The Legend of Rob N. Hood
The
Story of What Happens When the Greatest Country in the World Acquires a President
whose
Told by Holinshed
You may remember the legend of Robin Hood. While
King Richard the Lion-Hearted of England was away fighting in the Crusades,
Robin Hood lived in the woods as an outlaw, fighting injustice and robbing the
rich to help the poor. That was a long time ago.
Hood, Robert L.
President of the Greatest Country in the World from 19—to 19--. Hood was descended
from the younger son of a long line of English earls, who crossed the ocean to
become a colonial governor and left when his side lost the Revolutionary
War. One of his sons remained, however. Throughout the
history of the republic members of the Hood family were distinguished by their
dedication to public service and the savvy deals their political connections
enabled them to make. By the late twentieth century the Hood family was
moderately well known and very wealthy. Robert L. Hood knew everyone who
was anyone. As president, Hood was best known for his successful conduct
of a war against a much less powerful foe, as well as for his patrician
attitudes and his affection for the oil industry. He and his wife,
Patricia, had several children, most of whom do not figure in this story.
A Ton of Money and a Good Name
The Guardians Of Privilege needed a candidate.
Even though they controlled both houses of Congress the opposition had held the
presidency for eight years. The vice president was running for president, and
they were afraid he would continue the policies they so disliked. The
people with money wanted a change.
The people with money can always find candidates willing to
support their interests. It did not take them long to find Rob N. Hood,
son of the recently defeated Rob L. (Actually, at the Skull and Bones it was
Robert Nottingham Locksley Fitzwalter Hood, but when it came time to run for
president, it was Rob N all the way.) People with money loved the
name. They said “We couldn’t hope to find a better name for a president.
It says ‘Man of the People’ no matter what he does.” They said “If we
give him money now he will do what we want later.”
Rob N. himself was perfect. He was eager to
avenge his father’s electoral defeat. He was so personable that he had
amassed a small fortune solely on the basis of his charm and his close
relationship to a powerful president. Unlike many candidates he had
honest sympathy for the tribulations of the rich. He called this
“compassionate conservatism.” People with money began to talk about the
candidate as a natural leader. Just to make sure, they gave him more
money than a presidential candidate had ever spent in the entire history of the
country. Nature can always use a little help.
A presidential candidate should make things
easy. Easy came naturally to Rob N. People didn’t want a candidate
who would make them work. Rob N. didn’t want to work too much
either.
People with no particular ideas or money smiled and nodded,
because the name was familiar but the face was new. The name had not been
associated with good times before, but it did sound heroic and it sounded
comfortable with “President “ in front of it.
Rob N. had already acquired a campaign team. The
campaign manager, Rogue, was a direct descendant of the legendary champion pit
bull, Attackwater, whose premature death was still mourned by all who count
success by the number of bite marks on their opponents’ carcasses.
Reporters began to tell stories about the candidate that they heard from Rogue
and the campaign’s communications director,
Rogue collected more money for his campaign than anyone had
ever spent on a presidential campaign before. The candidate was able to
outspend his opponents in the primaries by a thousandfold. They had to
drop out and he became the candidate.
The candidate had been nominated without ever having to say
anything. His opponent was a man who loved to think about policy and had ideas
about everything. The candidate had to say something.
First he said “I am a man of integrity and a friend to
everyone. My opponent is a sneaky liar.” Newspapers ran stories
about how his opponent was a sneaky liar.
The opponent said, “If people understand that I am right
about the issues they will vote for me” so he began to explain the
issues. People were bored.
Rogue and the people with money and the people with ideas
all got together to come up with some stands for the candidate to take on the
issues so that he would have something to say at the debates. Their
positions did not add up to much, but they were simple enough to fit in between
“I am a man of integrity and a friend to everyone” and “My opponent is a sneaky
liar.”
Daringly, the positions acknowledged that he would give the
people with money more money. Less daringly, they did not acknowledge
that he would follow the ideas of the people with ideas, but he promised them
he would and they knew that every time he squinted he was winking at them.
The campaign had some trouble coming up with a good campaign
slogan. “Robbing the poor to give to the rich” tested poorly with focus
groups. “I’m okay, you’re okay” sounded dated and might still be under
copyright. “Nanny nanny boo boo” almost made it before they settled on
“Looks good and does nothing.” The sign in the back room read, “Making
the world safe for plutocracy.”
When the candidate debated his opponent, a few people
noticed that he didn’t seem to know very much.
The candidate’s opponent defended himself against charges of
meanness and exaggeration, but he did not mention his opponent’s empty resume,
because he was proud of campaigning on the issues. People were bored.
A good candidate is a mirror. The people with money
looked at Rob N. and saw his financial sympathies. The people with ideas
saw his simple piety. Many people with no special money or ideas saw a
vaguely soothing regular guy.
The campaign worked on coaching the candidate so that in
future debates he would sound less ignorant. They moved the speaker so
that he would sound more natural. They made a cheat sheet with the
answers to some of the more obvious questions. To their great relief, the
cheat sheet worked and the candidate did not say anything too obviously
stupid. Many people concluded that this showed he was qualified to be
president. He pressed his advantage by telling jokes about being stupid,
so many people concluded that he was smart enough to make jokes, and even if he
wasn’t, stupidity was appealing. At least when he talked about things
that were hard to understand he made it clear that he didn’t understand them
either. Probably it wasn’t even necessary to understand them.
Just before the election, disaster almost struck.
Someone found out that the candidate had concealed a crime he committed a long
time ago. It was in the newspapers. Rogue appeared on a television
interview show.
The interviewer asked him about the crime. “The
candidate told us about it long ago. We didn’t believe it was the
public’s business,” he said. The interviewer nodded pleasantly and did
not ask him why he favored reporting every detail of the sex life of the
current president.
The interview continued. Rogue explained his
position. “We’re trying to persuade people that when the other guy lies
it’s because he is a sneaky liar with no morals, but when our guy lies it
doesn’t count because he is a man of integrity.” The interviewer nodded
pleasantly and asked, “Do you expect people to believe this?” Rogue
nodded pleasantly and said, “Yes, if we repeat it often enough.”
Rob N. continued to remind voters that he was a man of
integrity and a friend to everyone and that his opponent was a sneaky liar, and
many of them voted for him.
Chapter 2
Rob N. Hood’s Running Mate Finds Himself
Rogue
and
Chainsaw gave a press conference and outlined his criteria
for the platonic vice presidential candidate. He would use tried and true
methods in his search. First he had made to order a Bruno Magli glass
slip-on. He would try the glass slip-on on every prospective vice presidential
candidate, and only the one it fit would be chosen. He had another test
as well. He had a sword embedded in a stone and padlocked with a special
Kryptonite lock to which only he knew the combination. Only the candidate
who could remove the sword from the stone was the true vice
president-to-be. He went forth among the party faithful, looking among
them for someone who could wear the slip-on and unlock the padlock to pull the
sword from the stone. Not one of them could do it. He went back to
Rogue and
Rob N. Hood announced that Chainsaw would be his running
mate. Malcontents and supporters of the opposition brought up what they
said were unsavory parts of Chainsaw’s past. He had voted to support
oppression and keep political prisoners imprisoned abroad. His supporters
dismissed this. Foreign politics are confusing, they said. There
are security considerations. The malcontents complained that he had voted
to snatch food from the mouths of starving children. The Guardians Of
Privilege approved of this vote, because they had long believed that if you feed
starving children you only get more starving children, and we’re all against
that, right? They pointed out that he seemed a nice enough fellow, and
wasn’t that enough? And for many people it was.
Chapter
3
The
Election Reveals That Money Isn’t the Only Thing Worth Stealing
You
can’t fool all of the people all of the time. That’s why you need to
steal. Rob N. Hood’s opponent got more votes in the election.
You can fool enough of the people enough of the time to get
away with it. Rob N. Hood became president anyway. Here is how it
happened.
When Election Day dawned, Rogue was confident that every
contingency was covered. A victory speech was drafted for the candidate
to give if he won. In case, as some predicted would happen, Rob N. won
the popular vote but lost the electoral vote, a statesmanlike speech denouncing
the Electoral College was prepared. The third speech, extolling the glory
of tradition and the settled rule of law, was for the unlikely contingency of
the candidate’s losing the popular vote but winning the electoral vote. A
fourth speech, denouncing the opposition for stealing the election, was drafted
at the last minute just in case, unthinkably, Rob N. lost both.
The electoral vote was very close. One state would
decide the outcome. Fortunately for Rob N. Hood his brother, Brother
Hood, was the governor of the state and had promised to deliver the
state. The opposing campaign, apparently believing that such promises
were undemocratic, campaigned very hard in the state anyway. On Election
Day more people there went out to vote for the other candidate than for Rob
N.
But the governor was prepared. Black voters, who were
deemed likely to vote against Rob N. Hood, were turned away from the
polls. Their precincts were wrongly told that they were criminals.
Their registrations were lost. Extra documents were required of
them. Literacy tests were regretfully rejected as unnecessarily
heavy-handed, although an extremely tricky one was secretly incorporated into
some of the ballots. Many registered blacks were unable to vote, and many
who did vote discovered that faulty machines had not counted their votes.
Meanwhile voters who supported Rob N. were provided with ballots that were
already filled in. Everything was taken care of.
Rob N.’s campaign was also lucky. Thousands of Jewish
voters for the other side had ballots that were difficult to work. They
could not get new ballots if they made mistakes. Many of their votes were
thrown out and some mistakenly voted for a candidate who admired Hitler.
For a while on election night it appeared that Rob N. had
lost in spite of all his campaign had done. It was even announced
on television that he had lost the state.
Rob N. protested to Brother Hood. He had been promised
the presidency and he wasn’t going to settle for a PlayStation II. He
went on television and announced his cabinet choices.
The opponent’s campaign protested the votes that were thrown
out and the voters who were turned away and the thousands of votes that were
not counted.
They said “These black voters should have been allowed to
vote.” Brother Hood said, “If anyone was denied the right to vote whoever
is responsible will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law [here he
smiled] as soon as my brother appoints an attorney general.”
The opponent said, “Thousands of voters should not have
their votes thrown out.” The governor said, “We don’t need to count votes
of people who are so stupid that they make mistakes.” This was a great moral
victory for Rob N.’s campaign because someone else was made to look stupider
than their candidate.
Rogue went on television. He said , “So what if a few
black voters were turned away? It’s not as bad as slavery. So what
if a few Jewish voters voted for a candidate who admired Hitler? Plenty
of Jews voted for Hitler in 1933 because they liked his economic
policies.” People forgot about the black voters who had
been turned away from the polls and agreed that the voters who made mistakes
were stupid. No one whose vote was counted thought it was necessary to do
anything about other people’s votes not being counted.
The opponent’s campaign asked for a recount. They
asked the election officials to check all the ballots. Rogue
protested. “This is unfair,” he announced. The other side is trying
to steal back the election. That is not allowed under our system.
The Constitution clearly allows only votes for our candidate to be
counted. Otherwise our donors’ money will be wasted.” Rob N.’s supporters
demonstrated their outrage by spontaneously picketing in eight-hour shifts.
The governor preserved his dignity by stepping aside.
He handed his shredder over to his assistant. The assistant imposed a deadline
for final election results and ordered the election officials not to count any
ballots till it was past.
Rob N. announced again that he had won, and people began to
believe him. He announced that it was time for his opponent to
concede. He had been saying that for months before the election. So
people began to believe it, too. His opponent protested that the votes
had not all been counted. The candidate appeared on television again
looking pained. “Democracy is not about votes,” he said. “It is
about winners and losers. As I have said all along, I am a winner and my
opponent is a loser.” People believed him.
The plan almost failed when a rogue court ordered that votes
for both candidates should be counted. A distinguished statesman who had
been drafted to be a campaign spokesman, Taker, said solemnly, “It is a sad day
for democracy when they count all the votes.”
All might have been lost, but just as the counting was
getting under way, the Supreme Court rushed in, disregarding 200 years of
constitutional interpretation. It issued a sixty-five-page opinion, which
read in its entirety, “The hell with the law. Rob N. Hood wins.”
The election was over. Rob N. would be the new
president of the Greatest Country in the World. Losing the election and
gaining the presidency by preventing the counting of votes was a minor public
relations problem that would be forgotten soon enough. The real robbing
could begin.
The Honeymoon
The
Greatest Country in the World always gives a new president a honeymoon because
we always hope for the best. The Greatest Country in the World has an
international reputation for eternal naïvete. The new president got his
honeymoon even though it was the first wedding in recent history where the
groom wielded the shotgun. His opponent yielded graciously and he
accepted, graciously saving his taunts for the private meeting. His
followers rejoiced and showered him with confetti, which they prepared by
running copies of the Constitution through a crosscut shredder. The mood
was festive.
The new president’s Congressional allies, Rott and DeCay,
beloved by the people with ideas, rubbed their hands and made plans to enact
all their ideas. The new administration fell into place.
The new president reached out to the African-American voters
who had not been allowed to vote by appointing a popular African-American
general to a prominent position. He reached out again and extended a
finger by naming as the official in charge of investigating their claims a man
who thought bipartisanship meant enacting more of the Confederate agenda.
Some thought that a president whose ancestor was famous for living in an
ancient forest would name appointments who were committed to protecting the
wilderness. Instead, the new president combined the Department of the
Interior and the Department of Labor into one Department of Exploitable
Resources and appointed a dedicated exploiter to lead it. He established
a new department, the Department of Theocracy, and appointed an old friend to
run it.
Things were going well, and the new president was happy, but
even Machiavelli couldn’t predict every pitfall. The new president
answered a question by making a joke. The joke was that he wouldn’t have
these problems if he could be a dictator. Chainsaw, Rogue,
“What would you do if you wanted to set up a dictatorship?”
asked Rogue. “I give up, what?” asked the president. “First, you keep
a lot of people who don’t like you from voting,” said Chainsaw. “Then you
establish a rule that you don’t have to count all the ballots,” said
“What’s your point?” asked the president. His advisers
smiled.
Everyone accepted the new president with surprising ease,
except for a few black protesters who were considered sore losers because they
were still complaining that they had not been allowed to vote. The president
saw them picketing. “Why are those people calling me
‘Commander-in-Thief’?” he asked. “They have lisps,” replied
Chainsaw. “All of them?” asked the president. “Yes,” said Chainsaw
firmly, “You know they don’t speak English very well.” “I really should
do something about the soft bigotry of low expectations,” said the president.
The
New President’s First Legislative Initiative
An
important speech was prepared for Rob N. Hood to introduce his first
legislative initiative. Because of its importance the entire text is
included here.
“Good
evening, fellow citizens of The Greatest Country in the World and people who
didn’t vote for me. First let me say that no one regrets more than I do
the unfortunate accident that happened to the ballots in the
I
am appearing before you tonight to tell you about the very first bill I am
sending to Congress, even before my tax cuts and tort reform.
The
uncertainty caused by the last election and its afterdefects was even harder on
average folks than waiting to find out who shot J.R. As you all know I
have appointed a Blue Ribbon Commission to make recommendations on election
reform. This commission consisted of Orange Juice State Governor Brother
Hood, Orange Juice State Secretary of State and Ambassador Designate Harrass,
and former Speaker and noted historian Getrich. The Election Reform Bill
I am sending Congress tonight is based on their recommendations.
The
commission considered all kinds of proposals to avoid the kind of mess we had
last year.
Despite
the fact that a lot people seem to want to abolish the
They
did consider prohibiting the announcement network projections of election
results based on exit polls before it is determined how many votes will be
discarded by the nonpartisan machines. These can be misleading and had
the effect of keeping thousands of Floridians who believe everything they hear
on television from going to the polls and voting for me in landslide
proportions. However, the commission determined that this problem could
be resolved by a simple agreement with the networks to require that all
projections broadcast on election night be cleared with my cousin at the
network political desk.
Second
they considered whether Election Day should be changed from the first Tuesday
in November to some other day to make voting easier. Saturday was
considered. The Orthodox Jews and Sabbatarians were on board with a few
accommodations, but the suburban soccer leagues wouldn’t hear of it.
Third,
they considered whether a uniform ballot would be desirable, and if so what
kind. Though Rob N. Hood Orange Juice State Legal Emergency Fund would
like to thank the Punch Card Voting Machine Manufacturers Association for
its generous contribution, punch cards were only one of the technologies
considered. Optical scanning equipment is too expensive and might
interfere with my tax cut proposals. Computerized voting was considered
until hackers overturned the results of the elections of 1980, 1904, and
1860. Paper ballots are time-consuming and expensive to count.
To
be honest, there is no technology for voting that is not expensive, unreliable,
or tedious. That is why the commission went outside the box to come up
with a solution that I can only call brilliant. Election Day will remain
the first Tuesday in November, but voting will be abolished. This will eliminate
the expense, tedium, and unreliability of counting by any of the current
technologies.
This
proposal will also help the economy by improving workplace productivity.
Workers would no longer show up late or leave early to vote. They could
work a regular day and then go home and watch the returns on the late night
news.
Another
advantage of this proposal would be the complete elimination of the problem of
voter’s remorse, where voters realize after they leave the polling place that
they made a mistake. Whoever is counting the votes is left to decide
whether the voter still wants to support the candidate with nothing to go on
but the marks on the paper.
A
lot of people have talked this year about campaign finance reform. Under
our election reform proposals, the whole rationale for this would be
obliviated. Money could not corrupt our elections because candidates
would no longer need to spend buckets of money in vain attempts to persuade
voters. Instead, any contributions could go directly to their offshore
accounts.
Some
of you may be wondering how we will choose a new president if we eliminate
voting. Don’t worry. We have it covered. My election reform
bill provides for a commission to study the issue and come up with some
recommendations. It provides for the continuation of the current
administration until the new system can be adopted, so don’t worry, fellow
citizens. You’re in good hands. There’s no rush.”
The Electoral Reform Act of 2001 was passed by Congress and
remains the law to this day. The study commission had a meeting just a
few months ago.
The New Guard Moves to
The
election was over. Members of the new administration would be moving to
Most of the new administrators were moving from the (second)
Rogue and
Rogue gave it some thought, too. He preferred to work
behind the scenes and did not like to give interviews. Fortunately, he
remembered what Rob N. had done back in the (second)
House-hunting isn’t that hard if you think outside the box.
Chapter 7
Great--Expectations
Rogue
met with his advisers before the inauguration to consider a central strategy
for Rob N. Hood’s administration—how to keep expectations of the president
low. So long as little was expected of Rob N., he could neglect issues
that did not interest him (which included almost all besides stealing from the
poor to give to the rich) while still appearing to do a better job than
expected. That would enable him to maintain enough popularity to win (or
at least fudge) the next election.
During the campaign, the staff had kept expectations
low by having the candidate described as an idiot. Many observers had seized
relentlessly on the candidate’s malapropisms and apparent lack of understanding
of any complex issue and concluded that he was stupid. Comedians and
satirists made jokes about how stupid he was. Whenever he said anything
coherent, voters were relieved, and enough voted for him out of relief that he
almost won the election. A slightly different strategy was needed for a
president. The difference between the administration’s actual aims and its
stated goals meant that it would be foolish to expect Rob N.’s programs to
accomplish their pretended purposes. It would be hard to push programs
while characterizing them as idiotic.
The advisers decided they needed a complex
strategy. Rogue and Chainsaw would handle the substantive decisions and
the president would concentrate on his greatest talent, superficial
charm. The president would entertain members of Congress. He
would even entertain members of the opposition, though he would ignore any
substantive remarks they might make. He would thus get credit for
creating a new civility in Washington. Naturally no one could be expected
to remember that civility and even cooperation had existed in Washington years
ago, before the rise of the now-exiled Speaker Getrich and his lieutenants,
Rott and DeCay. Rott and DeCay would enjoy new vitality in their roles as
bad cops now that Rob N. was there to play the charming good cop.
The president would forge alliances with members of
the opposition by focusing on the things they had in common. Those
included their taste for power, the promise of hefty government pensions that
freed them from any personal need to depend on Social Security, and incomes
that would allow them to send their pregnant teenaged daughters out of the
country, if it ever came to that.
While Rob N. flexed his charm and Rogue and Chainsaw
toiled in the background, Ruse and Splicer would use indirect means to keep
expectations low. They secretly encouraged comedians to continue making
jokes about the president’s stupidity. They secretly wrote their own
jokes and circulated them on the Internet. They carefully monitored the
Internet for jokes that compared the president to anything known for its
intellectual deficiency and forwarded them to independent voters, so the voters
would continue to be pleasantly surprised by every instance of presidential
coherence or competence. The appearance of coherence was achieved by
releasing edited versions of Rob N.’s words. Release of his actual speech
was still too risky. Ruse even had an in-house hacker develop a virus
that erased recipients’ hard drives and circulated it with the title “The
President Just Logged On…Oops”
The plan was a success. In his first week in office,
Rob N. astonished everyone with his political skills, just by meeting with
numerous members of Congress and assigning each of them a cute nickname.
He could always destroy them later if they refused to support his plans.
Congress and the press were charmed. The president’s advisers
congratulated him on his perspicacity. He happily accepted their
praise. “Very few people can stand up to someone who calls them
‘Stinky,’” he explained. “And they said I didn’t learn anything at Yale.”
Chapter 8
Ruse Reads a Book and Gets an Idea
One
day, Ruse read a book. Many people thought it was a grim book with an
unhappy ending. Ruse had other ideas. “A lot of people think this
book is out of date because of the title,” she said, “but actually it is full
of useful tips. If we follow them we can stop improvising our
communications and come up with a system.”
She shared her ideas about the book with Rogue, and they came up with a good
idea.
They drafted a presidential proclamation. Ruse
arranged to go on a news interview show on television to discuss the
proclamation.
Ruse read the proclamation. It said, “It is hereby
proclaimed that night is day and, furthermore, that day is night.” The
interviewer asked her what it meant. She said, “Night is day. Day
is night.” The interviewer nodded. Next the interviewer turned to
the loyalist pundit, Shrill Varlet, for his interpretation. “This
administration has finally clarified the night and day situation that the
previous administration to its eternal shame never even tried to address.
This simple proclamation rights a wrong that has been festering for the last
eight years.” The interviewer turned to the opposition pundit for
the opposing point of view. The pundit said, “This proclamation overturns
settled law and common usage for no discernible reason. What does it
mean? Day is not night and night is not day.” Varlet shook his head
and said, “Typical liberal claptrap.” The interviewer, seeing that it was
time for a commercial, announced, “There you have it. That represents
both sides of this important issue.”
After Ruse had appeared for similar interviews on all the
morning news shows and for good measure all the Sunday morning talk shows,
where the segments were longer and the pundits more numerous, the
administration conducted a poll. The polling company discovered that 78%
of the people who watched morning news shows and Sunday morning talk shows now
believed that day was night and night was day. 14% were undecided and
only 8% of diehard oppositionists still believed that night was night and day
was day. That included a 3% margin of error.
The success of the presidential proclamation confirmed
Ruse’s belief that she could use the tips from the book she had read. She
wrote up a memo for the administration summarizing the tips. “As I
recall,” she said, “1984 was a great year.”
Ruse’s Rules (informally known as “Ruspeak”) adopted by the
Hood Administration:
1. REPETITION IS MORE PERSUASIVE THAN TRUTH
REPETITION IS MORE PERSUASIVE THAN TRUTH
REPETITION IS MORE PERSUASIVE THAN TRUTH
2. Whoever defines the subject of a
debate wins it. The same is true for an election.
3. You have a lot more flexibility with
the truth once you persuade the public that your opponent is a liar.
4. If a piece of legislation is going
to stick it to people it should have one of the following words in the title:
Freedom
5. Defense
6. Rights
7. Bill of Rights
8. Reform
9. If you establish an opposing idea as
a pejorative term its proponents have no legitimate word to express their
impulses. Thus liberalism and feminism have been abolished. If
anyone comes up with an untainted word for the same things those words must
also be discredited to insure that they do not resurface.
Additional candidates for the hit list include “federal” and
“rights.” Further nominations are being accepted on the White House
website. Just click on “Logocide Log Entries.”
10. Just because things have already
happened doesn’t mean they can’t be changed. That’s why God invented the
edit menu.
11. If a slogan is catchy people will
not examine its accuracy.
12. If you revile the government people
will trust you to run it without expecting you to use its power for the public
good.
13. If people disagree with you their
credibility must be destroyed. The best way to achieve bipartisan unity is to
eliminate the opposition.
14. Anyone who talks about the rights of
people we don’t care about can easily be dismissed as “politically correct.”
15. The literary term “doublethink,”
referring to the useful ability to believe you are saying although you know it
to be a fabrication, is considered disreputable. The preferred word is
“multitalk.”
16. The term “spin,” referring to
presenting the media with interpretations of events that are consistent with
the story you want believed, has also fallen into disrepute. The
substitute term, “Republican Truth Squad,” still works, but it would be wise to
begin looking for a new term sometime soon.
17. Most people will believe what they
want to if they have any excuse whatsoever. Always give them one.
18. If a talk show invites two experts
to discuss a subject, that subject has two sides. If the show has one
expert, the expert is considered objective and unbiased. Try to get your
speaker on alone as often as possible.
19. When ridiculing an opponent’s
position, always quote the shortest possible version of his remarks. If you quote enough to provide the context,
critical readers (there are still some out there) will detect the distortion.