by michael hureaux perez
Since Barack Obama has clearly reneged on any new dispensation for Black and working people in America, we may soon see him pitching an Old Deal as the Best Deal. Need affordable housing? “Please know that if a barn was good enough for Secretariat, it’s good enough for you. You’re an American.”
Eshus Blues: Roosevelt Offered the New Deal, Obama Launches Old Deal Programs for All Americans
by michael hureaux perez
“Join with me as we stride into the Old Deal, the Old Frontier.”
(Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.)
My Fellow Americans,
Tonight, as I come to you, I am reminded that we live in an age of high technology, high speed. High speed, and not just speed, you understand, but speed that is speed. The wonders of the Internet, that American innovation in communications, has now made it possible for us to send out more sound and fury signifying the monkey at the speed of light. And that is good.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot extricate, we cannot extrapolate, we cannot electroplate our lives. And that is why I come to you to suggest, that, in these days of declining economy, which, make no mistake is very bad, declining economy which is not good for Americans who do not wish to decline and know that it is not easy when so many Americans are expected to – you’ll please excuse the classic American phrase “fucking start all over again, motherfucker” – that we create for ourselves an Old Deal for all Americans.
I suggest, modestly as a man humbled by the great powers of the American presidency must, that it be yesterday once more, hey bop a reebop if you’re following me, and even if you aren’t. And believe me, I know that all most Americans want to do is-a zoom zoom zoom and – a boom boom. But, fellow citizens, the august quality of this occasion requires all Americans to know, as Americans always have known, as Americans have always known everything about everything, that this free market economy, even when slowing to a lessened pace, nay, a protracted death rattle in the staphylococcal halls of American antiquity, that this free market economy must work in its own manner for business, for the state, and for mugs like you.
“I know that all most Americans want to do is-a zoom zoom zoom and – a boom boom.”
My fellow Americans, we stand here today at an Old Frontier. As that great former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew once said, we cannot allow the nattering nabobs of negativism to breach our contract with the generations who have passed before us. Our Old Deal will work for all Americans, just as the same old same old always has. I have had experience enough to know what I say, and you need only believe me to be in a complete quandary at once.
So I come before you tonight to ask you to embrace this Old Deal. Let everything old be new again. Those of you who must travel on gravel roads since your counties can no longer afford to pave roads, remember that there were gravel roads in much of this country a century ago, and there are bound to be gravel roads in this country a century from now. America is the great gravel pit of the world, and there are few in this world who do not recognize that America leads the world in producing gravel. Where would the average American household cat be without gravel?
And yet, these words alone are not the only ones that may provide us with succor.
Those of you who must now sleep in the barn and raise your children there, remember that great American race horses like the immortal Secretariat sired his children in a barn, and his chosen filly threw her foals in a barn. My fellow Americans, there is no finer symbol of American can-do ism than good old fashioned American horsepower. So, as you wrap your children in furniture wraps taken from the eviction van in that corner of the relocation barns generously donated to the American public as shelter by the good folks at Archer Davis Midland, please know that if a barn was good enough for Secretariat, it’s good enough for you. You’re an American.
“Those of you who must now sleep in the barn and raise your children there, remember that great American race horses like the immortal Secretariat sired his children in a barn.”
My special presidential greetings go out tonight to young Ms. Emily Fellerocker of Bison Head, Nebraska, who lost her family last winter when they all asphyxiated from inhalation of charcoal fumes. The Fellerockers were attempting to heat their house with a barbecue grill once their power had been terminated by the Bison Head Power Company. Emily, I too have known personal loss and unexpected tragedy. My family home was burned down as a boy when my uncle got drunk and tried to suck up the waning coals in a barbecue pit with a vacuum cleaner in order to put the pit fire out. My family was saddened and shocked. But triumph comes out of such tragedy, and today, whenever vacuum cleaners are purchased in this country, prudent council is given to people that they should refrain from vacuuming up hot barbecue coals with a vacuum cleaner. And that is how it is in America, both the new old America and the old new America. For Americans, the road has never been easy, but it has been a road. A gravel road. A gravel road of old deals, a gravel road of barns and hay and refrigerator boxes and vacuum cleaners without hot coals inside them. President Millard Fillmore knew this. President James K. Polk knew this. President Franklin Pierce knew this, and all were men who were presidents in a time like our own. That is who we are. That is who we can be, with an Old Deal that embraces all Americans.
So I say to you tonight, Emily, that when you come out of your coma and off life support, have paid off your medical expenses and can breathe once more on your own as all Americans do, that the Old Deal will have a place for you in its rank and file. And for so long as I am president of the United States, you will be who you are, never forget that.
Join with me, young Emily and my fellow Americans, as we stride into the Old Deal, the Old Frontier. Though the rivers rise, and the lights go out, and the planes crash into the purple mountain’s majesty, and the bridges fall, and the waters are oiled, and the hurricanes blow, and our farms and pharmaceutical industries are outsourced to Turkey, and the radiation count rises, and our teeth fall out, and our hair comes off, and our pants fall down, and our brave soldiers fight in lands far away populated by people who earnestly pray that our American way of life roasts in the hottest pits of hell, we are Americans, and I am your president, and this is our Old Deal, and we shall under run.
God bless you all, and goodnight.
michael hureaux perez is a writer, musician and teacher who lives in southwest Seattle, Washington. He is a longtime contributor to small and alternative presses around the country and performs his work frequently. Email to: tricksterbirdboy@yahoo.com.
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