5. THE ASSASSINATION OF TRICKY

The President of the United States is dead. We repeat this bulletin. Trick E. Dixon is dead. That is all the information we have at this time. The White House has refused to comment on an earlier bulletin announcing that the President of the United States is dead. The White House Bilge Secretary says, “There is no truth whatsoever to reports of the President’s death,” but adds that he will not “categorically” deny the story at this time. Conflicting stories continue to circulate concerning the death of the President. A second White House announcement has now called attention to the President’s schedule for the day, pointing out that no mention is made there of dying. Also released was the President’s schedule for tomorrow, wherein there also appears to be no plan on the part of the President or his advisers for him to die. “I think it would be best,” said the White House Bilge Secretary, “in the light of these schedules, to wait for a statement, one way or another, from the President himself.”

Reports out of Walter Reed Army Hospital now seem to confirm the earlier bulletin that the President of the United States is dead. Though the circumstances surrounding his death remain unclear, it appears that the President was admitted to Walter Reed late yesterday for surgery. The purpose of the secret operation was to remove the sweat glands from his hip. That is all we know at this time. The Vice President has flatly denied reports of the President’s death. Here is a portion of the Vice President’s remarks, made as he was on his way to address the National Yodeling Association: “Now this is just the kind of reckless rot and rotten recklessness that you can expect from the vile vilifiers who are out to vilify vilely.”

“What of the reports, Mr. Vice President, that he had secretly entered Walter Reed last night to have the sweat glands removed from his hip?”

“Hogwash and hokum. And hooliganism. And heinous. I spoke to him only five minutes ago and found him fit as a fiddle. This lachrymose lie is a lamentable lollapalooza launched by the lunatic left.”

Unconfirmed reports from Walter Reed Hospital now indicate that the President was found dead at seven A.M. this morning. No word yet on the cause of death, or where he was “found.” Speculation mounts that death came following surgery for the removal of sweat glands lodged in the hip. We take you now to Republican National Headquarters, where the chairman of the national committee is meeting with reporters:

“I cannot believe that the great majority of Americans are going to keep this great American from a second term in the White House just because he is dead, no.”

“Then you are admitting, sir, that he is dead?”

“I didn’t say that at all. I said, I just don’t think that his death, if it were to come about between now and the election, would affect his popularity with the great majority of Americans. After all, this isn’t the first time you people were ready to call him dead, and here he is, President of the United States.”

“But we meant dead politically.”

“I’m not going to get into a fancy discussion of semantics with you fellas. All I’m saying is that whether these rumors are true or false is not going to affect our campaign plans by one iota. I’d even go so far as to say that if it turns out he actually is a corpse, our margin of victory in ‘72 will be greater by far than what it was in ‘68.”

“How do you figure that, Mr. Chairman?"

“Well, I for one just cannot imagine the press of this country, irresponsible and vicious as it may be, going after this man dead and buried with the same kind of virulence they used to go after him alive. Furthermore, as regards the voters themselves, it would seem to me that there is a certain sympathy, a certain warmth that a dead Dixon is going to be able to arouse in the people of this country that he never really was able to summon up when he was living and breathing and so on.”

“If he is dead then, you think it would be good for his image?”

“No doubt about it. I think that in terms of exposure he may have gone about as far as he can alive. This is probably just the shot in the arm we’ve been looking for, particularly if the Democrats run Teddy Charisma.”

“Can you explain what you mean, Mr. Chairman?”

“Well, assuming for the sake of argument that Trick E. Dixon is no more, that is going to cut strongly into the source of Charisma’s appeal. It’s one thing, you see, for a candidate for the Presidency to have two brothers who are dead — it’s something else when the incumbent himself is dead. I mean, if experience is any kind of criterion — and I think it is — I just don’t see how you can top the President now, where this whole death issue is concerned.”

“Mr. Chairman, is there any truth at all to the growing suspicion that you people are sending up a trial balloon with these rumors of the President’s death? To see just how much political mileage there is in it, if any? That is, on the one hand you yourself sound convinced that the President’s death would give a great boost to his waning popularity, while Vice President What’s-his-name asserts that the President is ‘fit as a fiddle’ and that these rumors have been propagated by ‘the lunatic left’.”

“Look, I have no intention of criticizing the alliteration of the Vice President of the United States of America. Under the Constitution he has a right to alliterate just as much as any other American citizen. I am speaking to you boys strictly as party chairman, and all I am saying, in language plain and simple, is that the President has absolutely no intention of withdrawing from the race for any reason whatsoever, including his own death. Anybody who counts him out be cause of something like that, just doesn’t know the kind of guy they are dealing with. This isn’t a Lyin B. Johnson, who tosses in the towel because the country hates his guts and doesn’t trust him as far as they can throw him. No, you’re not going to intimidate Trick E. Dixon just by hating him. Hell, he’s had that all his life; he’s used to it. And you’re not going to keep him off the ballot by killing him either. We’ve seen him rise from the ashes before, and I have every expectation that we are going to see precisely that again. If he has to address that convention from inside an urn, he’ll do it — that’s the kind of dedicated American we’re talking about.” The White House has now issued a statement denying — I repeat, denying — that the President entered Walter Reed Hospital yesterday for the removal of the sweat glands from his hip. There continues however to be a total news blackout from that source as to whether President Dixon is dead or alive.

We take you now to the National Weightlifters Convention, where Vice President What’s-his-name is in the midst of an impromptu ad dress on those who he claims have perpetrated upon the nation this “lachrymose lie”: “the nitwits, the namby-pambys, the neurasthenics, the neurotics, the necrophiliacs —”

We interrupt the Vice President’s alliteration to take you to Walter Reed Hospital for a special report:

“The mood here is somber, though it remains impossible to piece the story together in its entirety. It seems now that the President did enter the hospital late yesterday for a secret operation. First reports had it that the operation was to have been on his hip, for the surgical removal of sweat glands apparently lodged in that area. However, the White House, as you know, has flatly denied that story, and only a moment ago I learned the reason why. The operation was to have been not, on the Chief Executive’s hip, but on his lip, l-i-p. The sweat glands were, from all reports, to have been removed from the lip this morning. But now, according to the latest White House communique, surgery has been postponed for the time being because of, and I quote, ‘an unforeseen development.’ According to highly placed sources within the hospital itself, that unforeseen development is the death of the President of the United States. Now I see that the Secretary of Defense has just emerged from the hospital and is walking this way. Secretary Lard, have you just come from the President’s side?”

“Yes.”

“You seem quite despondent, sir. Can you tell us if he is dead or alive?”

“I’m not at liberty to answer that question.”

“Unconfirmed reports from various sources say he was found dead at seven A.M. this morning.”

“No comment.”

“Can you tell us then why you were visiting him?”

“To find out his secret timetable for ending the war.”

“Is there anybody other than the President who knows the secret timetable?”

“Of course not.”

“Then if he’s dead, he’s taken the secret time table with him to the grave?”

“No comment.”

“Secretary Lard, did the President have any other visitors aside from yourself?”

“Yes. The Joint Chiefs. And of course the Professor.”

“And they don’t know the secret timetable either?”

“I told you, nobody knows it but him. That’s what makes it secret.”

“Not even his wife?”

“Well, actually, she thought she had it, when we called her this morning. But it was just an old train schedule between Washington and New York. She found it in one of his suits.”

“There’s no other place he might have left it?”

“It doesn’t seem like it.”

“Cut open the mattresses, did you?”

“Oh, all of that. Ripped up floors. Tore out paneling. Turned the place inside out. No sign of anything resembling a secret timetable.”

“Mr. Secretary, everything you say seems to confirm the rumor that the President is dead. If that is the case, what were you and the joint Chiefs and the Professors doing sitting around a corpse, trying to find out vital information?”

“Well, we also had a medium with us.”

“A medium?”

“Oh, don’t worry. She’s worked for us before. Highest security clearance. Top-flight Gypsy.”

“And did she get through to the President?”

“I believe I can say she did.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, she got through to a voice who kept saying he was a Quaker.”

“And what about the secret timetable?”

“He says a secret is a secret, and he owes it to the American people, who have placed their confidence in him, not to betray a sacred trust. He said they can brand and skewer him in Hell, he’s never going to tell a soul.”

“Honest almost to a fault.”

“Well, he had to be, you know, with that sweating problem. Otherwise people tended not always to believe everything he said.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, that was the Secretary of Defense, speaking directly from the lawn outside of Walter Reed Hospital. As you saw, he was distraught and very near to tears throughout the interview, thus appearing to confirm the reports of the President’s death. We return you to the Vice President, who is now addressing the National Sword Swallowers Association.”

“— the psychotics, the sob sisters, the skin merchants, the saboteurs, the self-styled Sapphos, the self-styled Swinburnes, the swine, the satyrs, the schizos, the sodomists, the sissies, the screamers, the screwy, the scum, the self-congratulatory selfcongratulators, the sensationalists, the snakes in the grass, the sex fiends, the shiftless, the shines, the shaggy, the sickly, the syphilitic—”

We go now to the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation:

“Is it the same knife that the President demonstrated on television last night, Chief?”

“No doubt about it. Here are the four blades. Count ‘em. One, two, three, four. Open-and-shut case.”

“But my understanding was that some eight thousand such knives —”

“We’ve sifted through the eight thousand, don’t worry about that. And this is the one. This is the murder weapon, no doubt about it.”

“Then the President has been murdered?”

“I can’t tell you that right now. But I can assure you that if there has been a murder, this is what did it.”

“And do you have the murderer in custody?”

“One thing at a time. You rush in and say you’ve got the murderer, everybody thinks you picked up the first guy you could find out on the street. Let’s at least get the announcement of a murder, before we start accusing people.”

“How about the kind of murder. Stabbed to death?”

“Well, there again it’s like, ‘Have you stopped beating your wife.’ But of course I will say this much: with a knife, you may very well find that the victim has been stabbed to death, yes. Of course, there are other possibilities as well, and I can assure you we’re looking into them thoroughly.”

“For instance.”

“Well, you’ve got your bludgeoning, of course. You’ve got your various forms of torture such as the President himself outlined on TV the other night.”

“In other words, it’s possible the President’s famous eyes may have been gouged out.”

“I wouldn’t rule that out at this time, no.”

“But by whom? How? When? Where?”

“Look, as we say here at the Bureau, ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. The important thing right now is that we want to assure the American people, not only that we are actually on top of this case even before it has broken, but that we are keeping them abreast of the facts virtually before there are any. We just don’t intend to come in for the sort of criticism on this assassination of a President that we did on the last one.”

“What sort of criticism do you mean?”

“Well, last time there was just some kind of cloud over the whole thing, wasn’t there? Credibility gap and so on. People thinking they weren’t getting the straight story. Accusing us of covering up and being caught off guard and so on. Well, this time it’s going to be different, I can assure you. This time we have the weapon and a fairly good idea of who did it beforehand, and we’re really only waiting for word that it actually happened, to make an arrest. After a decent interval, of course, just so it doesn’t look as though we picked up the first poor slob we found in the gutter.”

“Is it a Boy Scout? That is, will it be a Boy Seout, if and when?”

“Well, of course I am only a law enforcement officer. I don’t decide who commits the crimes, I just catch them, after that decision has been made by the proper authorities. I will say this, however. We would not have decided on a Boy Scout knife as the murder weapon, if we didn’t think there was a good strong motive to go with it. That was one of the troubles with the last assassination: didn’t have a good strong motive to go with it. After all, we are talking about the assassination of the highest elected officer in the land. People like a good strong motive when something like that happens, and I can’t say that I blame them. That’s why this time we intend to give it to them. Otherwise, you’re just going to get your national disunity, your credibility gap, your doubt, and your cloud over the whole thing.”

“And you honestly think that this Boy Scout knife will clear up such doubt and incredulity?”

“Why? Don’t you?”

“Well, it’s not for me to say. I’m just an objective reporter.”

“No, no, go ahead, say. What do you think? Just because you’re objective doesn’t necessarily make you a fool. You don’t find the Boy Scout knife convincing? Is that it?”

“But what I think isn’t at issue — either this is or is not the murder weapon.”

“In other words, you’re implying that it does seem to you far-fetched. Good enough. What would you think of this, then?”

“That?”

“Yes, sir — a Louisville Slugger. Curt Flood’s very own baseball bat. Let me show you on this model here of the President’s head the kind of damage you can do with one of these things. Remember, before, when I said ‘bludgeoned’? Well, watch this.”

To the White House now, for an important announcement by the President’s Bilge Secretary. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to make the following announcement concerning the President’s health. At midnight last night the President entered Walter Reed Army Hospital for minor surgery involving the surgical removal of the sweat glands from his upper lip.”

“Can you spell that, Blurb?”

“Lip. L-i-p.”

“And the first word?”

“Upper. U-p-p-e-r… Now as you know, the President has always wanted to do everything he could to gain the trust and the confidence and, if it was within the realm of possibility, the affection of the American people. It was his belief that if he could stop sweating so much along his upper lip when he addressed the nation, the great majority of the American people would come to believe he was an honest man, speaking the truth, and maybe even like him a little better. Now this is not to say that people who sweat Along the upper lip are necessarily liars and/or unlikable. Many people who sweat profusely along the upper lip are outstanding citizens in their communities and sweat the way they do because of the many civic duties they are called upon to perform. Then too there are a lot of good, hard-working ordinary citizens who simply sweat along the upper lip as a matter of course That is really all I have to say to you at this hour, ladies and gentlemen. I wouldn’t have bothered to call you together like this, had it not been for the continuing rumors that it was the President’s ‘hip’ that had required surgery. There is absolutely no truth to that whatsoever, and I wanted you to be the first to know. I hope by tomorrow in fact to have available for you x-ray photos of the President’s hip that will make it absolutely clear that it is in perfect condition.”

“Which hip will that be, Blurb?”

“The left hip.”

“What about the right one?”

“We’ll try to get those to you within the week. I assure you that we’re working to clear this thing up just as fast as we can. We don’t want the people in this country to go around thinking the President has something wrong with his hips any more than you do.”

“What about the reports that he’s dead, Blurb?”

“I have nothing to say about that at this time.”

“But Secretary Lard was seen weeping as he left Walter Reed today. Surely that suggests that President Dixon is dead.”

“Not necessarily. It could just as well mean that he’s alive. I’m not going to speculate either way, gentlemen, in a matter this serious.”

“What about reports that he’s been murdered by a Boy Scout gone berserk?”

“We’re looking into that, and if there’s any truth at all to that story, I assure you, we’ll be in touch with you about it.”

“Can, you say anything definite about his condition at all?”

“He’s resting comfortably.”

“Are the sweat glands out? And if so, can we see them?”

“No comment. Moreover, it would really be up to the First Lady anyway, whether she wanted the President’s sweat glands to be made available for photographers and so on. I think she might want to keep something as personal as those glands just for the immediate family, and maybe eventually build a Trick E. Dixon Library at Prissier in which to house them.”

“Can you tell us how big they are, Blurp?”

“‘Well, I would imagine that given the sheer amount of sweating he used to do, they were pretty good-sized. But I’m only guessing. I haven’t seen them.”

“Blurb, is there any truth to the report that while at Walter Reed he was also going to have surgery done to prevent his eyes from shifting?”

“No comment.”

“Does that mean they were gouged out?”

“No comment.”

“Will the eyes be in the Trick E. Dixon Library at Prissier too, Blurb?”

“Once again, that would be entirely up to the First Lady.”

“Blurb, what about his gestures? He’s been criticized for a certain unnaturalness, or falseness, in his gestures. They don’t always seem tied in to what he’s saying. If he’s still alive, are there any plans for him to have that fixed too? And if so, how? Can they sort of get him synchronized in that department?”

“Gentlemen, I’m sure the doctors are going to do everything they can to make him appear as honest as possible.”

“One last question, Blurb. If he’s dead, that would make Mr. What’s-his-name the President. Is there any truth to the rumor that you people are postponing the announcement of Dixon’s death because you’re looking for a last-minute replacement for What’s-his-name? Is that why Mr. What’s-his-name himself keeps denying so vehemently the reports that the President is dead for fear of being dumped?”

“Gentlemen, I think you know as well as I do that the Vice President is not the kind of man who would want to be President of the United States if he felt there was any doubt as to his qualifications for the office. That’s f of even a question I will take seriously.”

“Good evening. This is Erect Severehead with a cogent news analysis from the nation’s capital… A hushed hush pervades the corridors of power. Great men whisper whispers while a stunned capital awaits. Even the cherry blossoms along the Potomac seem to sense the magnitude. And magnitude there is. Yet magnitude there has been before, and the nation has survived. A mood of cautious optimism surged forward just at dusk. Then set the age-old sun behind these edifices of reason, and gloom once more descended. Yet gloom there has been, and in the end the nation has survived. For the principles are everlasting, though the men be mortal. And it is that very mortality that the men in the corridors of power demonstrate. For no one dares to play politics with the momentousness of a tragedy of such scope, or the scope of a tragedy of such momentousness. If tragedy it be. Yet tragedies there have been, and the nation founded upon hope and trust in man and the deity, has continued to survive. Still, in this worried capital tonight, men watch and men wait. So too do women and children in this worried capital tonight watch and wait. This is Erect Severehead From Washington, D.C.”

“— the flag-burners, the faggots, the fairies, the filth peddlers, the Fabian Socialists of yore, the fair-weather friends, the fairies, the faithless, the flesh-show operators —”

We interrupt the Vice President’s address to the National Primates Association to bring you the following bulletin. A troop of Boy Scouts from Boston, Massachusetts, the home state of Senator Edward Charisma, has confessed to the murder of the President of the United States. The FBI has declined to give their names until such time as the President’s murder has been announced by the White House. The Boy Scouts are being held without bail, and according to the FBI the case is, quote cinched unquote. The murder weapon, which at first was believed to be the very knife that the President had exhibited on television during his famous “Something Is Rotten in Denmark” speech, is now identified as a Louisville Slugger baseball bat, formerly the property of Washington Senator center fielder Curt Flood. We return you to Vice President What’s-his-name at the Primates convention: “— the flotsam and jetsam of the universities, the fairies, the folk singers, the fairies, the freaks, the fairies, the free-loaders on welfare, the fairies, the free-speechers with their favorite four-letter word, the fairies —”

We switch you to our correspondent at Walter Reed Army Hospital.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this terrible news has just come to us from a highly reliable source within the hospital. The President of the United States was assassinated sometime in the early hours of the morning. The cause of death was drowning. He was found at seven A.M., unclothed and bent into the fetal position, inside a large transparent baggie filled with a clear fluid presumed to be water, and tied shut at the top. The baggie containing the body of the President was found on the floor of the hospital delivery room. How he was removed from his own room, where he was awaiting surgery on his upper lip, and forced or enticed into a baggie is not known at this time. There would seem to be little doubt, however, that the manner in which he has been murdered is directly related to the controversial remarks he made at San Dementia on April 3, in which he came out four-square for ‘the rights of the unborn."

“Right now, hospital officials seem to believe that the President left his bed voluntarily to accompany his assailant to the delivery room, perhaps in the belief that he was to be photographed there beside the stomach of a woman in labor. The recent Scout uprising, and yesterday’s nuclear bombing of Copenhagen, seemed to those of us here in Washington to have taken something of an edge off his campaign in behalf of the unborn, and it may well be that he had decided to seize upon this fortuitous circumstance to revitalize interest in his program. Doubtless, with the destruction of Copenhagen and the occupation of Denmark successfully accomplished, he was anxious to return to what he considered our most pressing domestic problem. Rumor has it that he intended, in his next major address, to use his new upper lip to outline his belief in ‘the sanctity of human life, including the life of the yet unborn.’”But now there will be no speech on the sanctity of human life with the new lip he would have been so proud of. A cruel assassin with a macabre sense of humor has seen to that. The man who believed in the unborn is dead, his unclothed body found stuffed in the fetal position inside a water-filled baggie on the floor of the delivery room here at Walter Reed Hospital. This is Roger Rising-to-the-Occasion at Walter Reed.”

Quickly now to the White House, and the latest bulletin from the Bilge Secretary.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a few more facts for you now about the President’s hip, including the x-ray I promised earlier. This gentleman in white that you see beside me in his surgical gloves, gown and mask is probably the foremost authority on the left-hip in the world. Doctor, will you comment on this x-ray of the President’s left hip for the members of the press. I’ll hold it for you so you don’t dirty your gloves.”

“Thank you, Blurb. Ladies and gentlemen, there is just no doubt about it in my mind. This is a left hip.”

“Thank you, Doctor. Any questions?”

“Blurb, the report from Walter Reed is that the President has been assassinated. Stuffed naked into a baggie and drowned.”

“Gentlemen, let’s try to keep to the subject. The doctor here has flown in from Minnesota right in the middle of an operation on a left hip, to verify this X-ray for you. I don’t think we want to keep him longer than we have to..Yes?”

“Doctor, can you be absolutely sure that the left hip is the President’s?”

“Of course I can.”

“How, Sir?”

“Because that’s what the Bilge Secretary said it was. Why would he give me a picture of a hip and say it was the President’s if it wasn’t?” (Laughter from the Press Corps)

“—the gadflies, the go-go girls, the geldings, the gibbons, the gonadless, the gonorrheacarriers—” We interrupt the Vice President’s address to i I is National Association for the Advancement of Color Slides to switch you to our correspondents around the country.

First, Morton Momentous in Chicago:

“Here in the Windy City the mood is one of incredulity, of shock, of utter disbelief. So stunned are the people of this great Middle Western metropolis that they seem totally unable to respond to the bulletins from Washington that have come to them over radio and television. And so from the Gold Coast to Skid Row, from the fashionable suburbs of the North to the squalid ghettos of the South, the scene is much the same: people going about their ordinary, everyday affairs as though nothing had happened. Not even the flags have been lowered to half-staff, but continue to flutter high in the breeze, even as they did before the news reached this grief-stricken city of the terrible fate that has befallen our leader. Trick E. Dixon is dead, cruelly and bizarrely murdered, a martyr to the unborn the world round — and it is more than the mind or spirit of Chicago can accept or understand. And so throughout this great city, life, in a manner of speaking, goes on — much as you see it directly behind me here in the world famous Loop. Shoppers rushing to and fro. The din of traffic continuous. Restaurants jammed. Streetcars and busses packed. Yes, the frantic, mindless scurrying of a big city at the rush hour. It is almost as though the people here in Chicago are afraid to turn for a single second from the ordinary routine of an ordinary day, to face this ghastly tragedy. This is Morton Momentous from a stunned, incredulous Chicago.”

We take you now to Los Angeles and correspondent Peter Pious.

“If the people in the streets of Chicago are incredulous, you can well imagine the mood of the ordinary man in the pool here in Trick E. Dixon’s native state. In Chicago they are simply unable to respond; here it is even more heartrending. The Californians I have spoken withor tried to speak with — are like nothing so much as small children who have been confronted with an event far beyond their emotional range of response. All they can do when they learn the tragic news that Trick E. Dixon has been found stuffed in a baggie is giggle. To be sure, there are the proverbial California wisecracks, but by and large it is giggling such as one might hear from perplexed and bewildered children that remains in one’s ears, long after the giggler himself has dived off the high board or driven away in his sports car. For this is Trick E. Dixon’s state and these are Trick E. Dixon’s people. Here he is not just the President, here he is a friend and a neighbor, one of them, a healthy child of the sunlight, of the beaches and the blue Pacific, a wan who embodied all the robustness and grandeur of America’s golden state. And now that golden child of the Golden West is gone; and Californians can only giggle to suppress their sobs and hide their tears. Peter Pious in Los Angeles.” Next, Ike Ironic, in New York City.

“No one ever believed that Trick E. Dixon was beloved in New York City. Yes, he lived here once, in this fashionable Fifth Avenue apartment building directly behind me. But few ever considered him a resident of this city so much as a refugee from Washington, biding his time to return to public office. Nor did New Yorkers seem much impressed when he assumed the powers of the Presidency in 1969. But now he is gone, and all at once the very deep affection, the love, if you will, for their former neighbor, is everywhere apparent. Of course, you have to know New Yorkers to be able to penetrate the outer shell of cynicism and see the love beneath. You had to look, but you saw it today, here in New York: in the seeming boredom and indifference of a bus driver; in the impatience of a salesgirl; in the anger over nothing of a taxi driver; in the weariness of the homebound workers packed into the subway; in the blank gaze of the drunks along the Bowery; in the haughtiness of a dowager refusing to curb her dog on the fashionable Upper East Side. You had to look, but there it was, love for Trick E. Dixon… Only now he is gone, gone before they could, with their boredom and indifference and impatience and anger and exhaustion and blankness and haughtiness, express to him all they felt so deeply in their hearts. Yes, the bitter irony is this: he had to die in a baggie, before New Yorkers could tender him that hard-won love that would have meant so much to him. But then it is a day of bitter ironies. Ike Ironic from grief-stricken and, perhaps, guilt ridden Fifth Avenue in the city of New York, where he lived like a stranger, but has died like a long-lost son.”

Reports coming in from around the nation confirm those you have just heard from our correspondents in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, reports of people too stunned or heartbroken to be able to respond with the conventional tears or words of sorrow to the news of President Dixon’s assassination. No, the ordinary signs of grief are clearly not sufficient to express the emotion that they feel at this hour, and so they pretend for the time being that it simply has not happened; or they giggle with embarrassment and disbelief; or they attempt to hide beneath a gruff exterior, the deep love for a fallen leader that smolders away within. And what of the madman who perpetrated this deed? For that story, we return you to the headquarters of the FBI in Washington.

“That’s right, we’re pretty sure now it was a madman who perpetrated this deed.”

“And the Scouts? The knife? The Louisville Slugger?”

“Oh, we’re not ruling out any of the hard evidence. I’m talking now about the brains behind the whole thing. More accurately, the lack of brains. You see, that’s really our number one clue everything else aside, this was a pretty stupid thing to do to the President. There he is, the President, and they do a stupid thing like this. Now if this is somebody’s idea of a practical joke, well, I for one don’t consider it funny. You’re not just stuffing anybody into a baggie, you’re stuffing the President of the United States. What about the dignity of his office? If you have no respect for the man, what about the office? That’s what really gravels me, personally. I mean, what do you think the enemies of democracy would think if they saw the President of the United States all curled up naked like that. Well, I’ll tell you what they’d think: they couldn’t be happier. That’s just the kind of propaganda they love to use to brainwash people and make Communists out of them.”

“Do you think then that the assassin was an enemy of democracy as well as a madman?”

“I do. And as I said, a practical joker. Fortunately, we happen to have a complete file on all madmen who are enemies of democracy and practical jokers, and they’re under constant surveillance. So I don’t think there’s going to be any trouble finding our man, or madman. And even if we don’t find him, we’ve got the Boy Scouts from Boston who confessed to this thing in reserve, so I’d say, on the whole, we’re in much better shape than we were last time, and are really just waiting a go-ahead from the White House…”

“We are privileged to have with us in the studio one of the most distinguished members of the House of Representatives, a leading Republican statesman, and a friend and confidant to the late President. Congressman Fraud, this is a sorrowful day in our nation’s history.”

“Oh, it’s a day that will live in infamy, there’s no doubt about that in my mind. I am, in fact, introducing a bill into Congress to have it declared a day that will live in infamy and celebrated as such in coming years. What you’ve got here, as Chief Heehaw at the FBI was saying, is a real lack of respect for the office of the Presidency. What you’ve got here in this assassin is a very disrespectful person, and, I would agree, probably a madman to boot.”

“Do you have any idea, Congressman, why the White House continues at this late hour to refuse to confirm the story of the assassination?”

“I think it goes without saying that we’re in a sensitive area here, and consequently they want to move cautiously on this whole thing. I think they want, first off, to gauge the public reaction here at home, and then of course there is the reaction around the world to consider. On the one hand you’ve got our allies who depend upon us for support, and on the other hand you’ve got our enemies who are always on the lookout for some chink in our armor, and if you keep all that in mind, then I think you have to agree that in the long run it is probably in the interest of our integrity and our credibility to cover this whole thing up. I would think that some such reasoning as that is going on behind the scenes at the White House right now.”.”Has the First Lady been notified?”

Oh, of course.”

“What was her reaction?”

“Well, she was understandably quite overcome in the first moment. But, as you know, she is a very decorous woman, even in moments of great emotion. Consequently, her immediate reaction was to note that the manner in which the assassin went about the assassination was in extremely bad taste. The baggie aside for the moment, she thinks that at the very least the President should have been slain in a shirt and a tie and a jacket, like John F. Charisma. She says there was a suit fresh from the dry cleaners in the closet at the hospital, and that it really shows that the assassin was a person of very poor breeding to have failed to recognize how important it is for the President, of all people, to be neatly and appropriately garbed at all times. She said she just had to wonder about the upbringing of a person who would forget something like that. She said she didn’t want to blame the assassin’s family, until she knew all the facts, but it was clear she felt there probably could have been a wee bit more attention given to good grooming in his house when the assassin was growing up.”

“Congressman Fraud, there has been some speculation that the President’s assassination is a reprisal for the destruction yesterday of the city of Copenhagen. What do you think of that idea?”

“Not very much.”

“Can you explain?”

“Well, it just doesn’t make any sense. The President himself went on television, after all, and explained to the American people the situation in Denmark and why we might have to destroy Copenhagen. Now he didn’t have to do that, you know — but he did, because he wanted the people to have all the facts. So I just don’t see how you can fault him there. And, I must say, in praise of this great country, that except for a few elderly people out there in Wiseonsinand they of course turned out to be of Danish extraction, and obviously didn’t have any objectivity on this matter at all — but except for those few irresponsible demonstrators out there shouting dirty words in Danish, the overwhelming majority of the people of this country have taken the destruction of Copenhagen with the wonderful equanimity and solidarity we have come to expect of them in matters like this. No, I just can’t see where somebody is going to assassinate the President for a sound policy decision such as this one, and that even goes for a madman. No, he had the mandate of the people here, lunatics included.”

“And the mandate of the Congress as well?”

“Well, of course, as you know, there are unfortunately a very few Congressmen and Senators — "

guess you could call them headline seekers who will go so far as to try to make political hay out of the bombing of a little Godforsaken village out in the middle of nowhere, some crossroads nobody has ever heard of before and surely after the bombing will never hear of again — so I leave it to you to imagine what such politicians are going to do with the nuclear destruction of a place like Copenhagen. In their behalf, however, let me say that even they would not be so reckless as to assassinate the President because of a difference of opinion over some thing like bombing sites. I mean, nobody’s perfect. One President chooses this target, one President chooses that target, but fortunately we have in this country a political system that can accommodate itself to that kind of disagreement, without recourse to assassination. And by and large I think you can say that in the end the mistakes in judgment and so on shake themselves out, and we pretty much destroy the places that need destroying. It seems to me, in fact, that as regards the destruction of Copenhagen, you’ll find that even among the President’s staunchest critics in the Senate, there was a sense that a decision of that magnitude simply couldn’t have been arrived at lightly or arbitrarily. I think most of the truly responsible members of the Congress feel as I do, that having made a strong show of strength such as this in Scandinavia now, we are not going to get ourselves bogged down there later the way we did in Southeast Asia.”

“So you see no connection between the ‘Something is Rotten in Denmark’ speech and the assassination?”

“No, no. Frankly I can’t believe that the murder of the President has to do with anything he has ever said or done, including his courageous remarks in behalf of the unborn and the sanctity of human life. No, this is one of those wild, crazy acts, just as the FBI describes it — the work of a madman, and, as the First Lady suggests, a pretty ill-mannered madman, at that. It seems to me that any attempt to find some rational political motive in anything so bizarre and boorish as stuffing the President of the United States unclothed into a water-filled baggie in the fetal position is so much wasted effort. It’s an act of violence and disrespect, utterly without rhyme or reason, and cannot but arouse the righteous indignation of reasonable and sensible men everywhere.”

“—the hairy, the half-cocked if you know what I mean, the hammer-and-sickle supporters, the hard-core pornographers, the hedonists, the Hell’s Angels, those whom God won’t help because they won’t help themselves, the hermaphrodites, the highbrows, the hijackers, the hippies, the Hisses, the homos, the hoodlums of all races, the heroin pushers, the hypocrites—”

“Yes, the tribute has begun, the tribute to the man they loved more than they knew. By trains they come, by busses, by cars, by planes, by wheelchairs, by feet. Come some on canes and crutches, and some on artificial limbs. But come undaunted they do, like pilgrims of yesteryear and yore, to honor pay to him they loved more than they knew. Reaped by the Grim Reaper before his reaping was due, he brings us together at last, as he promised he one day would do. And doing it he is. For in they come, the ordinary people, his people, barbers and butchers and brokers and barkers, tycoons and taxidermists and the taciturn who till the land. It is, I daresay, a demonstration the likes of which he who has been grimly reaped by the Grim Reaper did not, alas, survive to witness. No, during his brief residence on this planet Earth, and his three years in the White House, they demonstrated not to honor him but to humiliate him, not to pay him homage and respect but to shout their obscenities at, and display their disrespect toward, him. But these are not the obscenity-shouters and the disrespect-displayers gathering here tonight along the banks of the Potomac — banks as old as the Republic itself — and beneath the cherry blossoms he so loved, and in the brooding grandeur of this the city which embodies that which he who has been untimely reaped would have himself willingly laid down his life for, had of him it been asked instead of cruelly being stolen in the night from him by an ill-mannered madman with a baggie. Yet madmen there have been and madmen there will be, and still this nation has endured. And, I daresay, endure it will, while the madmen pass through these corridors of power and halls of justice and closets of virtue and dumbwaiters of dignity and cellars of idealism, leaving us in the end, if not stronger, wiser; and if not wiser, stronger; and if, alas, not either, both. This is Erect Severehead with a cogent news analysis from the nation’s capital.”

“This is Brad Bathos. I’m down here in the streets of Washington now, and it is a moving and heartrending sight I see. Ever since the news first broke that the President had been found dead in a baggie at Walter Reed Hospital, the people of this great country, his people, have been pouring into the capital from all over the nation. Thousands upon thousands simply standing here in the streets surrounding the White House, with heads bowed, visibly shaken and moved. Many are crying openly, not a few of them grown men. Here is a man seated on the curbstone holding his head in his hands and quietly sobbing. I’m going to ask him if he will tell us where he comes from.”

“I come from here, I come from Washington.”

“You’re sitting on the curbstone quietly sobbing into your hands. Can you tell us why? Can you put it into words?”

“Guilt.”

“You mean you feel a personal sense of guilt?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I did it.”

“You did it? You killed the President?”

“Yes.”

“Well, look, this is important — have you told the police?”

“I’ve told everyone. The police. The FBI. I even tried to call Pitter Dixon to tell her. But all they kept saying was that it was kind of me to think of them at a time like this and Mrs. Dixon appreciated my sympathy and thought it was in very good taste, and then they hung up. Meanwhile, I should be arrested. I should be in the papers — my picture, and a big headline, DIXON’S MURDERER. But nobody will believe me. Here, here’s the notebooks where I’ve been planning it for months. Here are tape recordings of my own telephone conversations with friends. Here, look at this: a signed confession! And I wasn’t even under duress when I wrote it. I was in a hammock. I was fully aware of my constitutional rights. My lawyer was with me, as a matter of fact. We were having a drink. Here — just read it, I give all my reasons and everything.”

“Sir, interesting as your story is, we have to move on. We must move on through this immense crowd… Here’s a young attractive woman holding a sleeping infant in her arms. She is just standing on the sidewalk gazing blankly at the White House. Heaven only knows how much anguish is concealed in that gaze. Madam, will you tell the television audience what you’re thinking about as you look at the White House?”

“He’s dead.”

“You appear to be in a state of shock.”

“I know. I didn’t think I could do it.”

“Do what?”

“Kill. Murder. He said, ‘Let me make one thing perfectly—’ and before he could say ‘clear,’ I had him in the baggie. You should have seen the look on his face when I turned the little twister seal.”

“The look on the President’s face when you—?”

“Yes. I’ve never seen such rage in my life. I’ve never seen such anger and fury. But then he realized I was staring at him through the baggie, and suddenly he looked just the way he does on television, all seriousness and responsibility, and he opened his mouth, I guess to say ‘clear,’ and that was it. I think he thought the whole thing was being televised.”

“And — well, was your baby with you, when you allegedly—?”

“Oh yes, yes. Of course, she’s too young to remember exactly what happened. But I want her to be able to grow up to say, ‘I was there when my mother murdered Dixon.’ Imagine it my little girl is going to grow up in a world where she’ll never have to hear anybody say he’s going to make something perfectly clear ever again! Or, ‘Let’s make no mistake about it!’ Or, ‘I’m a Quaker and that’s why I hate war so much —" Never never never never. And I did it. I actually did it. I tell you, I still can’t believe it. I drowned him. In cold water. Me.”

“And you, young man, let’s move on to you. You’re just walking up and down here outside the White House, very much as though you’ve lost something. You seem confused and bewildered. Can you tell us, in a few words, what it is you’re searching for?”

“A cop. A policeman.”

“Why?”

“I want to turn myself in.”

“This is Brad Bathos, from the streets of Washington, where the mourners have come to gather, to pray, to weep, to lament, and to hope. Back to Erect Severehead.”

“Erect, we’re up here on top of the Washington Monument with the Chief of the Washington Police Force. Chief Shackles, how many people would you say are down there right now?”

“Oh, just around the monument alone we’ve got about twenty-five or thirty thousand; and I’d say there are twice that many over by the White House. And of course more are pouring in every hour.”

“Can you describe these people? Are they the usual sort of demonstrators you get here in Washington?”

“Oh no, no. These people don’t want to disrupt anything. I would say they are actually bending over backwards to cooperate with the authorities. So far, at any rate.”

“What do you mean by so far?”

“Well, we haven’t yet had to make any arrests. We’re under orders from the White House not to arrest anyone under any conditions. As you can imagine, this is putting something of a strain on my men, particularly as just about everybody down here seems to have come for the purpose of getting himself arrested. I mean I’ve never seen anything like it. A lot of them are down on their knees begging to be taken in, and just about every Tom, Dick and Harry seems to have documents or photographs or fingerprints, proving that he is the one who killed the President. Of course, none of it is worth the paper it’s written on. Some of it’s kind of laughable, in fact, it’s so unprofessional and obviously a slapdash last-minute job. But still and all, you got to give them credit for, their fortitude. They grab hold of my men just like they had the goods on themselves, and actually try to handcuff themselves to the officer with their own handcuffs and get carted off to prison that way. We can’t park a squad car anywhere, without half a dozen of them jumping into the back seat, and screaming, ‘Take me to J. Edgar Heehaw — and step on it.’ Now you can’t arrest anybody without taking the proper procedural steps, but go try to explain that to a crowd like this. We’re sort of humoring them, however, the best we can, and the ones who just won’t quit, we tell them to wait right where they are and we’ll round them up later. What we’re hoping for is a good thunderstorm during the night, that’ll sort of break the back of the whole thing. Maybe if they stand around long enough in the rain they’ll get the idea that nobody is going to arrest them no matter how much evidence they produce, and they’ll go home.”

“But, Chief Shackles, suppose the rain doesn’t come — suppose they are still jamming the streets in the morning. What about the workers trying to get to government offices—?”.. “Well, they’ll just have to suffer a little inconvenience, I’m afraid. Because I am not subjecting my men to the charge of false arrest just so somebody can get to his office in time for the morning coffee break. And then there are these orders from the White House.”

“Your assumption then is that all these people here are innocent, each and every one?”

“Absolutely. If they were guilty, they would be resisting arrest. They would be running away and so on. They would be screaming about their lawyers and their rights. I mean, that’s how you can tell they’re guilty in the first place. But all these people are saying is, ‘I did it, take me in."

What sort of law enforcement officer is going to arrest a person for something like that?”

“This is Brad Bathos. Violence has erupted here on Pennsylvania Avenue, directly outside the White House gates where upwards of thirty thousand mourners have already gathered to bid farewell to a fallen leader. Even as Police Chief Shackles was praising this crowd for their obedience to authority and respect for the law, a free-for-all broke out among a group of fifteen men in business suits. Though police intervention was necessary, no arrests were made. I have here beside me one of the gentlemen who was involved in the violent episode, and by all appearances he is still rather upset. Sir, how did the violence begin?”

“Well, I was just standing here, minding my own business, trying to confess to an officer about murdering the President, when along comes this very fancy guy in a limousine and wearing a flower in his buttonhole, and he just steps in between me and the officers and he says he did it. And then the chauffeur gets out of the car and he starts pushing me back and saying let his boss do the talking, his boss really did it and he was a very busy man and so on and so forth and who did I think I was, acting so high and mighty. So then some colored guy comes up and I don’t have anything against colored guys, you know — but this one was real uppity and he starts saying we’re both full of it, he did it, and the chauffeur tells him to get at the end of the line and wait his turn, and that really starts the thing going, and the next thing you know there are fifteen guys all swinging at one another, claiming they all did it, too. Well, if it wasn’t for the officer, I’m not kidding, somebody might have gotten hurt. It could have been awful.”

“So you have nothing but praise for the police?”

“Well, yes — up to a point. I mean he broke this thing up one-two-three, but then when it was all over he still wouldn’t make any arrests. In fact, once he’d separated us, he just disappeared, like the Lone Ranger used to. I can’t find him anywhere. Some of the other guys want to find him, too. See, we gave him these confessions and all this incriminating evidence, and so on and you know what he did with it? He just tore it up, even while he was running away. Fortunately, I had my secretary xerox all this stuff at my office, so I’ve got a copy at home, but a lot of these guys were foolish enough to give him the only copy of their confessions that they had. About the only good thing to come out of this is the possibility that because the fifteen of us were seen all huddled together on the pavement here, pounding each other’s heads in, we might get picked up as a conspiracy. That is, if we can find a cop. But go try to find even a plainclothesman when you need one. Hey, you’re not authorized to make an arrest, are you, by your network or something?”

“—and so in they continue to come. And now they have told us why. They come not as they came to Washington to mourn the death of President Charisma. Nor do they come as came they did to Atlanta, to follow behind the bier of the slain Martin Luther King. Nor come do they as to the railroad tracks they did, to wave farewell as the tragic train that bore the body of the murdered Robert Charisma carried to its final resting place, him. No, the crowd that cometh to Washington tonighteth, cometh not in innocence and bewilderment, like little children berefteth of a father. Rather, cometh they in guilt, cometh they to confesseth, cometh they to say, ‘I too am guilty,’ to the police and the FBI. It is a sight, moving and profound, and furnishes evidence surely, if evidence there need surely be, of a nation that has cometh of age. For what is maturity, in men or in nations, but the willingness to bear the burden — and the dignity — of responsibility? And surely responsible it is, mature it is, when in its darkest hour, a nation can look deep within its troubled and anguished blah blah blah blah blah blah blah the guilt of all. Of course, those there are who will seek a scapegoat, as those there will always be, human nature being what it is instead of what it should be. Those there are who will self-righteously stand up and shout, ‘Not me, not me.’ For they are not guilty, they are never guilty. It is always the other guy who is guilty: Bundy and Kissinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Calley and Capone, Manson and McNamara — yes, the list is endless of those whom they would make responsible for their own crimes. And that is what makes this demonstration here in Washington of collective guilt so blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. The blah blah of the spirit and the blah blah blah blah blah blah for which our sons have died blah blah blah blah blah blah reason and dignity blah blah blah blah blah dignity and reason. No, blame not those who gather here in Washington to confess to the murder of the President. Ratber, praise them for their courage, their blah blah blah, their blah and their blah blah blah, for blah blah blah blah as are you and I. We are all guilty. And only at the risk of blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah forget. This is Erect Severehead from the nation’s blah.”

“—the masochists, the mainliners, the minorities who think they are the majorities, the mashers, the masturbators, the mental cases, the misanthropes, the momma’s boys, the much-ado-about-nothing-ites, the milquetoasts—”

“Gentlemen, because of the developing interest around the nation in the situation here in Washington, we have decided to move somewhat faster than we had originally planned, and to release to you tonight the x-ray of the other hip. We hope that by releasing the x-rays of both of the President’s hips, the right virtually within a few hours of the left, we will be able to restore some perspective as regards this whole situation.”

“You mean by that the assassination, Blurp?”

“I don’t know if I want to use a highly inflammatory word like that at a time like this. It may not sell newspapers, but I’d just as soon, for the sake of accuracy, stick to ‘the situation.”‘ “In other words, you are now admitting that there is ‘a situation.’

“I don’t think we ever denied that.”

“What about the funeral, Blurb?”

“Let’s deal with the situation first, then we’ll get to the funeral. Any other questions?”

“Where is the President’s body right now?”

“Resting comfortably.”

“Comfortably in the baggie or out of the baggie?”

“Gentlemen, don’t push me. He’s resting comfortably. That’s the important thing.”

“Will he be buried in the baggie, Blurb? One report is that the First Lady has decided that given his dedication to the rights of the unborn, burial in the baggie would be fitting and proper. Like King’s body being pulled by a mule train.”

“Whatever the First Lady decides, I’m sure it’ll be in good taste.”

“Blurb, what about Mr. What’s-his-name? He’s still back of the podium saying it didn’t happen, that it’s a pack of lies. Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?”

“No comment.”

“Blurb, is it true that the oath of office has already been secretly administered to the Vice President between speaking engagements, and that he actually is the President at this very moment?”

“Why would we do a thing like that? Absolutely not.”

“Mr. President, can you tell us now why the oath of office was administered to you secretly between speaking engagements, so that actually you were the new President even while you went around claiming that the stories of President Dixon’s assassination were lies perpetrated by the enemies of this country?”

“I think the answer to that is obvious enough, gentlemen. You cannot have a country without a President any more than you would want to have a cackle-dooper without a predipitous, or, likewise, a caloodian without a pre-pregoratory predention. Of course, the dreedles, the drishakis and the dripnaps would give their eyeteeth to have it otherwise, but the sworn swaggatelle of this sirigible, and the truncation of our truthfulness will not be trampled and torn, so long as I, as President, vent such vindictiveness as the avengers varp.”

“President What’s-his-name, there is an admittedly ugly rumor to the effect that the reason you denied any knowledge of the President’s assassination was because you were fearful that otherwise the finger of suspicion might be pointed at you. Do you have anything to say about that admittedly ugly rumor?”

“Yes, I have this to say and I propose to say it so that there is no doubt about my feelings on this matter later. If the creeps and the cowards that crucify the crelinion, crip after crip, and who furthermore — and we have proof of this — have crossbowed the cradalious ever since the first crackadoes crusaded in the cause of caliphony, if they think they can cajulate and castigate and get away with it, there will be such a cacophony of cabs, cassanings and crinoleum through the criss and cratch of this country, that the crypto-callistans and the quasi-clapperforms will quiver rather than coopt the crokes.”

“Sir, while we’re on the subject of admittedly ugly rumors, can you comment on one that suggests that the reason you kept saying the President was alive when you knew he was dead, was because you were fearful that either a coup on the part of the Cabinet, or an armed revolt by the people, would have prevented you from taking office, had you announced openly your intention to do so? Were you frightened that they wouldn’t let you be President because you weren’t qualified?”

“Far from fear, what I felt was a filarious frostification at the far-reaching fistula into which fate had feductively fastinguished me.”

“Sir, will you comment on Mrs. Dixon’s decision to bury the President in his baggie at Prissier? Were you consulted on this, and if so, does it mean that your administration will be as committed as was his to the rights of the unborn and the sanctity of human life and so on?”

“Well, of course, not just me, but zillions and zillions of our zircos, zaps of our zilpags and zikons of our zikenites—”

“So the blah blah blah blah of state has been passed. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah has ended and the republic that blah blah blah.blah reason blah blah blah blah. Heavy are our blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah corridors blah blah blah that he loved. And the cherry blossoms. Blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah lest we blah blah blah blah blah our civilization with it. We can ill afford that. Blah blah blah blah blah back to normal blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah of America, from the humblest citizen to the blah blah blah blah. Blah blah 1776 blah blah? Blah. Blah blah 1812 blah blah blah? Blah blah. Blah blah 1904–1907? Blah! Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah reason and dignity. Blah blah blah blah reason. Blah blah blah blah blah dignity. Blah blah blah blah blah blah fulfillment of the Ameriblah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah one hundred years ago. Blah blah blah blah of Galilee. And yet those would surrender hope blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah cherry blossoms. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah before him. Blah blah blah the republic. Blah blah blah the people. Blah blah blah blah blah nation’s capital.”

The Eulogy Over the Baggie

(As Delivered Live on Nationwide TV by the Reverend Billy Cupcake)

Now today I want you to turn with me to page 853 in your dictionaries. Our eulogy is from the letter “L,” the twelfth letter of the alphabet, and our word is the fifth down in the left-hand column, directly below the word “leaden.” Our word is “leader.” Now how does Noah Webster define “leader”?

Well, Noah writes, “A leader is one who or one that which leads.” One who or one that which leads. One who or that which leads.

Just the day before yesterday I read an article in a current magazine by one of the top philosophers of all time and be wrote, “Leaders are one of man’s top necessities.” And in a recent Gallup Poll we’ve been reading where more than ninetyeight percent of the people of America believe in leadership. I was in a European country last summer and one of the top young people there told me that the teenagers in his country want leadership more than anything else. President Lincoln — before he was killed — said the same thing. So did Newton — Sir Isaac’ Newton, the great scientist — when he was alive. Now when Noah tells us that a leader is one who or one that which leads, he is telling us what “leader” means in the ordinary sense of the word. But I wonder if be who lies here before us in this baggie was a leader in the ordinary sense. I don’t think be was. And I’ll tell you why. I talked to a psychiatrist friend of mine only this morning and be said, “He was not an ordinary leader.” And one of my friends, a distinguished surgeon who does heart transplants at one of our great hospitals, wrote me a letter and said the same thing: “He was not a leader in the ordinary sense of the word.”

Well, you say, what was he then, if he wasn’t a leader in the ordinary sense? He — and I repeat that — he was a leader in the extraordinary sense of that word. Now what does that mean, the extraordinary sense of that word? Fortunately, Noah defines “extraordinary” for us, too. You will find the definition on page 428 in your dictionaries, in the right-hand column, six words down, directly beneath “extraneous.” Extraordinary, Noah tells us, means, “beyond what is ordinary; out of the regular and established order.” Beyond what is ordinary. Out of the regular and established order. Now what does that mean? I read only the week before last in an Australian newspaper that I get in my home a story about a fellow who made news down there — and why did he make news down there? Why do I know about him thousands and thousands of miles away? Because he was extraordinary in some way or another. He was that rare thing among men. He was himself and no one else. Himself and no one else.

And what does Noah tell us about “himself”? “Himself,” Noah says, “an emphatic form of him.” An emphatic form of him. Here then is what was so extraordinary about the leader around whose baggie we are gathered today. He was emphatically himself and no one else.

You know. Let me repeat that. You know, I have been to funerals of ordinary leaders the world round, and I know you have too, by way of the miracle of television. We all know the wonderful things that are said on these sorrowful occasions. But I think I have only to repeat the fine words that are intoned over the graves of ordinary dead dignitaries for you to see how truly extraordinary was our own dear departed President, in and of himself. In and of himself, which, you remember, Noah tells us is the emphatic form of him. Now I don’t mean to disparage the ordinary leaders of this great globe by this comparison. I read a letter only three weeks ago Thursday that a radical young person wrote to his girl friend disparaging and scoffing and laughing at the leaders of this world. Now he may laugh. They laughed at Jeremiah, you know. They laughed at Lot. They laughed at Amos. They laughed at — the Apostles. In our own time they laughed at the Marx Brothers. They laughed at the Ritz Brothers. They laughed at the Three Stooges. Yet these people became our top entertainers and earned the love and affection of millions. There are always the laughers and the scoffers. You know there used to be a top tune in all the jukeboxes called “I’m Laughing on the Outside, Crying on the Inside.” And I read an article in a news magazine only Sunday before last by one of our top psychologists which says that eightyfive percent-eighty-five percent! — of those who laugh on the outside cry on the inside because of their personal unhappiness.

I am not then trying to disparage the ordinary leaders of the world by this comparison. I want only to illustrate to you the extraordinary leadership of the man who walked among us for a brief while in a business suit, and now is gone. Only yesterday morning at ten A.M., I overheard a lady in an elevator of one of our top hotels, say to a young person, “There has never been another like him in history, there will never be another like him again.” Now. Let me repeat that. Now, when an ordinary leader dies — and I mean by “ordinary” just what Noah does, on page 853, the last word down in column one: “of the usual kind” or “such as is commonly met with”—when an ordinary leader dies, there always seem to be words and phrases aplenty with which to bury him. However, how ever, when an extraordinary leader dies, a man who was himself and no one else — what then do we say? Let’s try a scientific experiment. Now science doesn’t hold all the answers and many of my scientific friends tell me that all the time.

Science, for instance, doesn’t know what life is yet, and in a recent Gallup Poll did you know that five percent more Americans believe in life after death now than they did some twenty years ago? So science doesn’t have all the answers, but it has provided us with many wonderful breakthroughs. Let’s try this scientific experiment. Let’s try the phrases for an ordinary man on this extraordinary man. And you tell me if you don’t agree that as applies to him who lies here in his baggie, they are hollow to the ear and false to the heart, and vice versa. Let’s see if when this experiment is over, you don’t say to me, “Why, Billy, you’re right, they don’t describe him at all. They describe one who or one that which leads, but not him who was emphatically himself and no other.”

I’m going to ask that we bow our heads now. Every head bowed and every eye closed, and listen. They say of an ordinary leader, when and if he dies, of course — he was a man of broad outlook; Or, he was a man of great passion;

Or, he was a man of deep conviction;

Or, he was a defender of human rights;

Or, he was a soldier of humanity;

Or, he was scholarly, eloquent and wise; Or, he was a simple, peace-loving man, brave and kind;

Or, he was a man who embodied the ideals of his people;

Or, he was a man who fired the imagination of a generation.

They say of an ordinary man, when and if he dies, that the loss is incalculable to the nation and the world.

They say of an ordinary man, when and if he dies, that all will be better for his having passed their way.

Need I go any further? There was an article in a current magazine last month by a professor who is an authority on human behavior, and he writes that you can tell when a crowd of people is in agreement with you. Well, the professor is correct. Because I know that you are all saying to yourselves, “Why, Billy, you’re right — in vain do I listen for the words or word that describes he who lies here in this baggie; for these are phrases that summon up the image of an ordinary leader, not the extraordinary leader we have lost.”

What word or words then will describe this extraordinary man? I was in an African country one year ago this July and I heard a top political expert there call him “The President of the United States.” The President of the United States. In another African country I heard about a teenage girl who called him “The Leader of the Free World.” The Leader of the Free World. And a lawyer friend of mine, a well-known judge, who lives in South America wrote me a letter not too long ago and he had an interesting thing to say. He said he heard a man in an elevator in a top hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, call him “Commander-in-Chief of the American Armed Forces. Commanderin — Chief of the Armed Forces.

Yet are these the words in which he lived in the hearts of his fellow countrymen? Perhaps that is what he was to the rest of the world. But to we who knew him, nothing so majestic or formal could begin to communicate the kind of man he was and the esteem in which he was held. Because to us he was not a leader in the ordinary sense — he was a leader in the extraordinary sense. And that is why we who knew him think of him by a name as unpretentious and unceremonious as the name you might give to your own pet, a name as homey and familiar as you might bestow upon a little puppy. I’m going to ask that we bow our heads again. Every head bowed and every eye closed, while we all share in the remembrance of the name by which he was known to we who knew him best, the name by which we called him in our hearts, even if we were too shy or too timid to speak it with our lips while he walked among us in a business suit. And how appropriate that it is a name even a puppy could bear, for we all remember as much as anything about him, the deep reverence he had for dogs.

The name was a simple one, my friends. The name was Tricky. Yes, to you, to me, and to all Americans for generations to come, Tricky he was and Tricky he shall be.

And now, all heads bowed and every eye closed, let us pray. Oh God, who alone art ever merciful in sparing of punishment, humbly we pray Thee on behalf of Thy servant, a man called Tricky…