The Weekly Screed (#842)

Perverted and proud
by David Benjamin

“Thou shalt not diddle thy neighbor’s daughter.”
               — Eleventh Commandment, Exodus 20; 17.5 (deleted)

MADISON, Wis. — The Internet is just brimming over with surprises — like the other day when I tried to access the NAACP, for reaction to the election of Democratic senatorial candidate Doug Jones, a result fueled by black voter turnout. However, I suddenly found myself looking, live onscreen, into the white face of a middle-aged guy with a pencil mustache, twitchy lips and hair plugs.

“Hi there, guy,” he said. “Welcome to to the website of the NAAACP. I’m Dr. Francois Feely, executive director. What can I do ya for?”

Since I happened to know that the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is Derrick Johnson, I was puzzled. Francois Feely smiled genially, and said, “Oh, I get it. You were looking for the NAACP, the outfit with all those African-Americans, right? Well, we’re the NAAACP. And I wanna tell ya, guy! Since the special election in Alabama, we are fit as a fiddle and ready for love!”

I asked. “Three A’s?”

“Yes, the N-triple A-CP,” gushed Feely. “The National Association for the Amatory Advancement of Chickenhawks and Predators.”

“You mean — ”

“That’s right,” Dr. Feely broke in cheerily. “We are the sword and shield for the ancient tradition of intergenerational romance.”

“You mean, child molestation?”

Dr. Feely winced, but carried on amiably. “That’s an unfortunate characterization, soon to fade from common usage, thanks to Judge Roy Moore’s glorious victory Tuesday.”

“Victory?” I said. “But, er, Judge Moore lost.”

“Lost the election, yes. But who cares about that?” exclaimed Dr . Feely. “Our victory — my goodness! We scored a triumph for every redblooded American male who really, truly LOVES children. Six hundred fifty thousand politically reactionary, lily-white, small-town, family-values Republican moms, dads, grandmothers and grandpas came out in droves to validate, celebrate and group-hug an accused pedophile who had (they say) preyed on a veritable platoon of underage virgin girls! I mean, shazam, Sgt. Carter!”

I couldn’t dispute Dr. Feely’s interpretatation. Rather than vote for a moderate Democratic civil-rights hero with a spotless reputation, more than a half-million Alabamians — and the Republican National Committee — had cast their lot with a theocratic bigot with a throbbing jones for Lolita.

“The entire Christian evangelical community has come over to our side. We can start dating their little girls and boys, holding their hands in church, leading them out behind the rectory. Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last, free at last. Out of the closet and into the kindergarten. Perverted and proud!”

I tried to suggest to Dr. Feely that an apparent outpouring of Republican support for one horny judge way down south in Dixie might just be an aberrant moment — a one-night stand— for conservative voters.

“What?” scoffed Dr. Feely. “Do you honestly believe that the GOP can put the K-Y jelly back into the tube?

I shuddered at the metaphor but pressed on. “So, you think this movement has momentum?”

“Momentum? This is a tsunami of l’amour! Do I think the lonely kiddies of America — and Europe, Thailand, the Philippines — don’t want to be held, caressed, fondled and smothered by the sort of love their parents are too inhibited to provide them? Fuggedaboudit! Besides, isn’t it nakedly clear now that Republicans, in Alabama and beyond, have opened their minds and hearts to to the pedophiles of America the way we open our flies to their three-year-olds?”

I really didn’t want to answer this question.

“You don’t have to answer,” said Dr. Feely, letting me off the hook. “The voters — the doting Christian parents of Talladega, Sylacauga and Tuscaloosa — have welcomed us spiritually into their tots’ boudoirs. They finally understand that sexuality has no bounds, that no romance can be constrained by age or the absence of pubic hair. Love, as John Lennon said so poignantly, is all you need.”

I objected to the mention of John Lennon, but Dr. Feely was rolling. “We’ll be fighting hard for Judge Moore, of course. We’re thinking about a presidential run. It could turn out to be a Trumpian landslide! Sure, the Democrats might have the gay vote. But now, the Republicans have every pederast and peeper from sea to shining sea. We’re on the march — in raincoats and see-through dungarees.”

I wondered aloud whether Judge Moore, in light of a defeat that was triggered by credible accusations that he stalked teenage girls and seduced them in the hallways of the courthouse, would welcome the support of the “NAAACP.”

Dr. Feely candidly admitted to some concern. He said, “Well, according to our own ecumenical deviate grapevine, there are rumors that the judge has lost some of his interest in blossoming nymphets. His appetites seem to have shifted in a different direction.”

“Well, that’s good news for the daughters of the New South. But what could have lured Judge Moore away from little girls in pigtails and pinafores.”

Francois Feely cleared his throat and leaned close. “Well,” he said softly, “do you remember that horse he rode in on?”