Nom D’Guido! I eye the panel sitting before me here in Los Angeles on the eve of Christmas as I prepare my first question. I will not lie, I am intimidated.

“Early today, the Senate passed health care legislation that, with the House bill, will provide sweeping and fundamental changes to the American health care system. What are your thoughts? Snooki?”

“Well,” said the fat thighed Italian-American girl with the long, black hair. “I keep thinking about when I got hit in the face by that frat boy at the club and I was on the ground crying. What if I had lost one of my teeth, or my face had been cut? What if I lost more than one tooth? My gawd, would Obama be able to help me?”

“Michael,” I said with a tight cough. “The Republican opposition to health care reform took the shape of a fractured party almost desperate to undercut the new president’s administration. From deceits such as death panels for your grandmother and loss of existing coverage; it was an opposition completely in the face of their own constituent’s desires, yet it’s impossible defeat became their sole obsession. What will Republicans focus on now that the historic legislature has become a fait accompli?”

“I mean, all we do is, when we go out at night, is focus on girls. I’m with my boy, Paul D, and you know, we work that shit, you know. Everybody knows by now that any time I can get my shirt off, there’s a Situation, and if you want to talk about Health Care, take a look at this shit.” The mook with the big nose stands up from his chair and pulls his Ed Hardy t-shirt over his neatly trimmed guido haircut. “This is fitness. You want health care, you should come out for a workout session with me and my boy, Ronnie. You may never get abs like this, yo, but you might not be crying so much about what’s covered. And if you’ve got it working, if you’ve got a little booty… the Situation has you covered. You know what I mean?”

“Yes, yes, I see,” I say, turning to the last member of the panel. “JWoww. Women’s groups are protesting and are expected to continue efforts to expand abortion coverage in the legislation, making it one of the hot button issues with conservative Democrats, to say nothing of the religious right. How important is it that these group’s see immediate advances in abortion coverage when, in all likelihood, as we build on National Healthcare… how shall I say… these things shall come? Wouldn’t they be best advised to get through what they can and hope to do more in the future?”

Wearing a blouse cut to present maximum cleavage, the girl’s breasts cut a strange figure, almost as though they were caught in a wind tunnel, though they were most certainly surgically augmented. Her face turned solemn.

“I had my first abortion when I was seventeen. Tommy took me to the clinic and put up almost half of the $350 and I got the rest from my uncle. I got to say that, that’s not a lot of money, so my heart goes out to girls that don’t even have access to the care that I got. I don’t know… if I got pregnant tonight, and you know, who knows? That’s possible, right?” She winks at the Situation. “What would this bill do for me? I don’t know.”
“Yes, wrong question, wrong panelist. Alay… that’s all the time we have for now. Thank you for joining me here today for this round table discussion. Next week, we ring in the new year with the Jonas Brothers and America’s need for reinvesting in manufacturing and infrastructure! Joyeux Noel, bitches!”

The Return of Pierre Bertrand Lafitte!

Putt.
“So, you’re out here looking for the American Dream?”

The ball rolled up the rise of the green and dropped into the cup with a metallic ‘plop’.

“Mmmm, what’s left of it, I suppose,” I bended at the knee behind my own ball, putter in hand, eyeing the line over the cool morning grass at Augusta.

“What makes you think sumpthin’s happened to it,” says my companion, Sully McDaniel, bending to recover his Titleist.

“Or was it ever there to begin with, no?” I stand to address my Maxfli Noodle, line my putt and clap the ball across the green. “Americans, real Americans, rallying with images of their president as a Hitler, or a Nazi; working class Americans servicing their corporate masters, blissfully unaware of the nuances of the moniker ‘teabagger’. I mean, mon frere, what is happening here?”

It was a rare, good putt and sank into the hole with that satisfying hollow sound. We gathered our clubs and made for the thirteenth hole, the Azalea, a wicked par five. Sully is quiet until we begin to cross the green felted bridge over the creek.

“Now, see, I think old Clint Eastwood has it right,” he tells me, brushing a bit of grass from his plaid trousers. “What this here country needs is an ‘Invictus’ moment. I think he’s trying to make an analogy, or a metaphor. You got your Morgan Freeman standing in for Nelson Mandela, whose kinda standing in for Obama. And then there’s Matt Damon standing in for… well, I guess standing in for Matt Damon, but the rest of it, the image of a whole nation coming together, building a new identity out of the ashes of a dark past. Well, it gets a bit tricky, working the whole apartheid as the Bush years thing, but it’s pretty close and old Clint had to use what was there to work with.”

It’s in the low sixties on an overcast morning in Georgia in the middle of December. The course is mostly empty and there is no wait for us at the tee for the 13th.

“I have to admit, Sully, I see flaws in your theory. Number one, the team USA does not look good to get past the quarter finals next summer and Joe Leiberman just came out against buying into Medicare early and hopes to quash the public option single-handedly.”

“Goddamn Joe Lieberman.” Sully sullenly drew his Calloway driver.

“And yet, isn’t that so quintessentially American? The rogue individual, the man who makes a difference?”

“The preening goddamn ego that calls all the attention to himself?”

Sully blasted the drive in a high-soaring arch.

“Sacre’Poutine! That ball needs a stewardess!”

“We don’t need no galldang soccer game, the country can rally round gathering a pile of pitchforks and good rope and head up to Connecticut and lynch that no good Yankee! It’s a goddamn conspiracy to spoil Christmas, that’s what the hell it is! I don’t mean that in any kind of anti-Semitic kind of way, Pierre, you know that.”

“Sully, we’re all friends here,” I say, pressing my tee into the grass. “I think even Wild Bill would share your sentiment.”

I take my stance in front of the ball, look out at the far off, left turn of the dog leg. The American Dream. I’ve come back to find it.

Shank! The ball hooks violently and kertwangs off the footbridge over the creek, half mercifully landing in the rough under the shade of trees just off the fairway.

“Goddamn Joe Lieberman.”