, like Ken, be lacking genitalia.
2008
Texas Senator, Contender for the
Republican Presidential Nomination
“We have sort of become a nation of whiners.”
—Phil Gramm,
The Washington Times
As senator, Phil was among the designers
Of laws that helped Enron, which showed no decliners,
Manipulate prices of oil from refiners.
(Its stock can be used in your cat box, for liners.)
His laws helped the mortgage thieves rook naïve signers,
Who then lost their houses and can’t afford diners.
So now he decides we’re a nation of whiners.
Figures.
2008
Arizona Senator, Republican Nominee for President
A Hymn of Thanksgiving Sung by Right-Wing Preachers About John McCain
Oh, thank you, Sweet Jesus,
Oh, thank you so much
For any distress John has got.
We hope he continues
This streak of bad luck.
Though Christians, we hate him a lot.
Yes, we hate him a lot, we hate him a lot.
Sweet Jesus, we hate him a lot.
He called us all bigots,
Or something like that.
And just ’cause we slandered his daughter.
We did it for Jesus,
Like all that we do,
And John McCain knows that, or oughter.
Yes, we hate him a lot, we hate him a lot.
Sweet Jesus, we hate him a lot.
He treats us real nice now.
He panders to us.
We know, though, he’s not born again.
We hope that he loses.
We’d even prefer
A heathenish Mormon. Amen.
… but then …
A Hymn of Forgiveness Sung by Right-Wing Preachers About John McCain
Oh, thank you, Sweet Jesus,
Oh, thank you so much.
At last John has learned he’s our debtor.
He chose Sarah Palin,
Who’s real born again.
Who cares if his guys didn’t vet her?
Yes, we like him much better, we like him much better.
Sweet Jesus, we like him much better.
She wouldn’t kill babies,
Which Lieberman’s for.
And that’s why McCain had to get her.
He listens to us now.
He’s up in our laps.
He yelps like a small Irish setter.
Yes, we like him much better, we like him much better.
Sweet Jesus, we like him much better.
2008
First Lady
As Performed by the Swiftboat Singers
Who’s not a retiring, shy Southern belle?
Whose Harvard degree is the way you can tell
That she’s so elite she once ate a morel?
Who doesn’t wear flag pins in either lapel?
Michelle.
Rah! Rah! Smear! Rah! Rah!
Who might be a part of a terrorist cell?
Who might have the powers for casting a spell?
Whose fist-knocks may summon the devil from hell?
Who could be, we reckon, a Muslim as well?
Michelle.
Rah! Rah! Smear! Rah! Rah!
2008
Alaska Governor, Republican Nominee for
Vice President
The Barbra Streisand Standard as Sung by Sarah Palin
On a clear day
I see Vladivostok,
So I know world affairs.
Don’t say, “No way.”
Though I know elites mock,
It’s osmosis that does it—well, that and our prayers.
And Joe Biden sees New Jersey from his shore.
And that’s just a state. That doesn’t rate. It’s me who knows the score.
On a clear day,
On a clear day,
I see Vladivostok …
And Novosibirsk …
And Krasnoyarsk …
And Novokuznetsk …
And Omsk …
And Tomsk …
And more!
2008
Illinois Governor
It seemed to Rod Blagojevich
A powerful appointment which
Was his to make should make him rich.
His plan turned out to have a glitch.
Perhaps the feds had flipped a snitch.
So much for Rod Blagojevich.
2008
Pennsylvania Senator
Voilà, a GOP defector!
He’s unbeloved Arlen Specter—
As kindly as a rent collector
Or Hannibal, the hungry Lecter.
(Remember when we watched him hector
Anita Hill, so he’d deflect her
From Thomas sniffing her as nectar?)
The Dems say, “Welcome to our sector.
Obama now is your protector.”
A vote’s a vote.
2009
President of the United States
His calm, say the pundits, is not the right mode.
To look like a leader he’ll have to explode.
The man has to demonstrate more of an id.
For that there is nothing like flipping your lid.
That’s right: What they say is to get Big Mo back
Obama should contemplate blowing his stack.
According to them, what could help him the most’ll
Be some sort of sign that he’s finally gone postal.
2010
Speaker of the House
It’s true for greed this has to be a gainer
(To lobbyists John Boehner’s on retainer).
Can anything be said for Speaker Boehner?
Yes. Others in the party are insaner.
2010
New Jersey Governor, Potential Presidential Candidate
So Trump is out. We’ve lost our best buffoon—
We’ll surely miss that gaseous air balloon.
Oh sure, there’s Newt. Though Newt jokes once were great,
They’re getting old. He’s past his sell-by date.
Chris Christie was the one we hoped they’d draft.
Yes, in our fondest daydreams people laughed
As we eyed Christie’s body, fore and aft,
Comparing him to William Howard Taft.
But Christie has insisted he’ll not run.
Is anybody left who’s any fun?
Oh Lord, please hear our prayers. We’re on our knees.
At least just leave us Sarah Palin—please.
2011
“The New York term for what others might call a typical American or a real American is out-of-towner.”
Murray Tepper was sitting at the wheel of a dark blue Chevrolet Malibu that was parked on the uptown side of Forty-third Street, between Fifth and Sixth. Behind him, a car was coming slowly down Forty-third Street. As it passed the imposing structure occupied by the Century club, it slowed even more, and, a few yards farther, came to a stop just behind Tepper’s Chevrolet. Taking his eyes away from the paper for only an instant, Tepper shot a quick glance toward his side
mirror. He could see a Mercury with New Jersey license plates—probably theatergoers from the suburbs who knew that these streets in the forties were legal for long-term metered parking after six. The New Jersey people would be hoping to find a spot, grab a bite in a sushi bar or a deli, and then walk to the theater. Good planners, people from New Jersey, Tepper thought, except for the plan they must have hatched at some point to move to New Jersey. (The possibility that anybody started out in New Jersey—that any number of people had actually been born there—was not a possibility Tepper had ever dwelled on.) He pretended to concentrate on his newspaper, although he was, in fact, still thinking of the state of New Jersey, which he envisioned as a series of vast shopping-mall parking lots, where any fool could find a spot. The Mercury’s driver tapped his horn a couple of times, and then, getting no response, moved even with Tepper’s Chevy. The woman who was sitting on the passenger side stuck her head out of the window and said, “Going out?”
Tepper said nothing.
“Are you going out?” the woman asked again.
Tepper did not look up, but with his right hand he reached over toward the window and wagged his index finger back and forth, in the gesture some Southern Europeans have perfected as a way of dealing with solicitations from shoeshine boys or beggars. Tepper had been able to wag his finger in the negative with some authority since 1954, when, as a young draftee who regularly reminded himself to be grateful that at least the shooting had stopped, he spent thirteen miserable months as a clerk-typist in a motor pool in Pusan and had to ward off prostitutes and beggars every time he left the base. An acquaintance had once expressed envy for the gesture as something that seemed quite cosmopolitan, but Tepper would have traded it in an instant for the ability to do the legendary New York taxi-hailing whistle that was accomplished by jamming a finger in each corner of the mouth.
He had never been able to master that whistle, despite years of patient coaching by a doorman named Hector, on West Eighty-third. Tepper had encountered Hector while looking for overnight parking spots in his own neighborhood, in the days before his wife managed to persuade him to take space for his car by the month in a multilevel
garage a few blocks from their apartment. He hadn’t seen anybody use the fingers-in-the-mouth whistle on the street for a long time. He hadn’t tried it for a long time himself. Was it something that might simply come to him, after all these years? Now that he wasn’t trying it several evenings a week under the pressure of Hector’s watchful eye, might it just appear, the way a smooth golf swing sometimes comes inexplicably to duffers once the tension of their expensive lessons has ended? He was about to jam a couple of fingers in the corners of his mouth to see if the gift might have arrived unannounced when he realized that the Mercury was still idling next to him, making it necessary to remain focused on the newspaper.
“He’s not going out,” the woman shouted to the man at the wheel, loudly enough for Tepper to hear.
“He’s not going out?” the driver shouted back, sounding incredulous. “What do you mean he’s not going out?”
“He probably parks there just before six and sits there so he can tell people he’s not going out,” the woman shouted.
The driver gunned the motor in irritation, and the Mercury from New Jersey pulled away. Just past the entrance to the Princeton Club, it briefly stopped again, the occupants apparently having mistaken a no-parking zone in front of the post office for a legal spot. Then the driver slowly made his way toward Sixth Avenue, speeding up suddenly when a spot came open on the left and screeching to a halt a moment later as a sport-utility vehicle two cars in front of him positioned itself to go into the spot. The woman got out of the Mercury and shouted back toward Tepper. “It’s your fault!” she said. “That should have been our spot! It’s your fault. Making people waste time talking to you! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
Tepper, pretending not to hear her, went back to his newspaper. He was reading a story about an office betting pool that had been held every week in a commodities-trading firm for as long as anyone in the firm could remember. A committee of the firm’s partners met regularly to decide on each week’s pool topic, always based on current events. The office pool had been a subject of press interest before. During the Vietnam War, some people objected to the pool’s being based for several weeks in a row on casualty figures. One of the firm’s partners responded by saying, “People who don’t want to play hardball
should get out of the game,” but the casualty-figure pools were quietly dropped in favor of pools based on how many tons of explosives would be dropped on North Vietnam that week.
The commodity firm’s pool was back in the news because it had been based that week on how many people would be cited for hailing a taxicab incorrectly. The mayor, Frank Ducavelli, as part of his never-ending campaign to make the city more orderly, had declared a crackdown on people who stepped out in the street to hail a taxi rather than remaining on the curb, as required by an ordinance that nobody but the mayor and his city attorney had ever heard of. Tabloid headlines didn’t have the space for the mayor’s entire last name. It was known that when Frank Ducavelli first became a force in the city he had hoped that headline writers might refer to him as the Duke, suggesting not only nobility but the Dodger great Duke Snider. Given the mayor’s interest in order and his draconian response to anyone who disagreed with him, though, the tabloids tended to go with Il Duce. The item Tepper was reading about the weekly pool at the commodities-trading firm was headlined
IL DUCE EDICT HOT COMMODITY
.