How To Save America

America is fighting for her life. So we had a contest. The contest was:“How Would You Save America?” And the Conflab, as brilliant a gang as exists, has been brillianter than ever coming up with ways to save America.

Some ways are do-able, taking on the realest of realities. Other ways are aimed at a desperate nation which for seven decades has only wanted to be entertained and the Conflabbian ideas suggest the most blatant of impossibilities.

I liked ‘em all. I embraced them all.

Gloria, of course, bitched about the prize:

“Dear E. Jean,

WAIT ONE HOT DAMN MINUTE.

The prize? The prize?!

I can’t believe my eyes.

I read it once, twice, thrice—

surely, some cruel trick of the mind,

some misprint, some clerical error—

but no.

There it is, staring back at me

like a poorly lit mugshot of democracy itself:

Balsamic & Basil Triscuits.

Eewww.

E. Jean, my beacon, my battle cry,

you wound me.

Balsamic? Basil?

On a Triscuit?

Why must a perfectly decent cracker

be humiliated like this?

I was prepared to fight,

to stra…