Counting Coup with Man on Dog

It was a hard rain in the big city and the slick black streets wound through boroughs of corruption and promise alike. My contact had promised me an exclusive with a Beltway insider ? the chance, and chat, of a lifetime. Finally, a member of the media was going to penetrate the fog of delusion and pierce the aura of bullshit that hung heavy around those who forge our fates: a policy-maker had agreed, for convoluted and unfathomable reasons of his own, to open up and tell the truth.

The address scribbled onto a scrap of brown paper, torn from a lunch bag and slipped under my office door, proved to be that of a seedy dive located in the center of Squalorville. Hooded eyes tracked me through the room where a hush had fallen the moment I?d walked through the door. The dingy light from a mere handful of low-wattage bulbs glimmered dimly on shot-glasses holding meager rations of watered-down rotgut; half-concealed switchblades gleamed; a topless dancer wriggled to her feet and slithered through the gloom toward the bar. One booth in a dark corner sported the agreed-upon signal, a red candle burning in a votive globe. I made my way through the building susurrus of a dozen tentatively resumed conversations to the back of the bar, where a shadowy figure, thin and wide-eyed, waited for me. Then he leaned forward into the glow of the candle, his coarse skin and glassy eyes those of a maniac? or, wait? those of a sock puppet!

Our interview began without preamble.

EDGEBoston: Wait a minute, you?re not Rick Santorum.

RICK SANTORUM: Yes I am.

EDGE: No you?re not. You?re a sock puppet.

RS: A wobbly-eyed, red-throated purveyor of the words that emanate from the fiendish hand that controls my every move? Is that what you?re saying I am?

EDGE: In fact, aren?t you the same sock puppet that guest starred on Coupling as Jake the Snake?

RS: I didn?t come to discuss my personal life.

EDGE: This is bullshit.

RS: I am a snake of truth! Er? I mean? I?ve come here tonight to tell you the truth?

EDGE: Okay then, Senator Santorum ?

RS: Call me by my tribal name: Man on Dog.

EDGE: Um?

RS: You didn?t know that I?m one-eighty-fifth American Indian, did you? ?What your people call corn holing??

EDGE: Right, okay. So what is your problem with gay people anyway, Sen ? that is, Man on Dog?

RS: Well, obviously, being gay is a choice.

EDGE: You think so, do you?

RS: Well, don?t get me wrong! So is being black.

EDGE: Excuse me?

RS: Sure, these days being black is optional. So anyone who chooses to be black is just asking for whatever they get.

EDGE: How is being black optional and what does that have to do with being gay?

RS: Michael Jackson opted to be white. And what a success story he is! With prayer, faith, charitable choice, and school vouchers, anything is possible.

EDGE: Huh?

RS: Jesus makes all things possible. And even plausible! That?s why you must be re-born into the spirit of Christ. If you were black, you must be re-born as white. If you were gay, you must be re-born as straight. If you?re a woman, you better just shut the hell up and start bakin? another brat.

EDGE: What are you talking about?

RS: There?s hope of redemption for everyone! It?s a matter of choice and of personal responsibility. That?s the great thing about our democracy. Democracy gives you the choice to be Saved ? or to slide down the slippery, needle-strewn, abortion-ravaged road to Government Internment Camps.

EDGE: What Government Internment Camps?

RS: Oh, nothing? nothing? you must have heard me wrong? But the point is, it?s up to you whether or not we break up your marriage by force and strangle your hopes and dreams. You simply have to choose the right hopes and dreams.

EDGE: Senator ?

RS: ?Man on Dog.?

EDGE: Right, pardon me. Man on Dog, you know that you?re looked upon as a maniac and an out-of-control extremist, don?t you?

RS: They will hurl stones and epithets at me and yea, strip the flesh from my bones with fish-hooks and fondue forks, but I will rise again on the fourth day and stride the hallowed halls arrayed in splendid raiments of Egyptian leather.

EDGE: What?

RS: What?

EDGE: I was just saying that you?ve gained a reputation as a maniac. Does this worry you, seeing as you?re up for re-election?

RS: Let me tell you something. I give speeches to cheers of ?Amen!? and ?Hallelujiah!? I?m not worried about elections. Elections are merely the will of the people. I act and speak according to the will of God. I am the instrument of the Burning Bush. And so is Bush.

EDGE: Burning?

RS: That?s treason, boy!

EDGE: Senator ? sorry, Man on Dog, is it really a desirable thing for a Senator to give speeches that are met with hails of ?Amen!? and ?Hallelujiah!? Isn?t that sort of thing best left to religious television and traveling minstrels?

RS: We are a Christian country, and it?s time we started acting like it. If you choose to be raped and impregnated by a grinning cafeteria Catholic with a knife, then you have to live with the consequences and not come crying to me for an abortion. If you choose to love men, then you better be a woman, or else your choice will lead you to the lockup. If you choose to be black and poor, well then, quit playing victim and do something about it. Get a job? a nose job. A skin job. Like Michael Jackson. You can be reborn in the name of Christ and you can be a straight white man. As long as you?re not a woman.

EDGE: You know, Man on Dog, it?s possible for women to choose to become men. That?s another modern medical marvel.

RS: You?re sick. This interview is over.

EDGE: And you?re a sock puppet filled with the hand of a twisted lunatic. You bet this interview is over.

RS: Will you at least pay for my drink?