What I'll Do for $241,000
By Crispin Sartwell


The case of Armstrong Williams has got me -- and probably every columnist in America -- thinking about cashing in. The political commentator accepted $241,000 to promote No Child Left Behind, the administration's plan to centralize, standardize, and bureaucratize America's children once and for all.
This actually removes the deep mystery about right-wing commentators. It seems obvious to me that no human being capable of rudimentary ratiocination -- and with a charity that speaks well of my character I include in that category Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, David Brooks, Max Boot, Ann Coulter, Charles Krauthammer , and Bill Kristol - would say anything good about this administration without substantial remuneration.
Sadly no one from the White House Office of Disinformation has ever offered to pay me to endorse their policies. I assume this is an oversight. So I'll spell out here and now the services I will provide the propaganda arm of this administration, along with my fee structure.
If you provide the quarter mil, I will be happy to promote torture: waterboarding, for example, or forcing prisoners to have sex with one another, or whatever the whim of an Ashcroft or a Gonzales may dictate .
In fact I here and now boldly endorse torturing Ashcroft and Gonzales themselves. For another quarter mil, I'll withdraw that sentence.
If you put my wife and kids on the payroll and don't require them to do a lick of work, I will endorse the idea that it is perfectly in keeping with the Constitution to hold American citizens incommunicado, without charge or representation, for as long as you feel like it.
If you bribe op-ed editors to run my column and get me on CNN, I will undertake to defend searches without warrant and blanket surveillance of all private communications, particularly those of Hillary Clinton.
In a budget of trillions, it will be easy to conceal the trivial expense -- call it $500,000 - of having me declare that the force in Iraq is adequate to secure the country. Double that and I will never use the word "quagmire."
For a similar payment Ill use the phrase "New Iraq" with a straight face. And I will undertake to refer to anyone struggling against the American invaders as a ""terrorist,"" and every American soldier -- starting with Charles Graner -- as a "hero." In passing, I wonder how much it cost in taxpayer dollars to get Fox News to do that.
Double me up at a million, and it will be my pleasure to use the term "freedom" as a synonym for "Dick Cheney" in sentences such as these: "all over the world, we are fighting the forces of darkness and bringing freedom to the people." Or: "they hate our freedom."
I will help to convey to America the profound assertion that tripling the national debt will help stimulate the economy. And as I collect my fee for doing so I will putting your money where my mouth is.
For a measly couple of million I will hop onto the moral values gravy train and declare plainly that homosexuals will be spit-roasted by Satan at the behest of an angry (but loving) God.
Keep up the exponential increases, and I will praise anyone, even people I personally find deeply evil and repulsive, such as Tom DeLay.
But there's exactly one thing I won't do for money. You can beg, you can wheedle, you can double the budget of the Department of Homeland security and deposit it directly into my account.
But I will not endorse No Child Left Behind.