The American Way: A Politically Incorrect Satire

By Gene Brewer

Not handsome enough to succeed in politics, the Coach vows to produce three sons, the first of whom is slated to become President of the United States; the second, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; and the third, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. But even the best-laid plans can go awry, as they most certainly do in this hilarious spoof of American society, politics, and values.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 16, 2007
• ISBN: 9781477179543

Gene Brewer

Before becoming a novelist, Gene Brewer studied DNA replication and cell division at several major research stations. He is the author of ON A BEAM OF LIGHT, K-PAX II and the forthcoming K-PAX III, published in summer 2002, which will complete the K-PAX trilogy. He lives in New York City.

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Copyright © 2007 by Gene Brewer.

ISBN:

   Hardcover   978-1-4257-1881-7

   Softcover    978-1-4257-1882-4

   eBook    978-1-4771-7954-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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CONTENTS

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

OTHER BOOKS BY GENE BREWER

K-PAX

K-PAX II: On a Beam of Light

K-PAX III: The Worlds of Prot

K-PAX: the Trilogy, featuring Prot’s Report

Creating K-PAX

Alejandro in Twice Told

Murder on Spruce Island

Wrongful Death

Ben and I

Watson’s God

K-PAX IV: A New Visitor from the Constellation Lyra

Funniest social/political satire since Catch-22.

—J. Heller

Brewer is kind of a sober Hunter S. Thompson.

—H. S. Thompson

Out-Vonneguts Vonnegut!

—K. Vonnegut

I laughed till I cried.

—R. Nixon

All the mordancy of an Oliphant cartoon.

—P. Oliphant

I couldn’t decide whether it was fiction or nonfiction!

—N. Mailer

Pulls no punches! It really floored me!

—M. Ali

This is the most insulting book I have ever read. In fact, it’s the only book I have ever read.

—R. Reagan

I loved it!

—G. Brewer

So did I!

—K. Brewer

Brewer pulls it off!

—B. Starr

No one escapes Brewer’s word processor. If you are offended, so is everyone else.

—M. Downey, Jr.

Before you vote again, read The American Way!

—M. Gorbachev

Irreverent as heck!

—B. Graham

More acidulous than Edward Abbey!

—the late E. Abbey

I felt like such a fool.

—G.H.W. Bush

Editor’s note: this novel has been edited to preclude offending any United States Senator. Furthermore, any resemblance between the characters depicted herein and actual persons living or dead is purely etc., etc., etc.

The business of government is business.

—C. Coolidge

PART ONE

During the optimistic reign of President Calvin Coolidge, when everyone was getting better and better every day in every way, a young baby was born in a small but rapidly-growing American town whose motto was, and still is: A GREAT PLACE TO LIVE AND WORK AND RAISE A FAMILY—ALL OTHERS STAY AWAY.

He was given a Christian name, of course, but before he could figure out whom it referred to his father began calling him Coach. And, as is often the case with sobriquets, it stayed with him for the rest of his life.

Like all of us he inherited the worst traits of both his parents. Thus, from the beginning, he exhibited that most dangerous combination of human characteristics: a humorless fearlessness. He was equally unintimidated by iodine and the Buckleys’ German shepherd, and he thoroughly enjoyed lightning and thunder. Utterly unafraid of the dark he would frighten his little brothers by suddenly appearing at their windows after they had gone to bed, like the devil himself, fire-eyed and intangible.

One black night he brought home a dead raccoon and left it in the kitchen for his mother, a deeply superstitious and pathologically docile woman, to discover in the morning. Dazed and staggering, she finally lost consciousness and fell, ironically, onto the deceased, awakening later amidst a cloud of pungent miasma and tiny winged insects.

After that, everyone got his own breakfast.

His first few years of schooling might best be described as boring. The only things he learned of value came from his pint-sized contemporaries—how to play poker and mumbletypeg, for example. The biggest bombshell, of course, was how babies were made (the school itself had washed its hands of this unwholesome topic). Another was never to trust anyone and, as usual, it was learned the hard way: his best friend ratted on him for lifting a girl’s skirt shortly after he had learned how babies were made. His exhausted teacher finally stopped whacking the unrepentant Coach when it became apparent that he was totally oblivious to the punishment. And so it went, grade after grade.

Being fearless permitted him, at an early age, to observe dispassionately, and therefore to understand, what everyone else was afraid of: change, the unknown, and especially death, the ultimate change, the final unknown. With something like amusement he found that he was surrounded by terrified people—for every natural phenomenon or human activity there were multitudes who were frightened out of their wits by it.

By the time he was nine he had learned how most people cope with these otherwise debilitating fears: by tenaciously clinging, with the support and encouragement of the government (of either party), to the existing state, and by fervent belief in an afterlife, as promised by one or another religion.

With this knowledge came the realization that great rewards accrue to those who are able to manipulate these desperate needs. The most powerful people he had heard about were the President and the Pope, both champions of the status quo. The ideas of chronic celibacy and constant prayer didn’t particularly appeal, however, so he decided to become President.

During the great depression his father, no longer able to sell enough insurance to provide for his family, succumbed to a secret, lifelong ambition and ran off with a traveling carnival to become a geek, leaving his ill-equipped wife to raise their four children alone. But here is what makes America great: faced with overwhelming adversity she pulled herself together, did what had to be done, and each of her sons became pillars of their respective communities. The strain finally killed her, of course, but no matter—if it hadn’t, something else would have.

As for the Coach, who loved and hated his old man with equal dispassion, the experience taught him another valuable lesson about life, shared by all who survived the great depression: the paramountcy of money. It was a lesson he never forgot, nor allowed his children to forget.

In high school a previously undetected heart murmur (precipitated by bouts with strep throat and rheumatic fever, which he ignored), precluded his participation in vigorous sports. Instead, he took up the less manly activities of golf and hunting, edited the newspaper and yearbook, and led the debaters to their first state championship, arguing successfully that the President of the United States should be granted unlimited power to declare and wage war as he deems necessary to protect American interests at home and abroad.

His valedictory address was so fervently jingoistic that every male classmate—and many of their relatives—enlisted in his favorite military service the following Monday morning. Sadly, the Coach himself was rejected on account of his muttering heart (and flat feet), and he was forced to work his way through college by playing poker every weekend instead.

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It was one of those small, conservative arts, church-related schools replete with evergreen lawns and everred brick buildings inhabited by elbow-patched professors sucking on spit-encrusted pipes, like so many thumbs. He immediately chose a major in political science with minors in American history and business, all intertwined like the roots of the tall oak trees lining the narrow campus walkways, and so began his noble quest for the Presidency.

Ignoring his roommate he immersed himself in his textbooks, emerging only for classes, food, and payday, the regular Friday night poker games. To his dismay, however, he soon discovered what it takes many hopefuls a lifetime to figure out: in America, election to public office requires a subtle combination of looks, talent, experience, hard work, perseverance, and luck. Just like every other human endeavor.

Thus, it was while leaving the library, named for a corpulent, nonanonymous benefactor, one moonless winter night that he realized he would never become a politician, let alone President of this or any other country. He was anything but handsome, hopelessly nonathletic (except for a mediocre golf swing) and, worst of all, had no military experience whatever. These sobering truths brought immediate further insight, nourished, as is often the case, by a sour grape: any fool can become President! (This secondary revelation was borne out years later when the American people successively invited a crook, an oaf (who pardoned the crook), a country bumpkin, a bad actor, and a wimp determined to prove that he was a macho wimp, to occupy the Oval Office.) The real power, he suddenly understood, lay not with the Chief Executive but with the men who selected him and told him what to do.

The Coach wanted to be one of those men.

But first, in order to move freely and inconspicuously along the corridors of power, he needed to procure a wife, a home, and a family, roughly in that order.

According to the textbooks the little woman had to be someone who, in thirty years, would be the still-attractive mother of his children and energetic grandmother of theirs. She should be president of the local Community Chest and serve on the boards of the Parks Commission, the Girl Scouts of America, and the Tuberculosis Society. She must be active in her church, chairwoman of the fundraising committees for the orchestra and the art museum, and editor of a cookbook for busy housewives such as herself) featuring hearty—though easy-to-prepare!—casseroles and rich, colorful desserts. Her principal aim and ambition, however, would be to please her influential husband. In short, almost any co-ed would do.

He began the search by picking the lock of the Admissions Office (a talent that would come in handy during later campaigns), where he spent three silent nights scrutinizing the current files. A quarter of the way through the women he realized that he could shuffle the folders like a pack of cards, pick one, and save a lot of time. Yet, with characteristic patience and determination he persisted, and it was early on a snowy Christmas morning that he came across one labeled Revere, Shirley Anne, a direct descendant of Revere, Paul. A sociology major, former high school cheerleader, and member of a ubiquitous Protestant youth organization, her hobbies were cooking and sewing and baton twirling and her avowed goal, drilled into her pretty little head by her childhood beauty contest trainer, was to do something to help my fellow man. A southern belle with straight teeth and long, yellow-brown hair and legs, courted and quickly accepted by one of the fifteen identical Greek sororities on campus, she had professed a desire to do her part in the selfless, if endless, fight to save human lives: she wanted to become a nurse. As he closed the file church bells began to ring.

After the holidays he tracked her down at the Kampus Koffee Klatsch, where he offered her hot fudge sundaes, coffee with extra cream, and Rose Garden intimacy with any number of First Ladies (not to mention himself). At first she thought he was joking, but eventually realized he wasn’t smiling, nor was he going to go away. No one had ever paid her so much attention before. At last, overwhelmed by his dogged persistence (he popped up frequently at her second-floor window) she finally agreed to marry him on condition that they wait—in every sense of the word—until after graduation. Having little interest in passion and none at all in love he had no difficulty in acceding to this stipulation, and their last two years of college passed by quickly and uneventfully, except for the happy conclusion of the world’s first nuclear war.

The large church wedding was attended by scores of winking men in identical dark blue suits, a like number of tearful women all wearing variations on the same summer dress, and countless cute, well-combed children, who chased each other around and around the plentiful food tables. During the ceremony itself the past and future brides sadly relived or happily pondered their own weddings, respectively, waited expectantly for the kiss, with its warmth and promise, and came away vaguely disappointed by its perfunctoriness and brevity. But then came the garters and champagne, and everyone wished the handsome couple happiness and prosperity, a pair of terms as intimately coupled as were the bride and groom a few hours hence, somewhere in Bermuda.

Nine months later, to the day, a miracle happened. As soon as the Coach saw him, red-wrinkled and squalling, he realized he was looking at a future President of the United States of America. The hairless head looked as if it belonged on a coin. The toothless mouth never closed. The tiny hands thrashed out as if searching for a lectern to hang on to. He called him Duke (that was his actual name—Duke). At that moment, as if he had read the mind of God, he knew also that his next son was destined to become Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and a third, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

When he informed his wife that he would need two more little Coaches to fulfill this objective she was somewhat less than ecstatic at first, having just given birth to what felt like a small elephant. She soon acquiesced, however, allowing herself to be drawn into his apple pie-American dream.

But this was no fantasy, for the Coach knew something that countless others with similar visions did not: that dreams come true not by wishing, but by good planning, wise investing, and ceaseless, gut-busting work.

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A little-known fact: most of the great power brokers of the twentieth century have come from the worlds of advertising and public relations.

The Coach was one such man.

His first job was with the third biggest advertising agency in America, whose clients ranged from Aardvark Vacuum Cleaner to ZZZ Sleepwear. He was given a desk in a broom closet and told to listen and learn and never to be seen without a tie (worn loose). He listened and very quickly learned something that was not explicitly stated in his college textbooks: the basis for all successful advertising lay in the hidden lie, the promotion of pros while ignoring cons, the selling of candy to babies. At night and on weekends, when everyone else was sleeping, he toyed with this idea. Within a year he had come up with several highly successful (if meaningless) slogans, one of which (WE CARE ABOUT YOU!) brought a well-known department store chain from near bankruptcy to record profits in a matter of months, tripling his salary and rendering him, at twenty-three, an assistant to the second vice-president in charge of consumer management.

He became known as the idea man and, in America, ideas, when coupled with salesmanship and persistence, sometimes bring success. Those the Coach was credited with (and amply rewarded for) include: MAKES YOUR TEETH AS WHITE AS A SNOWY MOUNTAIN STREAM (as white as the stream, not the snow); TED’S NATIONALLY FAMOUS STEAK HOUSE (only after the nationwide billboard campaign featuring that slogan); THE NOVEL THAT SHOCKED EUROPE!!! (Florence Europe, an aged spinster); and literally several more, which the astute reader would recognize instantly.

It was the Coach who came up with the slogans YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY WON! (if [deleted] has frozen over) and BUY NOW, PAY (double) LATER! It was he who patented the survey letter (with its purely incidental solicitation); the exchange of mailing lists containing the names of those who responded to the questionnaire; the ware party, making eager shills of millions of American housewives; the notion of the permanent wave; and his most profitable gimmick of all, the grocery store coupon, the clipping of which filled innumerable happy days all across this great land of ours, including those of his wife, the mother of a future President, a future Chief Justice, and a future Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

It was also the Coach who single-handedly convinced the American people that their body parts ought to smell fabulous at all times, that their collars must be absolutely ring-free, and that they should seek immediate relief from the merest hint of pain, the first flake of dandruff, the tiniest bubble of gas.

He created the holidayless holiday (grandmother’s day, secretary’s day, garbage collector’s day, etc.), from which florists and greeting card and candy manufacturers were to reap windfall benefits for decades to come. He dreamed up the idea of including self-aggrandizing propaganda along with gas, electricity, and telephone bills. He convinced the postmaster general to help the nation’s struggling businessmen by subsidizing the mailing of all advertising material. He taught baseball players to spew a slimy brown fluid all over the playing field and to scratch their [deleted] regularly, thereby giving them much-needed character and bringing out millions of additional fans.

It was during this period that he confirmed a long-held suspicion that people will eat anything if it is cheap and can be made to taste good. To prove this point and win a sizable wager (a tank car of molasses) from a prospective client, he personally financed the test marketing of a cereal composed of fly wings, bat scat, and pure cane sugar.

Seven out of ten Americans preferred it to corn flakes.

At twenty-five he wrote and successfully marketed his classic text, The General Theory of Advertising (the advertiser’s Bible), in which he proved scientifically that it was far more lucrative for a corporation to invest in the promotion of its products than to improve them, and coined the advertisers’ credo: You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, and that’s close enough, for which he won a coveted Irving.

At twenty-six he was made senior vice-president and chief of creative phraseology, with another tripling in salary and benefits, not to mention the opportunity for further advancement and its concomitant riches. Indeed, had he stayed with the company another five years he undoubtedly would have been nominated to replace the aging president and CEO and become the youngest chief executive of all 500 of the Fortune companies. Instead, following his defective heart, he decided to start his own advertising/public relations firm, which he called Market Imaging and Research, Inc.

And that has made all the difference.

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In the meantime the Coach’s family, like families everywhere, was growing. The future Chief Justice was born, on schedule, four years after the future President, with the future wife of a future business or religious leader arriving in-between. The little tyke, dubbed C. J. (that was his actual name—first name C., middle name J.), was blessed with tiny, close-set eyes and mouth, a bulbous nose, and floppy, cartoon-like ears. It was a face only his mother could love, though she had to work hard at it.

His most distinctive feature, however, was a tiny hump, a permanent knapsack to be carried on his back every day for the rest (almost) of his unnatural life. As he grew, so did the hump, only faster, like a giant tumor, until even experienced physicians were nauseated by the sight of the future Chief Justice unrobed.

His older brother Duke, nicknamed the Prez, was already showing signs of political acumen: he smiled broadly at everyone he met, faithfully accompanied his mother and siblings to church, and loved all sports, including his uncle Fred, the shoe salesman. His features were unusually rugged for a four-year-old, and the strong square chin suggested the determination that was to bring victory after victory in the years ahead. His hands were large for their size and, like many of his predecessors in the White House, he would become a doggerel pianist. But he would also become what most would have given their eyeteeth to have been: a great athlete.

Their mother was also in training for her role in government. She studied home economics (in order to properly supervise the maid and the cook), gardening (in order to properly supervise the gardener), fashion design, and the art of the chat. She learned how to greet royalty, how to sleep sitting up with her eyes open, and how to get into and out of an automobile without showing her [deleted]. Her days were so full, however, that she never learned to drive one, which was just as well, as the reader will soon see.

Her evenings, on the other hand, were free to spend as she saw fit in supervising the care of the children, something that she, like all young mothers, knew nothing about. At the end of these busy hours, exhausted by the supervision of the feeding, wiping, warning, scolding and chasing, she barely managed to supervise the bathing and bedding and, with a death-rattle sigh that could be heard on Mars, headed for the liquor cabinet.

Sipping her late-night sherry (as