Professor Clinton,
Professor Obama
An Allegorical One-Act Play in One Baffling Part
By Dale M Brumfield
Setting: Sometime in the future in a dark, smoky gentleman’s lounge. The ceiling is about 18 feet; the walls are ornate paneled mahogany, with 9-member crown molding around the ceiling and 2-member chair rail around the room. The centerpiece of this dovecote is a huge, brick fireplace with a roaring fire. Large, gilded-framed oil paintings of previous Professors line the dark, smoke-saturated walls, which are lined with heavy, sepia-tone linen wall covering. Two huge windows on each wall, 11-feet tall, are covered with heavy velvet drapes complete with corded pulls and tassel ends. Three-light sconces with 40-watt bulbs in the center of the four walls provide dim, ambient light.
In the center of the lounge, at a cattycorner angle facing each other, are two heavy, over-stuffed easy chairs, covered in gloomy, musty brocade. Beside the chairs are mahogany end tables, with dusty doilies upon which sit leaden, ancient brass lamps shaded with faded and tasseled blood-red shades
As the curtain draws a large, ancient waiter named Axelrod rambles silently through the room. Wearing an old style tuxedo with tails and white linen gloves, he carries a sterling serving tray with two empty bourbon glasses. He mumbles silently as he shuffles through the room on his way back to an unseen serving area. He leaves the room and there is a moment of silence before another character enters.
This character is Clinton. Senior Professor William Jefferson Clinton III, PhD, is a tenured Professor of Domestic Relations at a long forgotten, august Ivy League university. He is of unknown age, anywhere from 80 to 100. He has a long, slightly unkempt grey/white beard that extends to the middle of his chest. His mouth is not even visible under his bushy moustache. He wears a black graduation robe with a burgundy sash and mortarboard. He carries a stack of disheveled papers under his right arm, which he deposits on an end table as he enters the lounge. He shuffles to one of the easy chairs, turns and with great labor eases into the over-stuffed cushion, which wheezes under his sudden weight, as if the chair has not known a sitter in many years.
Clinton sits for a few seconds as he catches his breath, then shifts suddenly to get comfortable. He grunts, puffs and blows as he shifts, then lets out a satisfied “Aahh” with a thick, moldy voice as he settles into the moaning chair. He removes his mortarboard and sets it on the end table by his chair. He briefly looks around the room.
Clinton:
“Axelrod? Oh Axelrod? Confound man, show yourself.”
Axelrod slowly enters the room, stopping at Clinton’s chair:
“Sir?”
Clinton:
“Ah, yes, Axelrod. I fancy today a flagon of your tawniest port, of ocher palette and buttery walnut bouquet, and one of your finest cigars, an Upmann Cameroon Belicoso, uncut. Chop chop.”
Axelrod:
“Mmmyes, sir.”
Axelrod shuffles out the room to fetch Clinton’s request. The esteemed old professor dozes in the chair, when another old man slowly enters the room. He is Obama.
Professor Barack Hussein Obama, PhD, Nobel Laureate is the first tenured African-American Professor of Community Relations at the same un-named university. He wears a baggy and ill-fitting grey, almost black tweed suit with peeling leather-patched elbows. He clutches a long unlit pipe between his yellow, neglected teeth and carries a stack of antique volumes under his arm. He wears tiny, bent, frameless reading glasses that sit crooked on his deeply-lined face. He wears a dirty white dress shirt with a crooked, badly-tied bowtie. He reeks of cigar smoke and unwashed clothes.
Obama and Clinton are bitter rivals, going back to their Harvard Crimson days.
Obama stops briefly and harrumphs disgustedly as he notices his acrimonious rival Clinton dozing in one of the chairs, then continues to shuffle into the room. He moans loudly as he crouches and sets his stack of books on the floor before he too drops in the musty, over-stuffed chair opposite Clinton, its cushions also wheezing under the weight of its musty, smoke-saturated sitter. Obama removes his unlit pipe, exhales like a tired old accordion, takes a deep breath, then looks with disdain at his bearded rival in the next chair. Clinton stirs from the noises of his nemesis and sleepily notices his presence next to him.
Clinton:
“Hmm? What ho! Hmmph.”
Obama:
“Ah, Clinton. Conscious and invigorated from your return from the Far East I see. I thought I detected the air sucked dry from this chamber. Hmph.”
Clinton:
“Harumph, and an equally acerbic greeting to you, Obama. It was my expectation that upon my arrival an ebullient statement publicizing the loss of your tenure would hail me. But alas, this apparently is not the case, judging by your profaning the club with your presence at this time. Brrmph. I understand also the Dean has taken notice of the 25% drop in enrollment in your Career skills workshop. Hmph, hmmpph.”
Obama:
“My enrollment notwithstanding, for I hear the Dean is consumed with a grievance regarding a certain Domestic Relations Professor’s curious escapade in the physics laboratory after midnight. No? Was that not you observed by a simpleton on the custodial staff a fortnight ago with your trousers about your ankles? Eh, Clinton?”
Clinton:
“Gossip and vicious whispers, all. Hmph. It has been established by the investigating authorities that the custodian in question had been indulging in intoxicating liquor prior to his scurrilous report regarding my supposed dalliance with a certain buxom master’s candidate; therefore no further investigation is warranted. A more pressing inquiry may be made into why a certain ‘Guantanamo Containment’ 501 instructor’s wife has been gallivanting around the Spanish Riviera with a contingent of hangers-on? Separate vacations now Obama?”
Obama:
“Hmph. My spouse expends funds of her own, willed to her by her Father, a titan of investment procurement. I may deduce instead most unfavorably, forthwith, the fate of your Human Sexuality course, which, as rumor has it, has been suppressed by the Department chair, who finds the explicit verbiage quite unacceptable. There have been complaints to the office of academic affairs, have there not? Yes. And my wife’s junket overseas is of a personal nature, and off-limits pertaining to this discussion.”
Clinton:
“Hmph. Criticism of my Human Sexuality syllabus is all carefully orchestrated to you by those brutes at Fox News, who wish rather to engage in drunken burlesques with female denizens of the local township, than analyze consenting relations between adults. One of the brutes – a sculler, and a most bulging fellow – asserts he observed you speaking to his own father, who he maintains is chair of the board of visitors, a claim I find most incredulous, until established otherwise.”
Axelrod interrupts the sparring to bring Professor Clinton his requested order. He sets a carafe and a massive goblet of port on the end-table, followed by a small sterling tray with a huge, 9-inch long black cigar, a cutter and a bronze lighter.
Axelrod (in a low, wheezing drawn-out voice):
“Will there be anything else, sir?”
Clinton:
“Hmph, that will be all for now, Axelrod. Hm. Quite.”
Axelrod (turning to Professor Obama):
“Most certainly. And may I bring anything for the professor?”
Obama:
“Ah yes, Axelrod. Hmm, curry to me a ceramic pint of Stone Black Porter, heavy on the barley, thickly frothed, and biscotti, post haste. I shall prefer my cigar thereafter, a Maduro Churchill. Step lively, man.”
Axelrod:
“Mmmmmvery good sir.”
Axelrod shuffles from the room, his huge old shoes dragging as he exhales loudly and noisily, like an old set of bagpipes. Clinton and Obama sit in silence for several minutes, trying to remember what they were arguing about before their interruption.
Clinton:
“Enlighten me, Obama – the missive from the Dean affixed to your door with a transparent stickytape. Was it not an appeal for your immediate resignation to save the university further humiliations, thus salvaging the tattered remnants of her academic standing? Hmph! Hmph!
Obama:
“Better one inoffensive missive affixed to my door, temperate reminder of examination schedules that it was, than an entire collection of them, addressed by a quite randy Domestic Relations Professor, to a buxom 19-year-old male master’s candidate, secured and published word-for-word in that shameful campus scandal sheet the Wall Street Journal. Humph! Thurber himself would find the incident most reprehensible.”
Clinton:
“A fabricated outrage! I elucidated in my most vigorous response to the managing editor of the Journal, and to the Dean, those were annotations for my novel. Yes. Moreover, those notes were absconded surreptitiously, without my knowledge, by a local washerwoman, engaged and compensated by those hooligans at Fox News. Her task was to boil my shirts for a few copper pennies, not ransack my belongings. I stand by my innocence, in this matter. As for the Journal, I have asked for, but received to my regret, a most abject and sarcastic apology, from a fellow named Beck.”
Obama:
“I presume, however, the buxom master’s candidate, after her encounter with you, no longer has innocence on which to stand. Humph! Humph! Hmmph! Was it her thesis you successfully defended, as lampooned in cartoon form, in a subsequent edition of the Journal?
Clinton:
“Brrr -- Enough hugger-mugger on that trifle, Obama, for the matter is finished, and I am not appreciating you coloring the argu . . ..”
Obama:
“Colored? Why, I am most off. . .”
Once again, Axelrod the butler interrupts the arguing to bring Professor Obama his mug of Porter and biscotti. He sets it on a doily on the end table with a palsied hand. A gust of wheezy flatulence escapes from the back of his pants like an extended bassoon dischord.
Obama (obviously displeased):
“Axelrod, you waistcoated oaf, I specifically ordered my Porter heavily frothed. This is scarcely foamed, most improper. I command you, take it back, in jig-time. I shan’t ask you again. Hm.”
Axelrod stoically retrieves the unacceptable mug and slowly returns it to the serving area out of sight. The two professors sit silently once again, each trying to remember what they were arguing about.
Clinton:
“I take great delight that the hooligans at Fox News are your worthy adversary this quarter and not my own. I recollect well their games of whist and dormitory singsongs at days’ end, when they skillfully reconstructed the bronze statue of the founding vice-provost from the east quad in the office of Professor Bush Senior as a drunken hurly-burly after a most tumultuous convention against the Klannies in ‘24. Bush Senior was not pleased. But all is not lost, Obama; perhaps the motley congress of pasty faces in your Tuesday night Foreign Affairs forum can effectively defend your constitution against the Fox sophomoric offensives. But wait, I recall forum attendance this quarter is quite unsatisfactory, with only three participants – not even enough for a quorum, and hardly a successful defense. Hmmph?”
Obama:
“Your reckoning is a red herring, Clinton, much like your thrice-rejected study guide for Rwandan Antiquities. Had my Forum not been displaced the day prior to enrollment by the Dean, from the Latin Affairs Office on Thursdays to the Commons on Tuesdays, I am confident attendance would have been most improved; alack, the forum now competes on Tuesday evenings against European, adult-oriented art films, screened by the ruffians at Fox News, in their multi-purpose room. A most intolerable state of affairs, it is. And, I fear, one that is about to turn most inopportune.”
Axelrod returns yet again with another mug of stone black porter, this one thickly-frothed, as ordered. He sets it with great effort on the doily on Obama’s end table. Obama only hmmphs in approval. Axelrod exits the room slowly.
Obama (continuing):
“Bah. But not as intolerable and unpleasant as your tome, ‘A Critique of Conservative Philosophy’. I have it on good authority the Dean removed it off Bush’s required reading list for his Doctoral Thesis Preparation due to insinuations of plagiarism. I personally attest to its tediousness, as I dozed after chapter 356. My Foreign Affairs forum was not rejected, as you patently indict; forthwith, it was taken back by myself, to revise syntax in chapter 42. Cat got your tongue, Clinton?”
Clinton:
“Refrain from changing the subject at hand, Obama, for by turning inopportune I imply I have it on upright authority that the hoodlums at Fox News are hastily making ready, as we parley, a listing of attendees at those Tuesday night adult-oriented European art films, to be published in the Wall Street Journal . . .”
Obama:
“And do I portend the name ‘Clinton’ most discernible, at the top of this register? Hmm? For my unfailing sources report your front row presence, in high spirits, at a screening of ‘The Naughty-cal Adventures of Rear Admiral Otto von Skidmark and Chaps, His Salty Seaman’. Sounds like top-drawer entertainment, Clinton, top-drawer!”
Clinton:
“Folly! The louts at Fox News dare no such trifle! For my name’s inclusion would indicate forgery, and I shall lodge a most vigorous objection, with the vice-chairman of Fraternal Affairs! And to that drat Editor of the Journal, a knave I may choose to cudgel with a walking-stick! Barrumph!”
Obama:
“So you admit to attending! J’accuse! How do you care to explain this predicament to the Dean, who is under the impression you are grading term papers, just before cribbage, on Tuesday evenings? Be forewarned, Clinton, for divulging to the Dean your alleged attendance at the zesty art films will do no more than ensure the elimination of funds for any of your future promenades to exotic far east locales, which, as eyewitnesses attest – and mind you, I am acquainted with them – are done less for the purposes of unearthing post-cambrian khmer trinkets than for tasting the illicit fruits of common slant-eyed streetwalkers! Eh, Clinton? I order you, enlighten me otherwise!”
Clinton:
“A preposterous insinuation, and a most flagrant form of extortion! These eyewitnesses of whom you speak: I shall render the tormentors a deserved rebuke, herewith, should I expose their identity!”
Obama:
“Resolved also, that a dalliance with a slant-eyed streetwalker in the alleys of Sai-gon may account for your thrifty purchase of an antibiotic unguent at the corner druggist, secretly observed by one of those thugs from Fox News, who, while concealed behind a display of fruit-flavored carbonated refreshments, has produced clandestine sepia-tone snap-shots, surely to be reproduced in the Journal, accompanied by droll captions.”
Clinton:
“Outrageous! The unguent was a prudent procurement, made with funds of my own excogitation to treat a simple lip canker, hardly maladies transmitted by Viet-Cong streetwalkers. Unlike fellow department heads it is not habitual for me to use department resources, earmarked for research purposes, to make sundry purchases for my own disreputable needs, and scurrilous rumors such as paying admission fees to spicy adult-oriented art films, or to tender bribes to the custodial staff, to keep a peculiar bodily antic in the physics laboratory undisclosed, and out of the pages of the Journal, is patently false. You have no argument, Obama.”
Obama:
“Hmmph. No response is warranted for imprudent arguments, Clinton. The wages remunerated by you to the custodian in no way inferred bribery, for they were for services rendered of a personal nature, which shall remain confidential. Conversely, your dinners and cocktails with a certain buxom master’s candidate, paid with department funds, at the Palladium Lounge should not constitute requirements for graduation, Clinton, as related by you to your young guest, as overheard by the indentured wait-staff. How does the Mrs. respond to your continued dalliances with student bodies? Hmph.”
Clinton (bristling):
“I challenge anyone to establish that my dinner and cocktails with the young, buxom master’s candidate in question was construed not as a requirement for graduation, but as an enhancement to her future academic opportunities; further, no department monies were exchanged for any goods or services at that time. I too find it most shameful that you would retain the Palladium waitstaff to eavesdrop on our exchanges. And the reaction of Mrs. Clinton is not your concern, nor is the ashtray dent you see on my fore-head. Bah.”
Obama (pointing suddenly):
“You are the laughing-stock, Clinton, for your buxom master’s candidate is in fact a paid emissary, and is none other than one of the harlots from Fox News, in my employ, to gain access to your research notes on the role of existentialism in semi-primitive cultures! Did it not occur to you, in your drunken torpor, that by taking the young lady in question back to your flat that eve, you would imperil the sacredness of said notes, which I have acquired, reviewed and found most significant to my own research? Hm? Upon acquiring these notes, and completing my research, I hired an errand-boy – a freshman lad of modest academic standing, calling himself Gibbs, I believe – to deliver my project directly to the Dean. As we speak, my final proposition is being assessed, for publication in an academic journal, while you shall flounder in the gutter, tenure-less, subsisting on government assistance! I have the upper hand, Clinton!”
Clinton:
“Disgraceful! But quid pro quo, Obama, for that evening before cocktails I suspected the buxom master’s candidate was a mole, for her comprehension of Alinsky and his theorems were at best rudimentary! Thus prior to our engagement, calculating that my young date would surely search my flat, I replaced my genuine notes with counterfeits, plagiarized from the early work of Maxim Gorki! My actual notes were steadfastly positioned in safe-deposit! Your Fox harlot indeed consigned the forged documents to the Dean without delay, who I am sure, will recognize the research as bogus, without merit, spoiling your scheme and thus putting an end to your tenure! My own research is fixed firmly, and nearly complete, for inclusion in the academic journal, and my tenure shall remain beyond reproach. Who has the final jape now, eh, Obama?”
Obama:
“Hmmph. I would kowtow to your skullduggery, were it not for certain unanswered facts in question: the local washerwoman you suspect was compensated by the hooligans at Fox News who purloined your letters addressed to the buxom master’s candidate, who was a Fox News harlot herself, was in fact hired by me, to supply the pilfered letters to the Journal, to ruin your status in the academic community! And I, as a matter of fact, intercepted the so-mentioned counterfeit research manuscript before it reached the Dean, as the errand-boy – the engaging freshman lad of which you speak – was also in my employ, who then cheerily returned the false manuscript back to me, for a shiny Morgan dollar, once you recovered from your inebriated stupor and haughtily assumed it was in possession of the Dean! Perhaps the attendance drops in your Guantanamo Containment courses has less to do with your own research and more to do with published amorous communiqués to harlot-spies disguised as buxom master’s candidates, slant-eyed Sai-gon streetwalkers, suspicious unguents, and. . .”
Clinton:
“Hah! You oblivious boor! You neglected to check both the credentials of your freshman errand boy and the alcohol content of my drinks! I prearranged the Palladium Lounge wait-staff that evening to serve me teetotaling cocktails! And, knowing the freshly-scrubbed freshman lad would respond favorably to your offer of a paltry Morgan dollar – as most of them readily do – I in fact offered him a St. Gaudens double-eagle, whose condition is described as ‘fine’ by master numismatists, to return to you a spurious forged manuscript and deliver to the Dean a second false document, thus ensuring you. . .”
The Dean enters the club. He also is a very old codger, of unknown age, with a short gray beard and thick, black-frame bifocal glasses. One of his lenses has a crack in it. Like Clinton, he wears a floor-length black graduation robe and a mortarboard. He carries a heavy cardboard box in his hands. Clinton and Obama abruptly stop their arguments and stare at him.
Dean:
“Esteemed colleagues, I am glad you are both present, for I have some burdensome information mutually for you, the department and thus the university at large. The vice-provost has advised me that my services at this university are hereby terminated. I have been unreasonably accused of tolerating decadent, unethical behaviors within my department by persons unknown, the exploits of whom I converse all to be reported in exhaustive detail within the pages of the winter number of that scandal sheet the Wall Street Journal. Attendance in all department courses is down 40% for the 4th consecutive quarter. The President of the Board of Visitors, whose buxom daughter is one of those confound Fox News harlots, has petitioned for my removal, due to numerous complaints from the office of academic affairs, who is also reprimanding me for proffering allegedly plagiarized research for publication. I am charged by the office of Fraternal Affairs with tolerating the screening of prohibited European adult-oriented art films under my guard by an on-campus fraternity – no doubt, the beasts of Fox News. I am being shaken down by, and have paid out hundreds of dollars to, a corrupt custodian regarding a mysterious incident involving an unknown tenured lecturer in the Physics laboratory. Professor Bush Senior has filed a grievance re: my interference in his Doctoral thesis. A freshman lad of unpretentious academic status has filed a harassment suit with a local barrister against someone within my department, whose name they will not divulge. The department has thousands of dollars in travel funds unaccounted. Lastly, I myself am being disgraced by those devils at Fox News, who salaried the local dry-cleaner for an incriminating hand-written message, found by the proprietor in my trouser pocket, addressed to a certain buxom master’s candidate. The note has been passed to the disgraceful Editor of the Journal, who plans to publish it post haste. I am ruined! I leave you to your own devices, and bid you both, a good day.”
The Dean exits the club.
Clinton:
“Hmmph.”
Obama:
“Quite.”
Dean (returning back into the room):
“Oh, and furthermore, in an effort to preserve funds, both of you may expect to find termination notices affixed to your mail-boxes with a transparent stickytape. Your replacements will arrive in November. I bid you both a good day."
The End
