Potato Guns, Not Punishment

Pro Sports Crime Wave Gets a Welcome Reprieve from the White House
satire by Mike Seely, Free Press contributor

WASHINGTON, D.C.--The strangest of bedfellows assembled on the banks of the Potomac, amidst freezing winds and Secret Service cover so thick you'd think the ghost of JFK was taking an encore cruise past the grassy knoll.

Flanked by President Clinton, World Wresting Federation President Vince McMahon, drag racing hoopster David Wesley, ex-Mariners manager/lewd conductor Dick Williams and NFL standouts/accused murderers Ray Lewis and Rae Carruth, Attorney General Janet Reno announced a new federal initiative to treat wealthy, criminally inclined professional athletes via "immersion therapy."

The controversial plan-endorsed wholeheartedly by Vice President Al Gore, who was in Los Angeles at a "Tinsletown for Tron" campaign fund-raiser-would create a public-private partnership authorizing McMahon to form a network of affiliate professional federations centered around "organized crime."

When asked by a perplexed member of the assembled press corps whether this meant the government was going to dispatch the bad boy athletes to "crack some Mafia skull," Reno replied: "Well, no, quite the opposite. We're going to cut them loose on the American people without fear of retribution in hopes that they'll get sick of committing these silly, damn crimes."

Pressed on the details of these mysterious federations, Reno revealed that the project would fund players salaries and startup costs for professional leagues like the National First-Degree Murder Association, Big Time Sexual Assault, the Pro Coke-Snorters Circuit, and the North Carolina Residential Street Speedway System.

As reporters and even police officers assembled behind the featured speakers deluged Reno with questions, the Attorney General was replaced at the podium by the 70-something Williams, a Hall-of-Fame caliber former manager of several Major League Baseball teams, including the Oakland Athletics and Seattle Mariners.

Williams, who weeks ago pleaded no contest to masturbating in his pajamas outside a woman's hotel room while in Nevada for a baseball card convention, expressed pain and embarrassment at his travails with the legal system.

"If the cops had only let me climax, I woulda stopped tugging myself right then and there," said a senile-leaning Williams, who bears a disturbing resemblance to Wilfred "Quaker Oats" Brimley.

After Williams brief, lewd remarks, media diva Cokie Roberts was able to get a word in edgewise, directed at Clinton.

"Does this initiative mean the administration publicly supports the rights of dirty old men to pull it out in public?"

Clinton responded, "We stand fully behind the rights of senior citizens to live out their twilight years however they damn well please. Besides, if I didn't endorse Mr. Williams' conduct, y'all would call me hypocritical."

In an attempt to quell the stunned throng of vultures, Wesley, the Charlotte Hornets guard cited for drag racing the late Bobby Phills in the moments leading up to his fatal crash, ascended to the microphone.

"It's just not fair," stuttered Wesley, choking back tears. "I mean, Bobby's death was nothing a few extra minutes each game couldn't help me get over, but why the hell do they make Porsches capable of going 110 miles per hour when they know it'll burn out the clutch?

"Had the President's initiative been around when I beat Bobby in that race, my warrantee would have covered a new clutch so I could go out and drag race Eddie Jones (another Hornets guard) the next day. Instead, they revoked my driving privilges. No fair."

But as unremorsefully shocking as Wesley's remarks were--much less the whole dang surreal scene--the part of the event deemed "the live demonstration" by McMahon was what really stole the headlines.

Sometime during Williams' perverse soliloquy, Reno, an avid rower, esorted Lewis and Carruth to her kayak a quarter-mile from the scene of the press conference.

As Wesley closed his remarks, the paddle-powered trio sped downstream until they were within range of the mob, at which point Reno handed potato guns to Carruth and Lewis. Fueled by home-grown Iowa taters given to Gore after his primary victory in Iowa, the alleged murderers opened fire on ex-Presidential candidate and magazine magnate Steve Forbes, who suffered what was described in The Washington Post as a "massive, puss-laden head wound."

"I was wondering why on earth they invited me to that thing," grumbled Forbes, whose head dressings compelled pundits to brand him "The Mummy." "I thought they were planning a flat tax on pro sports salaries, which I intend to make the centerpiece of my platform in 2004."