All right, people, all right! Let's calm down!
 
True, your blue chips are turning into cow chips, and your dining room wallpaper is worth more than the stocks you're presently holding in your sweaty little hands. But be assured that our President is on the job! Yes! And what a relief it is to see his hand firmly in the till!
 
...We meant, of course, to say "on the tiller."
 
Just last week an infuriated President learned that there are some in the business community who are undermining the spirit of capitalism by seeking to make a profit. The deeply saddened War Leader has taken a solemn oath to make short work of such wickedness -- smoking it, if necessary, out of its cave and squashing it like a June bug on a tick. Assuming that is the way of June bugs with ticks.
 
And what's more he's just the guy to do it. Thanks to his long careers as the besieged headman of many, many, many enterprises, he is the perfect person to address the business community in their own terms. Few if any can rival the President's deep expertise in entrepreneurial catastrophe.
 
The President's concomitant experience in the ways of government does, however, place him in a unique and problematic position: that of an old broom that sweeps clean. The problem being that many of the suspected wrongdoers are Friends of the Broom.
 
Accordingly, we now see the dark shadow of suspicion to loom over the Chief Executive himself. Ut appears as though the moral choices he once called "as simple as black and white" have now acquired a more complex tonal structure. Now, in vehement denials of personal fiscal transgressions, the President asserts that, all appearances aside, his own business dealings are not evidence of "malfiance," but the result of "a complex transiction."
 
He could not have said it better.
 
Still, there are many as think he doth not protest enough, and they do much misdoubt him.
 
But, if the wheels of justice are turning slowly over fiscal crimes, they are spinning like lathes when it comes to simpler sins. Attorney General (we silly things almost said "Witchfinder General,") John Ashcroft -- a bible-carryin' man -- has completed a 13-month investigation that has unearthed as many as a dozen prostitutes rendering service to the city of New Orleans -- and there may be even more!
 
No determination has yet been made regarding their disposition (sunny, we like to think) -- as to whether to prosecute them or to cover them with blue drapes -- in which case, New Orleans being a port city, navy blue might be nice.
 
Clearly, the sins of the flesh are in good hands, so to speak, and we needn't worry about them. We do, however, admit to the teeniest bit of angst in the matter of Martha Stewart. Now, please understand that, while we would travel great distances to sample Martha's Ice Box Treats, we have not been deaf to the criticisms that have attached themselves to her like sticky buns.
 
Although we are aware that such executive descriptors as "combative," "scheming," or "manipulative" come most trippingly to the tongue when their object is a woman, we are compelled to acknowledged Ms. Stewart's extraordinary ability to focus on the main chance. It seems that very few leaders -- Torquemada being the single example that presently comes to mind -- have shown greater ability to rise above the ordinary encumbrances of empathy and concern for others. Martha, it would seem, is all for Martha; it's a full-time responsibility and one she does not shirk.
 
Nor are we distracted by the argument that someone worth a billion dollars would not lower herself to pocket a mere 250,000 samoleans -- an argument, in our opinion, made only by those who do not have 250,000 samoleans. We would be delighted to acquire such a sum -- we would be delighted merely to be in the same room with such a sum, breathing its heady perfume.
 
We fear the worst for Martha because the American system of justice has little patience with billionaires.
 
Speaking of just desserts, this week we turn to the realm of Joel Chandler Harris for "An Interview with Brer Fox," in which we speak with the new head of an inquiry into a rash of hen-house vanishments.
 
Oh, and good news in social trends: teenage births are down! It seems more and more people are choosing to be born as infants.
 
That's it, we're outta here. Leave the porch light on, we may be a little tipsy when we get there.
 
Hank
 
 
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