ISO newspaper columnist.
Thurber doesn’t think we’re strong enough to turn a house upside-down.
“Forget about that,” I tell him. “Real estate is a chump’s game. We’re getting into journalism.”
“But you don’t keep a journal,” says Thurber.
“What do you think we’re doing today?” I say. “Besides, not that kind of journalism. Opinion journalism. Ops and eds. It’s a lot like journal journalism except everybody has to read you and they pay you lots of money.”
“Lots of money?” says Thurber. “Enough for tuna?”
“Enough for tuna and poppa’s office and mamma’s office too, I bet.”
“But we’d have to be very careful to only ever tell the truth unless we’re wrong unless we know we’re wrong,” says Thurber.
“No we don’t,” I said. “I’ve been studying this stuff. It’s great. You don’t have to be right or tell the truth or anything. You just make stuff up and write it down and go play golf and eat lots of banquet dinners of fish with powerful people who tell you anyway what you ought to be writing down.”
“I suppose that’s one way of making sure you don’t know you’re wrong. So that way you can’t lie.”
“Don’t worry about lying! I’m telling you, there’s no accountability for this stuff!”
“Don’t say that,” says Thurber, and he does the thing where he lies down and looks the other way like I’m not there.
“Thurber,” I say.
“Take it back,” he says. “Take it back.”
“Fine,” I tell him. “One day, yes, they will all be held accountable for what they’ve done.”
“Okay,” says Thurber, and just like that he’s happy again.
“Anyway, the Times is looking for somebody. They say it’s good to have some experience, or at least a father who wrote there once in the past or something, but I figure purring is just as good. We just listen to what Kali says when she thinks we aren’t looking and write it down every week and send it in, at least until they invite us to play golf and eat fish and tell us what to write.”
“I can’t play golf,” says Thurber.
“Don’t worry about it! We just have to drive liberals crazy. How hard can that be?”
