Congressional Scandals
Monday, November 20th, 2006
This week’s question:
You’re in Congress right now—congrats! What’s the scandal that’s going to bring you down?
Next week’s question:
Since Murdoch pulled the plug on OJ, he’s asked you pen an “If I Did It, Here’s How it Happened” book instead—what’s yours about?
Your answer goes here (in 100 words or less, please). We’ll post our favorites on the front page of SMITH.
What began in earnest as an attempt to bridge racial and cultural divides, the resolution I sponsored (HR 8932) encouraging the nation to “hump the differences out,” is met with stiff resistance from both the religious conservatives and the NAACP. It doesn’t take long before I’m a pariah of both the right and left, though I continue to be a fixture at the most fashionable Washington soirees and, of course, the page’s dorm. Ultimately, my undoing comes from a leaked 2005 tax return where I employed Enron-like accounting methods while freelancing in New York.
I’m the candidate borne of Super Size Me and Fast Food Nation. After all, how can the leaders of tomorrow stop global warming and foster cross- cultural understanding if their developing brains are gummed up with hydrogenated oils and corn syrup? My downfall began with a single, desiccated French fry. I guess the carwash guy decided to do a thorough job for once, and took out my three-year-old’s car seat after I dropped off the Prius. That was all it took to tip off my opposition. Before long, they had amassed a hunk of McNugget coating, a half-used packet of ketchup, and the innards of a Happy Meal toy. I’m not proud, but I will say it’s easy to maintain your ideals when a hungry toddler isn’t howling in the backseat while you try to hold a conference call on your Bluetooth.
First they’ll find out I’m not actually a U.S. citizen (apparently my accent and ability to debate effectively never gave me away during the race). Then they’ll find out I’m a Christian, despite being one of the few genuinely leftwing representatives. Faced with this breech of “the whole package and nothing but the package” laws, nobody in politics or the media will talk to me, so my career implodes silently, like a European car at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Liberals can’t stand that I’m Christian, liberal Christians can’t stand that I’m theologically quite conservative, and theological conservatives think I’m a liar when they find out that my theology makes me semi-socialist.
The scandal that will rock my political career will involve a photocopy of my ass. Not just any photocopy of my ass, but one taken on the House Floor, on a copy machine outside the Republican Cloakroom. I was a Congressional Page in ‘88, back before representatives were sending text messages. Therefore, we had plenty of time on our hands to drop our drawers and roost on copy machines. Okay, so bare asses run amuck on Capitol Hill. Big deal. But how many of those asses are 15 years old and pressed up against glass? Okay. Don’t answer that.
My décor will sink me.
Each new member of Congress is presented with a budget for staffing and daily expenses. They’re also presented with money to decorate their offices. There’s where I am headed for trouble. For one, everything goes with the Capitol.
I can already see it, sneaking into the rotunda late at night to slip in an amendment to the appropriations bill giving Restoration Hardware forgiveness on all federal taxes, or taking to the floor to ardently argue the merits of the No China Left Behind Act, which will force every household in America to maintain at least one chip-free set of Crate & Barrel dinnerware. I will retreat into my plush office until the day one snarky Red Stater decides to turn me in to Roll Call for having space that looks like the court of Louis XIV. The committee chairman will start asking for receipts for my new English roll-top desk in burnt amber; Carson Kressley will testify before the Senate grand jury. I will leave in disgrace.
Let’s just hope I don’t forget the custom stationery. That shit’s expensive.
“Never made a promise I didn’t keep” was my highly successful campaign slogan. Of course I never meant it to be taken literally. Still, it didn’t take the media long to make a mockery of my lofty claim. When I was 20, and living in Manila, I let a fat, middle-aged, hairdresser named Ding-Dong give me head in exchange for some antique Catholic icons that decorated his salon. They included an old wooden santo—San Roque, the one with the little dog—and some chased-silver cherubs that looked as though they had been looted from an altar. Long story short: I couldn’t get it up, but was able to talk Ding-Dong into letting me take the spoils anyway, promising to come back and let him finish the job another day. I never kept that promise.
Received wisdom says that the surest way to lose office is to be caught shtupping a live boy or a dead girl. I got tripped up by becoming a political turducken: a dead girl inside a live boy—inside me. I was being stitched up after a hernia operation, and I accidentally rolled off the table — right onto the neighboring procedure, which involved a boy who’d swallowed his younger sister (don’t ask). They sewed me up before anyone noticed. So now we’re like Russian nesting dolls, and I’m out of a job. I could have done so much for the country.
“Adam,” Speaker Pelosi will say. “Please, have a seat.”
I will look at her over her well ordered desk, the neat stack of dossiers on Republican targets, the pens color coded in her “Cali Rocks” mug, trying hard to avoid the pristine edge of her oak desk, the kind of smooth surface you can only bite into once, before you can’t stop.
“So Nance, what can I do you for?”
She’ll toss the pencils onto her desk, one at a time, all half-gnawed, then take out the pictures of the chairs and desks, also gnawed.
“To the chase, Blackman,” she’ll say and god, who can fight that stare?
“It’s true,” I’ll say. “What you’ve heard. It’s all true.”
And she’ll say, “Badgers? Badgers?”
“I’m sorry,” I’ll say, and thinking of my youth, I’m sure, is what will do it. Break down and sob like the little human child I wasn’t allowed to be after I was left on the Upper Peninsula, on the edge of a Badger den.
“I’ll apologize,” I sobbed. “I’ll replace the desks and chairs.”
“And pets.”
“Of course! I’ll even buy new pencils! For everybody in the majority!”
“Pencils!” she’ll say. “Dog carcasses! If only that’s all this was. We’re talking integrity here, Blackman. All that work to distance you from those post-college years wandering in Wisconsin. A Real Michigander, we called you. Vote Blue. And now you’re saying you were raised in Wisconsin. By a competing Big Ten mascot.”
That, I like to think, is when I will do it. Stand up and say that my pseudo-family was certainly not just a bunch of mascots. I will leave Washington, integrity intact, and scurry my way up to I-94, the old scavenger’s buffet.
More likely, though, I will do something more human. Call a press conference. Hit the talk shows. The public craves reform, and who are we, as politicians, to deny them the illusion?
Rachel Pine, Representative - I- NYC, has this scandal-in-waiting:
It’s going to happen one day when I’m on interminable hold with customer service at Verizon Wireless. The conversation will go like this:
“Thank you for calling Verizon Customer Service. We value your call and will be with you shortly. Your estimated hold time is LESS THAN (for some reason that part is always recorded at a different audio level and sometimes in a different voice) 20 minutes.
I glance at my watch and begin to wait. I am cued to key in my account number, which I do. After 23 minutes a person says, “Thank you for calling, may I have your account number?” This time I am not going to whine about the fact that I’ve already keyed it in. I just say it.
“Reap Pine, how may we help you today?”
“Reap? Oh, you mean, Rep.”
“That’s what I said, Rep Pine.”
“You said Reap.”
“Miss, I don’t have time for you to be argumentative. How may I help you?”
“My bill has $900 in calls that I didn’t make.”
“Well if you didn’t make them, how did they get on your bill?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m calling you.”
“I do not have to be spoken to this way and I WILL hang up the phone.”
Oh God, no, anything but that. I settle in and use my sweetest, most apologetic tone. “I’m sorry, I have been billed for many calls I didn’t make and am trying to get to the bottom of it.”
I tell her the dates, times and amounts of the calls. I also point out that until now, my bill has never gone over $125 so this is obviously a mistake. Also, I don’t know anyone in Papua, New Guinea, although I’d like to (I think I’m on that committee now).
“From what I’m seeing here, these calls were all completed. I can’t help you.”
“I don’t care if you say they are completed. They weren’t ‘completed.’ They were never even made. Are you listening to me?”
“A lot of people make calls and then don’t want to pay for them,” she says smugly.
“May I have your name?”
“I cannot give you that information.”
“You are sitting with all of my telephone records, my billing information and personal data in front of you, but you won’t tell me your name?”
“That’s right,” she says, suppressing a snort, which is what causes my id to separate from my ego, or my superego, or just my tongue to come loose.
“Listen lady. I will have the INS, CIA and everyone else from the fucking alphabet soup of this government called in to investigate this situation. Your job will be outsourced to India faster than you can say ‘Dharamasala.’? I say, in the nastiest way possible. “And baby, my next bill is going to have a proviso for dealing with people like you. It’s going to penalize companies who employ morons who can’t do even the simplest job. Do you think Verizon is going to keep you if they have to pay a multi-million dollar fine, and mandatory job retraining for all of their customer service team?,” Bangalore,” I say, enjoying the way the syllables sound coming out of my mouth. “That’s where your job’s going.”
The bill is taking shape in my mind and I see myself on the House floor, proposing it, to the wild applause of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle.
Click.
Within two hours I’m handed a phone slip from an aide. “Call WaPo re:
Verizon conversation. They have tape.”
I expect just about every correspondent at Fox News to go apeshit when they discover I use the Magic Eight Ball to figure out my vote on every single piece of legislation.