On giving credit where credit's due

Dear readers,

It's funny the way life works out sometimes. Paul Wolfowitz has been booted from the World Bank, and scuttlebutt is that Bush will appoint former senator Bill Frist to take his place. Turns out I wrote to Sen. Frist over a year ago on the topic of immigration reform, also a subject recently in the public eye.

With that in mind, I present to you that topical chestnut from the Shandy archives. In another twist of synchronicity, this re-run means I can get a head start on the four-day Memorial weekend!

Best wishes,
Laurence Shandy, gentleman


From: Laurence Shandy
To: Senator Bill Frist, M.D.
Re: Immigration

Dear Billy,

Yes, it's me. Laurence Shandy. I suppose it's time for me to slide a big hunk of crow right down my throat. I remember Nashville, when I was writing an exposé on Tennesseans who adopt animals for sexual gratification, and you were a dashing young medical student telling the shelter that you wanted an adorable new tabby for "companionship". I remember thinking, "He's cute, he's a doctor, and he's sexually adventurous? Sign me up!" Little did I know you were just using those kittens to cut out and dissect their hearts. I have to say I was disappointed. That is, until you showed me the wonders a man with steady, smooth, aristocrat's hands and a high tolerance for blood can provide.

In bed!

You get it? I always loved how you would say that after reading the fortunes you found in the cookies you pulled from my rectum.

I'm writing to tell you that I was wrong when I said you would never amount to anything. At that point in my life, I had a 48-hour time limit on any relationship, and you were pushing into the red zone. I had to say something, and that seemed like the least offensive remark I could make. After all, you're from Tennessee. The odds were in my favor.

But look at you now. All dimples and puffy cheeks every time I switch over to C-SPAN. I've been following your career very closely, Billy, and I've jotted a list of kudos for you in the back of the Dukes of Hazzard notebook you gave me on our last night together.

Kudos on the whole Terri Schiavo thing. That slut was totally faking, and you called her out. A few years spent slack-jawed in a wheelchair with no discernible cognitive response does not a vegetable make. Hell, that's how I spent most of the '70s. My ex-wife, Meredith, even tried to pull the plug on me, though mine wasn't so much a feeding tube as it was a cocaine catheter. Actually, that's probably what woke me up.

Also, kudos on letting the truth be known that AIDS can be transmitted via tears and sweat. I was totally justified in firing my maid, Consuela. After just seventeen hours of re-grouting my marble tennis courts, the woman was crying and perspiring all over the place. If you weren't spreading AIDS everywhere, then why do you refuse to take the test, Consuela? Wrongful termination, my brown-eye.

And Kudos for keeping stock in your family's hospital business, Hospital Corporation of America. So what if they provide hundreds and hundreds of abortions on demand? There's nothing sexier than a man who puts family before politics.

Finally, kudos for opposing that new immigration bill. If the U.S. government had done a better job keeping the immigrants out of my manual labor pool, Consuela never would have smashed up my Rolls with a baseball bat.

That's right, Consuela. I know it was you.

Best wishes,
Laurence Shandy, gentleman