Kerry & Under-the-Bus Gang

It's mid-afternoon in a room over the Anything Goes Bar on a busy street in South Chicago. In attendance are university professors William Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright and State Secretary John Kerry, hereinafter referenced as A, D, W and K, respectively, though perhaps not respectfully.

**W: Welcome, Secretary Kerry, to the Union to Negate Demeaning of Erudite Realists, Theologians and Honest Educators Basic to the United States.
**K: Uh…the what?
**W: You mean you don’t know what the…in fact, I figured you’re here to join, now that you right soon might be rode out of that Washington nuthouse, no matter whatever happens in that pit of vipers. You ain't got Assad assassinated yet.
**A: Maybe you’ve heard of it by its acronym, John, Under the Bus. It’s made up of the people who’ve been…
**W: kicked off the team because they stood up for…
**D: Oh…don’t be so whiny, Rev. Just because Barry had to disown you after that awful performance at the National Press Club…after all, you got your reparations in the 1960s and…
**W: We ain’t got no reparations yet Bernardine, and I’ll thank you again to call me Doctor, not Rev.
**A: What brings you to this exclusive club, John? By the way, we aren’t the only members. I guess you remember Tom Daschle, for instance, and Richardson and Lerner and Petraeus and...
**D: I bet Barry needs someone sorta...you know...outta sight...get it...oh ha ha ha...Manson rides again.
**A: Stop it Bernardine! (turns to Kerry) Ever since those be-headings over there and the one in Oklahoma the other day, she's been on a tear...caught a mouse last night and cut off its head with the scissors...gory. I stopped her from sticking a fork in the cat this morning.
**D: Reminds me of the old days...bombs away...whee...
**A: Yeah blowin' in the wind...blowin' up everything...the old underground...those were the days...
**W: Knock it off, Bill. You can sing them Vietnam folk songs on your own time.
**A: Oh...sorry about that...we do get carried away once in a while. Teaching in the universities is s-o-o-o boring these days, even though they espouse our causes, mainly soak the rich...get 'em on their knees...make love not war, or is that make war now...whatever. So, what's up, John, the prez in a bind or something?
**K: Oh no...he's not ever in a bind...he's Teflon. The newsies—except for that evil Fox bunch—give him a pass on everything. What he needs is...uh...just a sec (whips out his ipod)...oh yeah, that's today...or was it yesterday...or did I say...don't raise your voice, I remember. The president is getting a lot of flak over the ISIS thing, not that he considers it serious, of course...just some Muslims having a fight. Whoa, strike that...never mention that I said Muslim. A bunch of gang-bangers are taking over Iraq and Syria and...
**W: Gang-bangers!!!! Oh...hoo hah...ha ha ha...gang-bangers! That's what we have right outside this door here. That ISIS bunch is driving tanks and taking over whole...
**K: Okay, okay! There IS a slight problem and the president believes his closest advisers—besides Valerie Jarrett, of course, and CBS—need to think over this problem and come up with a solution since he's never going to put troops over there again. That's my mission here.
**D: Simple...simple...simple! Just drop the big one over there and...oh...hoo hah ha ha ha...instant incineration, another Hiroshima...I'm talking about Israel, of course...wipe out all those kites and all those peaceful Muslims will cut off hands, stone some folks, party all night and pray five times a...
**A: Stop it, Bernardine! We have a real problem here and Barry's up the well-known creek.
**W: Yeah...I tried to tell him the chickens would come home to roost when he bombed those helpless Libyans back to the Stone Age, like they came back after Nagasaki back in the day. You know what I say...
**D: Everybody knows what you'd say, Rev, God damn America...right? Well...maybe Allah is damning God...oh hoo hah, damning God...
**K: And some nutcase just walked into the White House the other day and...
**D: Oh wow...with some of that fertilizer stuff he could have pulled off...hey, surely not an inside job...I never trusted that Jarrett woman...or even Michelle...she'd already gone on her own little helicopter flight that day—right—and left the door wide open, the floozy.
**A: You might tell Barry to borrow a few trillion from China and hire an army from Siberia or Burma, or whatever it's called now...those guys will...naw, it's too hot for them in the Middle east now, temps in the 100s.
**K: Actually, the president was wondering, Bill, if you could figure a way to terrorize the fat Saudi king and the other countries bordering Syria—about 1.3 million troops altogether—to just go in and smash ISIS and save their own oil...er...that is, skin. They got all kinds of jet-fighters and missiles, the whole nine yards.
**A: Not to put too fine a point it, John, I don't like the word terrorize...I'm not a terrorist. I'm a freedom fighter...
**D: That's right...bombs away...it's blowin' in the wind...stick a grenade in Abdullah's Gatorade...oh...hoo...hahahaha. Freedom fighters in the marketplace!
**A: That's enough, Bernardine. Timeout for you! (turns to Kerry) I'm serious about the army and Barry might be right about the gang-bangers. Tell him to get his community organizers in place, then organize Chicago's murderous jailbirds and jail-bait and that oughtta be enough to scare Baghdadi and his gang back into Libya where they might starve, and good riddance.
**K: Hey, you might have something there, and the president could organize in no time with his experience...have it all done by noon and then off for 18 holes. Thanks, guys...gotta go.
**W: By the way, John, did you ever find those medals you threw...
**K: A-A-R-R-G-G-H-H!!!!!!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark