The Bootblack Stand: Letters to Plunkitt from Senator Gravel and Opel Johnny Morton
The Bootblack Stand Dr. George Washington Plunkitt, our prize-winning political analyst, is celebrating the publication of his new book, which is now available at avant-garde bookstores throughout...
...Plunkitt's book is about the importance of altruism in politics and it is titled What's in It for Me...
...Morton: For shame...
...Trash is all around...
...GWP Dear Mr...
...Her language might soon be studied in many of the great universities and analyzed in the Modern Language Association (M.L.A...
...Why not just use a heavier cologne...
...Peculiar literature litters the halls, odd stuff like a manual on how to grow hair, and one of Iowa's senators left booklets around about conversations with the dead - blasphemy I call it...
...And besides I am so active in the ecology movement it seems to me that I could tell the press that I was only trying to study the way ducks swim in oil slicks...
...The "sassy gal" of whom you write is probably but speaking in the authentic idiom of her people...
...Men who have amassed vast fortunes and who wield enormous power, the power of the sovereign people of this glorious Republic...
...You speak of the chosen representatives of the American people...
...Dear Mr...
...I expect the reason their constituents send them to Washington is to get them out of their neighborhoods...
...What do you think...
...Plunkitt: My wife will not let me play in the tub with my rubber duck anymore...
...In fact I wouldn't want the family cat around the place...
...Troubled, Mike Gravel, U.S...
...I suggest you retire now before a quota is applied to your establishment and you are retired by the forces of justice and compassion...
...I'd sooner kiss a pig then clean up after their mess-ings again...
...Respectfully, Opel Johnny Morton Capitol Maintenance Staff Dear Mr...
...One of them, a sassy gal with floppy hats and a mustache, used the vilest language I have heard since the days they used to hold cock fights out in Virginia during Prohibition...
...She says that the newspapers might find out and make me to look like a saphead...
...I have told her that I will not take a bath without it...
...Although Dr...
...Plunkitt: Well the 92nd Congress closed up shop the other day and all of those no goods skedaddled to their home districts to butter up the voters and insure themselves a piece of the action for the next few years or so, and I am left here trying to clean up after them...
...Now what I want to know is why folks like me have to put up with it...
...The worst were too awful to describe...
...My good man you neither understand the greatness of the American political tradition nor the fresh winds of change sweeping across the land, bringing forth the New Age...
...The best of them was indicted and convicted for bribery...
...Senator Dear Senator Gravel: I think you are a real sport...
...GWP...
...Frankly they were the oddest lot that has come to Washington in the forty years that I have served on the maintenance staff...
...Address all correspondence c/o The Establishment, K.K...
...You are out of step with the times...
...The congressman who allegedly accepted that bribe did it in the grandest tradition of American politics, and the Iowa Solon who talks to the dead is a genuine reformer...
...Several of the old boys carved their initials into their desks, and one left an obscene suggestion...
...I expect his intentions are to extend the benefits of democracy even to the deceased, as is the custom in certain wards of progressive Chicago...
...You are possibly the first geek ever to be elected to the United States Senate...
...I'll have to think about your problem for a while though, for I had no idea you ever bathed...
...There are old bottles stuffed in every little cranny of the Capitol and all of them empty...
...George Washington Plunkitt, our prize-winning political analyst, is celebrating the publication of his new book, which is now available at avant-garde bookstores throughout New Jersey...
...I would not allow my little granddaughter around the building while they were in session...
...Plunkitt expects to earn ten million dollars from sales of his new book, he has agreed to continue to advise public figures through this column...
...Ever since your Thespian display at the Democratic Convention you have been one of my favorites...
...11, Box 360, Bloomington, Indiana 47401, Continental U.S.A...
...In the House there are mountains of spit balls around the Speaker's chair...
Vol. 6 • December 1972 • No. 3
