GOD BLESS YOU ASA

by

Mark Stone

They won't go away, will they?  Asa already gave shelter to the homeless (for which he was nominated for the Jason Compson "I Love My Fellow Man to Death" Award); must he feed the hungry and clothe the naked as well?  Of course, we know the answer, don't we?  Men like Asa are always called upon to do service to their country.  Patriotism is a twenty-four hour a day job: no "9 to 5" for Asa.  His devoted little wife, Ava, said it best: "You never quit, do you dear?"  To which he proudly replied "Not so long as the threat of subversion hangs over this great land of ours!"  In other words, he will never quit, for subversion just will not go away, no matter what.

"Do you ever get discouraged?" Asa was asked in a TV interview for the cable network.  Pretty Michele Rainey had the honor of conducting the interview; she missed riding the clown car in the circus parade to do it, but it was worth it to her.  "A tradition ends," the newspapers reported.  "For twenty years, since the age of 9, when she first joined that exclusive club which reports the news to the nation, Pretty Michele has ridden the clown car when the circus came to town.  Now, for the first time, she won't ride in that big tiny little car from which a dozen clowns emerge.  The parade won't be the same without her.  But then, as she grew from a little curly-top who danced the daily rhythms of life to a seasoned reporter covering the Capitol, we knew the day would come when she would outgrow her little red clown nose as she outgrew her tippy-tapping shoes.  So to Michele we say: 'Girl, you're a woman now.'  Our little Mickey-Poo is a full-fledged reporter.  God bless you, Mickey."

"Do I get discouraged?" Asa echoed Pretty Michele's question.  "Let me do something I have never before done in my life: let me use a four-letter word to answer you.  Do I get discouraged?  Heck no I don't get discouraged!"

Ava, listening at home, blushed all the way to the roots of her brain - but smiled all the same, for she had never seen this side of her husband.  A real man's man, she thought.  I'll knit him a sweater with a cowboy hat and boots on it.

"You never get discouraged?" Pretty Michele persisted.

"Never."

"Never-never-never-never-never?"

"A thousand times never," Asa repeated.

"But there's so much subversion - it's all around us - how can you keep from being discouraged?  It's like the Hydra."  Pretty Michele had just finished a review of Bullfinch's Mythology.

"Hydra-schmydra, I'm an American," Asa reminded his interlocutor.  "When I see this great land of ours, with its bulldozers, its asphalt, its steel beams, its billboards; when I think of its people, so full of patriotic fervor, ready to take on the world for the sake of peace and freedom; and, especially, when I encounter its great institutions, its banks, its army bases, its prisons, its state houses, each with its own set of rules so finely tuned that no one need ever wonder what's expected of him or how much he's allowed to do or how far his thoughts may wander - when I experience the fullness and the richness of these United States, with its endless bounty for all, there is nothing I wouldn't do to help preserve it.  No effort is too great, no sacrifice too extreme.  Not for my country."

"My country, right or wrong?"

"There is no wrong," Asa assured Pretty Michele.  "Not where my country's concerned.  I'm no armchair American - no nine to five-er, no part time patriot.  I'm a full bodied American.  End of discussion."

The President happened to be watching cable that day and heard Asa's speech.  Afterward, he telephoned his old friend from Michigan to congratulate him on his stunning repartee.  "Thank God I had to use the bathroom or I'd have missed it," he explained.

"Mr. President," Asa found it necessary to correct his great leader, "I know you're a loyal American, so I'll just overlook that little reference to certain unmentionable bodily functions."

"Please forgive me, Asa," the President apologized.  "It's been a rough day.  I've been dealing with the biggest headache any president ever had.  The Welfare Mess!  I tell you, Asa, after a day with those people, it's no wonder my sense of decorum has gotten out of whack.  You have no idea, Asa, what a drain it is on one's sensibilities having to try and carry on an intelligent conversation with people who live in such sub-standard conditions, let alone resolve differences of policy.  I tell you, Asa, these people haven't the slightest idea what America's all about."

"Maybe it's time they found out."

"We've tried, Asa.  Nothing seems to work."

"Perhaps that's because you're looking at it from the wrong perspective, Mr. President."

"How do you mean?"

"It's time we stopped considering this a social problem and started seeing it as it really is: a security problem.  There is something inherently un-American about accepting a handout.  Welfare, Mr. President, is nothing less than subversion on a scale so massive and so mind numbing none dare call it subversion."

"But not you."

"No, Mr. President, thank God nothing numbs my mind or keeps me from calling a spade a spade."

"God love you, Asa.  But I suspect this is too big even for you to handle."

"Oh, I think I can take care of a few welfare cheats, Mr. President."

"What do you have in mind?"

"A little something we tried back home when the belly-achers started becoming a nuisance and a threat to decent, hard working Americans.  But I'm going to need all the help you can give me."

"You've got it, Asa.  You know that."

"Thank you Mr. President."

It looks as if Asa has bitten off more than he can chew this time; but, as you and I know, appearances can be deceiving.  This hydra, as Pretty Michele so aptly called the welfare mess, has been fought by Asa before - and beaten - though on a much smaller scale.  But let's have the press tell us about it.  Let's flashback to a year and a half ago, to Highland Park and the local news for the all-important broadcast.

Action-Reaction.  The late breaking news.  Sponsored by Trends, Incorporated.  We gave you the hula-hoop.  We gave you slinky.  We gave you the scurvy-durvy, the kitchie-koo, the blodgie, the widgie.  We gave you long hair, crew cuts, Don Eagles, the frizzie-wizzies and the fuzzy-wuzzies.  We gave you wide ties, narrow ties, sloppy jeans, fashion jeans, penny loafers and dock siders.  We gave you chili dogs, tasty fritters, quiche and croissants.  We were there when you were a hippie; we were there when you were a Yuppie; we were there when you entered the nursing home to become a nurpie.  From cradle to grave, whenever there's a need for a trend - we'll be there.  Trends, Incorporated.  Reducing the complexities of American life to the lowest common denominator.  That's us.

Big Nick the sportscaster asking you if you've ever considered using snot to bait your hook.  Reenie the big-eyed weather girl trying to recall what these misty orange squiggles on sky-eye represent.  Now a special report on an electrifying new approach to the welfare mess.  We go live to the Department of Social Services for an on-the-scene look at the latest development.

"What if you were a teenage mother of four with no visible means of support and no husband?  Where would you turn for help?  Well, in the past, you'd come here, seeking welfare.  But no longer.  Because the city council has just passed a resolution requiring every mother applying for welfare to certify that she has made every reasonable attempt to place her children as indentured servants.  This, in light of a new study by the Heritage Foundation indicating that idle hands do the devil's work and that children need the kind of rigid discipline only bondage can provide.  'The family structure,' the report reads, 'has in the modern age grown too lax to give children the values they need to assume their proper place in a free society.  This is especially true of the welfare family.'  It goes on to recommend the immediate initiation of a system wherein children reared on welfare can be given the care and personal attention only a strong work environment can provide.  The massive study - of nearly thirty welfare families in sixteen states - took five years to complete and was hailed by the President as 'the final word on the subject.'  Highland Park, always in the social and political forefront, becomes the nation's premier testing ground for what has been called the 'Ween the Children Movement.'  The resolution goes into effect at midnight.  Welfare mothers of Highland Park: say goodbye to your kids and hello to responsibility."

Though the report did not say so, the entire idea was Asa's, who some time ago had been made an honorary member of the Heritage Foundation.  The program was an overnight success.  Highland Park's welfare rolls dropped ninety-eight percent.  And the flood of children into the labor pool helped American business recapture the lion's share of the world market.  Made in America, thanks to thousands of busy little hands, took on a whole new meaning.

So, once again, Asa rolled up his sleeves and went to work.  His thought process, as it slowly unfurled, was a study in advanced logic.  "What worked in Highland Park," he reasoned, "might need some sprucing up to adapt to the entire nation.  The economy can absorb just so many children into the labor market.  So making them indentured servants can do only part of the job.  We need some other incentive - but what?" Asa ruminated.  He glanced over at Ava, busy at her skeins and knitting needles.  She was the best little wife in the world; but, still, only a woman, so of course consulting her on so important a matter was out of the question.  She happened to look up and, catching her husband deep in thought, smiled and lower her head again.  Asa watched her deft little hands fast at work moving her needle back and forth, up and down, in and out, a woven fiber trailing behind like a puff of smoke from a smokestack on top of some great American factory.  Then it cam to him, so gently, so naturally it seemed as if God Himself had put the idea in his head - as, indeed, He may have, for can Asa be any less cherished of God than he is of the President of this, the greatest nation that ever existed?

"Ava," he said, "how about a sandwich?"  The little woman smiled, set her work aside, and went to the kitchen to do her wifely duty.

Asa had his plan.  And a great plan it was.  But I won't reveal it just yet, because something happened so shocking, so offensive to the sensibilities of all true Americans that I must digress a moment first - something, incidentally, which inspired a slight alteration in Asa's plan to end welfare once and for all.

Walking home from the Georgetown Mall, Asa was accosted by a young man - a black man.  Asa knew right away something was terribly amiss: what legitimate business did a black man have in Georgetown?  It goes without saying that Asa is no racist; but he does have a keen sense of propriety.  He's a realist, he knows American values like he knows his own name; therefore, he knows that blacks cannot afford to live in Georgetown.  He is also a humanitarian, first and foremost; so he realizes how embarrassing it must be for someone to be seen where he clearly doesn't belong.  To make matters worse, this young black man was inebriated.  But it was when he spoke that Asa realized the urgency of ridding this great nation of welfare.  The man spoke the most abominable filth any human being was ever forced to endure - a veritable assault on the senses.

"Hey man," he called out to Asa, rubbing certain unspeakable parts of his anatomy, "you got twenty bucks?  I really could use twenty bucks, man.  For twenty bucks I'll let you do me!  This big boy's hot and ready!  I know a place we can go."

Asa at once summoned the police and had the man arrested for assault.  "It's horrible, I know," the policeman commiserated with Asa.  "The faggots and hustlers have to be stopped before it's too late."

"Yes, it's horrible," Asa agreed.  "But even in such filth is a glimmer of God's great love for decent Americans.  This incident has given me the key I need to save this country."

You heard him: "the key I need to save this country."  A lesser man would have lost his mind after being accosted in so monstrous a fashion; but not Asa.  His calm, cool intellect not only held firm, it took heart from the incident.  The truly great mind sifts adversity for the rudiments of triumph.

"Mr. President," Asa is saying on the telephone - but he has gone to a phone booth in order to protect his dear wife Ava from the kind of terms he must use - "I had thought people on welfare were child abusers, what with providing no firm set of values.  Now I realize how far beyond simple child abuse they have gone.  It pains me to have to say this, Mr. President, but I realize at last that people on welfare are actually homosexuals."

"Oh my God, Asa, I never suspected anything like that.  Are you absolutely sure?"

"I'm afraid so," Asa admitted.  "Logic points irrefutably to that, and only that, conclusion.  What else would keep men and woman from getting married?  What else explains their reluctance to pay for the support of their own children?  What else accounts for their hatred of work?  Homosexuality is total subversion, pure and simple.  It puts sex above love of country.  The queer will sell his very soul for sex, so you can imagine what he would do to his country.  The queer wants only to dress up like the opposite sex, molest children, and exist at someone else's expense.  He has no sense of decency, no responsibility - and, above all else, no patriotism.  He's ripe for any and all subversion.  It's no accident, Mr. President, that the term for what queers do is so similar to the term for sedition."

"And which terms are we speaking of, Asa?  Just to be sure we're on the same page?"

"Oh, we're on the same page, Mr. President: we both love our country dearly.  You say inversion, I say perversion - but they both add up to subversion."

"Oh yes, I see," remarked the President.  "Strange that my Director of the CIA never pointed that out to me."

"I think I'd look into that if I were you, Mr. President.  I don't see how any real American could fail to see the obvious connection."

"I'll do that, Asa.  And let me know what you need to get this welfare mess cleaned up."

"I certainly will, Mr. President," Asa promised.

The Director of the CIA, when questioned about the uncanny similarity between queers and traitors, admitted that he had already discovered the connection but that he considered the information too secret to be dispensed - even to the President.  His loyalty earned him honorable mention in the annual J. Edgar Hoover "It's mine to know and yours to find out" contest.

Meanwhile, Asa, working as always behind the scenes, managed to set in place everything needed to expose welfare mothers and fathers as the queers they really were.  The results were breathtaking, and were reported first on the school day news: this nation is nothing if not humanitarian and, as such, takes great care to inform its children who and what to avoid.  So let's go at once to that ground-breaking report.

"Little Dippy-Doo will dance the news for you.  Every evening at four fifty-two, here on channel 16.  Tune in for an after school treat.  Close captioned for the motion impaired.  Now here's a preview of this evening's news headline, for the kiddies, who will not want to watch the evening news since it might contain explicit and improper material.

On a mountain high atop studio 16, a little red-haired, green eyed, freckle faced girl looks out over this great land of ours.  Suddenly she points.  She has seen the future, and she readies to bring it to us.  Her shining little blue stockinged legs start rappy-tippy-tapping the strains of tragedy.  "Two little girls," the taps tell it like it is, "were pickled in a vinegar vat in Great Falls, Montana.  Two little boys were eviscerated by a runaway trolley in San Francisco (where I left my heart!).  Two old ladies were decapitated when a skylight shattered in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.  Two old men were trapped in a burning building in East Orange, New Jersey.  Boo-hoo-hoo.  And that's the newsey-oozie-poozie.  From Little Dippy-Doo to you.  Boo-hoo.

Special anchorperson Clive Hoboken reporting on a matter of national security.  He speaks with a continental accent.  "Hi, Clive here, reminding the ladies I'll be at Iverson Mall tomorrow at noon for the Wooly Bear Roundup.  And, next week, look for me in Falls Church where I'll be grand marshal for the Fred Flintstone Parade: 25 years of fun.  Now a special report on an important subject: welfare.  That's right: welfare.  It was just learned that welfare is a veritable breeding ground of homosexuality, and that anyone not supporting his own children is by extended definition a homosexual.  Under a new program initiated by the Department of Health and Human Services, all persons applying for welfare must provide conclusive evidence that they are not, nor have ever been, nor will ever become homosexual.  We go to the Department of Philology at George Washington University for a live interview with the professor who coordinated the new HHS program.  Professor, how did the new definition of welfare come about?"

"Well, Clive, as you know, definitions proceed from custom and convention.  They evolve over time - usually at a very slow pace.  Sometimes they have to be helped along - moved in a certain direction.  This is what we've done.  I hasten to point out that the available evidence suggests the definition was moving in the desired direction already.  We simply gave it a little prod to speed things along."

"And what do you base this on, Professor?"

"We've examined each word against a grid taken from Greek, Latin, Judaism, Arabic and Old English concepts; and, without getting too technical, we've found a coincidence along the ultra-phonetic axis.  From then on it was child's play.  Our work is essentially -"

"Thank you, Professor," Clive is saying as the image of the good philologist fades from your screen.  "As of midnight tonight, you will have to give evidence of a healthy heterosexuality before you will be processed for welfare.  The mere fact of your application will henceforth be grounds for suspicion of homosexuality, which in turn opens the door to charges of sodomy and other illicit sexual conduct.  From this day forth, if you want something for nothing in America, you'd better be prepared to pay for it.  Signing off, this is Clive Hoboken, special anchorperson.  Ta-Ta!"  Back to Little Dippy Doo, who tippy-taps the rest of the boo-hoo news this after school day.

"Now that was a good broadcast," Asa apprised his little wife, Ava.  He had debated whether or not she should be allowed to watch: he knew there would be some very ugly things reported, but he decided to let her see it, he felt she was strong enough to handle it; and, although she did grow somewhat faint at one point, by and large she vindicated his good judgment.

"Yes, it was," Ava agreed.  "Very good."

Just then the phone rang.  It was the President calling to congratulate Asa on his bold new plan.

"Thank you, Mr. President," said Asa.

"Do you think that'll do the job?"

"I think so."

And, indeed, Asa was 100% right: it did do the job.  Beautifully.  From then on, only homosexuals ever applied for welfare - and they were summarily denied on the grounds that the people of these United States could not be compelled to underwrite evil.

Incidentally, as an unexpected coincidence, there was a thousand fold increase in the number of bodies available for medical research.  (All's well that ends well!)