I am not at liberty to say from where I obtained the story below. If I told you it came from the future, you wouldn't believe me anyway, would you? It all started when, on March 31, the day before the fateful day, the House Republicans decided to challenge the non-profit status of AARP, essentially because they opposed too many Republican policies. And then ... well, read on.
The morning after attacking AARP for its opposing cuts to Social Security and past support of Obama's health reform bill, House Republicans upped the ante by saying that seniors should be denied to firearms, prescription medications, and travel to Israel.
"The Republican Party has long favored responsible gun ownership," said Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA), "and it is increasingly clear that seniors have become irresponsible. If their brains are atrophying enough for them to take Democratic positions, they clearly can't be trusted with guns," he concluded.
Asked about the right to have guns for self-protection, as recognized in the Supreme Court case of Heller v. District of Columbia, Reichert was dismissive. "You can hire people for that," he explained.
Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) next stepped up and stated that he had adopted the Tea Party position of opposing the Medicare Part D prescription drug program, and that he was in fact going beyond it.
"I don't think that seniors should be taking prescription drugs at all," he explained. "If you've lived a virtuous life, treated your body as a temple like the Bible says, then the Lord will just take care of you, so long as you use certain healing herbs. Of course you should restrict yourself to ones mentioned in the Bible."
Gingrey noted that this was also part of his plan to reduce Social Security expenditures, but did not elaborate.
Freshman Rep. Allen West (R-FL) then came to the stage and explained that the party had accepted his proposal that seniors should be banned from travel to Israel.
"If you haven't visited the Holy Land before you're 65, what does that say about your priorities in life?" West asked. "Why should you be rewarded in your retirement? There's only so much Holy Land to go around, and senior citizens have got to stop hogging the Holy!"
Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX), a medical doctor who had not originally been part of the program, then ascended onto the stage and noted that he favored the proposal because it would be doing a favor to Israel.
"These old people take these long flights and then they can get blood clots, you know," Gohmert explained. "They may end up going to the hospital in Israel, taking up our ally's precious medical resources. Is it fair for us to do that to them? They're an ally! We shouldn't dump our practically lifeless husks of human flesh on an ally to care for!"
The four Representatives then pulled out straw hats and bamboo canes, linked arms, and tap-danced off of the stage without taking questions from stunned reporters.
At a hastily called (yet somehow well-catered) press conference starting about 15 minutes later, representatives of AARP, the NRA, the Pharmaceuticals lobby and AIPAC appeared. The AARP representative, visibly stifling a giggle, composed herself sufficiently to warn the Republican Party that they were messing with elemental forces and had to think carefully about their next actions. Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Reps. Mike Pence -- clad only in the Turkish towel he was apparently wearing when he was collected -- were hustled into the room along with Rep. Michele Bachmann.
The foursome stood there hemming and stammering for almost 45 seconds before Bachmann displayed an expression of sudden understanding, turned to one side, and kneed Majority Leader Cantor hard in the testicles, dropping him like a dead weight onto the stage.. She raised her hands to accept an ovation from the audeince gathered behind the reporters, then quickly fled the room.
A shaking Boehner took the microphone, acknowledged his "friends in these fine organizations, except sometimes the AARP, but not always" and explained that as Speaker he represented the entire House of Representatives rather than just one party. He motioned to Rep. Pence to come closer to him as he continued to speak about his own "fondness for Israel, guns, and especially pills."
When Rep. Pence got near the microphone, Speaker Boehner wheeled around and tried to knee him in the testicles as well, but missed badly and ended up straddling one of Pence's thighs. Pence immediately passed out. By this time, Rep. Cantor had risen unsteadily from the floor and, apparently confused but attracted to the microphone through some animal instinct, was making his way towards Boehner bowlegged. Boehner screamed into the microphone "ERIC WILL TAKE THE MICROPHONE! ERIC! ERIC! ERIC TAKE OVER FOR ME!" A look of ecstacy took over Cantor's face at these last five words and he squealed, momentarily distracting the NRA representative and allowing Speaker Boehner to escape from the stage with ass un-capped.
"I can explain, I can explain," Cantor began, when he was interrupted by a scream from Pence, who had taken a buck knife out of his jacket pocket and was trying to cut away the skin just below his upper hip -- the spot where the Speaker's genitalia, covered only by bikini briefs and the fly of his very expensive woolen slacks, had momentarily pressed against him. "Unclean, unclean!" Pence shrieked as he flayed his own flesh, and then as the blood started to flow more rapidly and he started to lose consciousness, now continuing to murmur, "unclean ... unclean ,,,,"
Cantor looked at Pence and the growing pool of blood, blinked twice, and began speaking to the lobbyists directly.
"OK, AARP, we think we can take you on because your old people are all watching Fox News and they'll believe anything we say about you, you election-rigging abortionists. Now what about the rest of you?"
Informed of the comments made about each group, Cantor quickly said to the NRA Rep: "Get real. You know that we were lying about that." The NRA representative looked mostly unmollified, but did signal the willingness to listen by lowering his Glock from being aimed at Cantor's heart to aiming at his left knee.
Cantor was nonplused. "As for you," he clarified to the Big Pharma rep, "I'm sure you realize that if seniors don't take your pills, they will get sicker and then they'll have to take even more of your pills. So we're actually helping you!" The repsentative thought about that for a moment, and started to issue a rebuttal," but Cantor had quickly and deftly moved on.
"As for AIPAC," Cantor began, twitching slightly and keeping his eyes half-closed in case the group's representative was the one who reminded him of his Uncle Benny, "we're actually helping Israel by making sure that elderly people don't go there after a long plane flight and --"
"Gohmert already tried that one," said the AARP Rep with a slight smile.
Cantor's eyes widened in surprise as he looked at her, and he forgot to close them as he turned back to gaze at the AIPAC Rep. It was the Uncle Benny look-alike. They knew his weakness.
"So it's not enough that your elders should not get Social Security and Medicare?" he began. It's not enough that they should should have no pills and no money for nice housing so they should be in the street like dogs?"
"Th-th-they ... should have invested more!" squeaked Cantor.
The man from AIPAC ignored him, getting into his groove. "No! This is not enough for you! Also, also they should die without being able to once again see the Holy Land?"
The color drained from Cantor's face. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the AARP rep make a throat-slitting motion at him.
"But -- but -- but --" he sputtered. "If we're going after the AARP and these other powerful lobbies, leaving out AIPAC would be anti-Semitic!"
The NRA guy raised and eyebrow and trained the Glock back at Cantor's heart. The man who looked like Uncle Benny looked at Cantor like he was a wart.
"You don't understand!" Cantor shrieked. "It's the Tea Partiers! They're making us take on you big powerful groups!"
"That's right, blame us!" Bachmann had returned to the room, carrying a pitchfork. "I knew you couldn't be trusted!"
Cantor quickly pulled Pence's prostrate form off the floor to use as a human shield. Bachmann wouldn't stab Pence, he reasoned to himself. Would she?
Pence's towel, jostled by Cantor's wielding of him, fell off. Bachmann, shocked, dropped the pichfork at her feet. Between its tines it pinned to the floor the neck of Rep. Patrick McHenry, who struggled gamely to extricate himself before anyone thought to ask what he had been doing down there.
The room gasped at it looked at Pence. Suddenly the man from AIPAC broke the silence: "That tattoo! Is that a swastika???"
Cantor's mind was working at blinding speed! "Fraternity prank!" he yelled, turning Pence backside towards the crowd, realizing too late about the tattoos of the noose and the hooded robe. "They were making a checkerboard but they ran out of ink!"
Cantor was then startled when he heard a nasal voice calling out to him from a back corner of the room: "Hey, Pisher!" He recognized it as the voice of Senator Charles Schumer. He turned to look in that direction and saw Schumer wave at him. He was standing next to Reps Henry Waxman, Shelley Berkley, Jerrold Nadler, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Howard Berman. After a second, they turned around and mooned him.
Painted in bright light blue block letters on their buttocks, two two a customer, was the word
S - H - E - H - E - C - H - I - Y - A - N - U
which is the name of the Jewish prayer of thanks for having been allowed to live long enough to see some blessed event.
At this, Cantor lost his composure.
(Boehner had actually snuck back into the room to enjoy this by now, judiciously staying in a closed litter carried by six tobacco lobbyists.)
"You have no idea what it's like," he sobbed. "We used to have ideas, we had a program! Now we have to do whatever these gomers think of! I'm from Virginia and I've never seen it like this before!"
His watch alarm went off. Right now, he was supposed to be speaking to a group of oil executives, for whom he was supposed to dance. As he glanced at his watch, though, he loooked at the date.
"Wait! Wait!" he tried to yell over the din of screaming teabaggers and journalists dictating stories into their telephones and lobbyists ostentatiously ripping tearing checks into small pieces and Democrats playing with noisemakers left over from Purim. "It's all been a joke! It's April Fools Day!" But no one could hear him, and each of the 12,345 times he repeated this on cable news over the next week, no one believed him.
And that, boys and girls, is why we now refer to April 1 as "Eric Cantor's Day." And everyone went off to phone bank to Wisconsin and they elected now-Chief Justice Kloppenburg to her first position as a judge.
Those were dark days indeed, but they're much better now. We knew that they would step in it before long, but we didn't know how soon, how hard, and how often. It was a good year.