The Bootblack Stand
Plunkitt, George Washington
The by George Bootblack Washington Stand Dear Dr. Plunkitt: I recently began a campaign to raise the intellectual level of debate in the U.S. Senate by delivering a series of speeches outlining...
...May I suggest you pay a visit to Senator Gravel, Senator Montoya, and that Senator from Virginia who keeps forgetting his name...
...Plunkitt: On September 21 I released a report adducing evidence that only about six percent of the Navy's five hundred ships are fully combat-prepared...
...Unfortunately the level ofintellect on Capitol Hill is so low that many Senators just laugh rudely and throw spitballs...
...John Tunney, B.A., LL.B...
...Felix's corpus commends itself to the modern condition (in 235 B.C., on April 12, he prophesied that "A great nation will rise up just south of Canada and be worsened by a man with a ski-jump nose"), so I have been using his quotes in my speeches...
...After all we have not had a truly big war for years, yet we keep building up this enormous military force...
...I am trying to make a serious point...
...Thanks for your nice note...
...Segretti sent me and who summed up his philosophy for all time in the insightful epithet: "Nothing human could ever leave a rash like that...
...Is Felix too deep...
...I look forward to seeing you the next time I visit the sanitarium...
...If we had some guarantee that we really were going to have a war I could see the purpose in this military expenditure, but it is unlikely we will have a war—not while there's an energy crisis...
...Cordially, Sen...
...Senate by delivering a series of speeches outlining my current philosophical position...
...The press construed this as a criticism of Navy laxity...
...My point was that if from 1966 America has survived with only six percent of the Navy's ships combat-prepared, it is obvious that the remaining ninety-four percent of the Navy's ships are superfluous and an unnecessary governmental expenditure...
...What can I do to get my colleagues to think more seriously...
...Dear Senator Tunney: Come now...
...For years I have been loosely referred to as a liberal but in light of an intellectual metamorphosis that began for me in early 1972 when a Professor Donald Segretti sent me a packet in the mail urging me to read it and use it in my speeches, I think it is more proper to describe my thought as radically humane...
...Even Senator Kennedy just looks at me and shakes his head...
...If we were to cut our Navy by ninety-four percent there would be a lot more money to spend on what I call people needs and a lot more room in the ocean for whales...
...Incidentally, the poet's name is not Felix but Phelix...
...Sincerely, Les (No Pun Intended) Aspin, M.G...
...This evidence has been amassed since 1966...
...It was meant as nothing of the kind...
...No do I see the need for an army or air force...
...That is to say, I am a direct philosophical descendant of Felix, the poet of yore, whose work Dr...
...I find it difficult to believe that you cannot attract any support in our redoubtable Senate...
...Some of his other statements were: "If it secretes there's more to it than meets the eye," "Hell hath no fire like a woman squirmed," and "I never met a man I didn't like...
...GWP Dear Dr...
...GWP 36 The Alternative: An American Spectator November 1975...
...Dear Congressman Aspin: Frankly I see no need for any navy whatsoever...
...The press is trying to make me out to appear as some sort of congressional grumbler...
...There are some remarkable minds in that body...
Vol. 9 • November 1975 • No. 2
