TRICKY: Slowly, please, slowly. I want to be sure to get it right. The Berrigans… The Panthers… Curt Flood… But that’s three. You’re allowed only two.
LEGAL COACH: I understand that, Mr. President. But in that my predecessors have each used only one from the Professor’s list of five, it did not seem to me a violation of the spirit of the law, if I took up some of the slack. I am a great believer, as I think you are, sir, in the spirit of the law, if not the letter.
TRICKY: Well, okay, if that’s the reason: Do you want now to add any names of your own?
LEGAL COACH:
As a matter of fact, Mr. President, I do.
TRICKY: One or two?
LEGAL COACH: As a matter of fact, Mr. President, five.
TRICKY: Five? But you were the one who made up the rule about only two.
LEGAL COACH: And I stand by it, Mr. President or would, under the circumstances such as existed at the time I suggested it. But I am dealing at this moment with what I can only call “a clear and present danger.” I am afraid, Mr. President, that if I were to submit only two of these five names that I have just this minute come up with, this administration would be in the most serious clear and present danger you can imagine of appearing to be out of its mind. If, on the other hand, the five names are submitted together, thus suggesting some kind of plot, a charge that might otherwise have appeared, at best, to be an opportunistic and vicious attack on two individuals we don’t happen to like, will take on an air of the plausible in the mind of the nation, such as it is.
Surely, Mr. President, you will permit me at least to read the names of the five. This is, after all, a free country where even the man in the street can say what’s on his mind, provided it isn’t so provocative that it might lead somebody in another state, who doesn’t even hear it, to riot. It would be a sad irony indeed, if the man who is this nation’s bulwark against those very riots that such freedom of speech tends to inspire, was to be denied his rights under the First Amendment.
TRICKY: It would, it would. And you can rest assured that so long as I am President that particular sad irony — if I understand it correctly — is not going to happen.
LEGAL COACH: Thank you, Mr. President. Now try not to think of the five individually, but rather as a kind of secret gang, protected, as much as anything, by the seeming disparateness of individual personality and profession. I: the folk singer, Joan Baez: the Mayor of New York, John Lancelot. 3: the dead rock musician, Jimi Hendrix. 4: the TV star, Johnny Carson…
ALL: Johnny Carson?
LEGAL COACH (smiling): Who better to be acquitted? It’s always best, you see, to have one acquitted, especially if he appears to have been unjustly accused in the first place. It provides the jury with a means of funneling all their uncertainty in one direction, makes them feel they’ve been fair about the whole thing. Makes the convictions themselves look better all around. And, of course, freeing Johnny Carson, you’ll be freeing the most popular man in America (besides yourself, Mr. President). Why,’ we can even, midway through the trial, have the President step in and make a statement in Carson’s behalf. Exactly as he did about Manson, only the other way around this time. Imagine, the whole country crying “Free Johnny!” and the President going on TV and casting serious doubt on the charges raised against this great entertainer.
TRICKY: And then when he’s free, I could have a press conference! Wouldn’t that be something? I could say, “H-e-e-e-re’s Johnny,” and he could come out from behind the curtain and do his cute little golf stroke! He could make jokes about being in jail with the other conspirators. Maybe he could even wear a ball and chain and a striped suit!
POLITICAL COACH: Fantastic! And we could do it on prime time the night before the election. While Musty is boring their pants off about how honest the pine trees are in Maine, we’ll be on TV with Johnny Carson!
LEGAL COACH: And that’s not all, gentlemen. You have not yet heard the name of the fifth conspirator.
POLITICAL COACH: Merv Griffin!
LEGAL COACH: No, not Merv Griffin… Jacqueline Charisma Colossus.
(Stunned silence)
Daring, yes. Absurd? I think not. Consider first, gentlemen, that like the other four conspirators, her Christian name too begins with a “J”. Now you cannot imagine the mileage we can get out of a seemingly nonsensical fact like that. Overnight the newspapers and the TV commentators are going to begin calling them “The Five J’s,” thereby linking them together in the public mind as though they were the Dionne quintuplets, or the New York Knicks. Just by that ruse alone, we will have moved halfway toward a conviction. Inevitably there will be speculation we’ll see to that about the relationship between Mrs. Colossus and Mayor Lancelot. Isn’t it about time that we turned those looks of his to our advantage instead of his? Then too there is the former First Lady’s bitterness toward her own country, as manifested in her decision to marry a foreigner and live in a foreign country.
POLITICAL COACH: Well, it isn’t exactly as though she’s living in Peking or Hanoi, you know.
LEGAL COACH: I’ve considered that, and I think that the wisest course to follow is not to mention the name of the country itself. We’ll just keep saying foreign — suggesting intrigue and despots and shady operations — and hope that nobody will remember it’s only Greece.
POLITICAL COACH: Jackie and Lancelot — I’ve got to admit, we’re going to get the headlines on this one. But why Jimi Hendrix, if he’s dead?
LEGAL COACH: Because we haven’t had a rock performer yet. And personally I think the parents of the country are ready to hang one of those bastards. We’ll start cautiously, however, with a dead one. And if we don’t pick up any flak there, we’ll get ourselves a live one in time for, the election… And, of course, last but not least, his name begins with a “J.”
TRICKY: I must say, from the sound of it, you certainly appear to have thought this through in all its ramifications in only about five minutes. The political advantages to be gained by associating Lancelot and the Charisma name with rock singers and folk singers seem to be inestimable. And indicting and then freeing Johnny Carson is probably just about the most fantastic opportunity for self-aggrandizement I’ve come upon since Hiss.
LEGAL COACH: Thank you, Mr. President.
TRICKY: But — and this is a very big but — there is the rule, of your own devising, that we all agreed to earlier. Yes, I know you see this as “a clear and present danger” to the party — but I happen to see it as nothing short of a tremendous boon.
Consequently, I am not going to allow you to submit these five names. But — and here is an even bigger but — but, because the five are inextricably linked by their first initial, I am going to ask you rather to submit them as though they were one. And to indicate that they are to be tabulated as one and not five, I am going to place a large bracket there in the margin, like so… See? I want all of you to see. I have just done exactly as I said I would. Please take a good long look so that afterwards there is no cause to question the honesty of these proceedings. (All examine the bracket and agree it is a bracket, just as the President said) Now then, Professor. Your vote.
HIGHBROW COACH: I cast my vote for Curt Flood and Curt Flood alone. Not only is his a fresh name to a country that is growing pretty weary of the Berrigans and the Panthers — and, with all due respect, is sick to death of Jacqueline Charisma — but on top of that he is, as I said earlier, someone we can slander and vilify without any danger of turning him into a hero or a martyr. In the argot of baseball, he is a natural.
TRICKY: Very good. (Records the vote) And, Reverend? Have you reached a final decision? You can’t say I haven’t given you time to make a wise choice.