I know, stealing a line from the sainted Lloyd Bentsen is a cardinal sin in the eyes of his most vehement defenders — slim honest men like Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy and al Gore — please, I beg of you, forgive me for this small usage.
But I've seen frog marching in handcuffs and it isn't pretty.
Suffice it to say that I had a call one night - as a cop, not as a historian - to an upscale apartment, where my partner and I found a pair of progressive gentlemen (they told us so) had had a tiff. One had stabbed the other during a go at frog marching through the apartment while one was attired in little more than velvet covered handcuffs, while the other had spurred him along with a stiletto.
apparently this nouveau go at lovemaking hadn't panned out and it led to the application of the knife, the charging of one for attempted murder, the summoning of an ambulance for the other, who nearly died, the blowing of their cover and our carrying a cardboard box of upscale cuffs, rolls of velveteen cloth, leather equipage, and color photos of frog marching, both posed and apparently live, back to the station.
and having arrived in the air-conditioned safety of the report room, the old boys, the veterans, began tut-tutting and clucking over the photos and passing grades on the degrees of difficulty shown in these shabby little photographs of serious frog marching, uncovered on a late night call.
around the same time as these unseemly happenstances were being played out on the unfettered left coast, my kid brother was attending Texas Christian University, the home of the Horned Frogs and their Horned Frog Marching Band.
I say this in passing because the TCU band is noted for some serious marching and my brother played the clarinet.
While this is by no means an unholy alliance, it does lend further credence to the fact that I have further credentials, via close kinfolk, on the netherworld of frog marching, and I have seen them in their tall hats, swinging from side to side, sashaying onto the football field in their purple and white, loudly jazzing it up at half-time in a number of games.
You see, my brother was too small for college ball, while I wasn't. I had been kicked out of the secondary school band for fighting, while my brother hadn't.
But time passed, George Bush was elected President over the howls and disclaimers of the Democrats, Karl Rove became his chosen man, and Joe Wilson became famous because of his freakish Niger yellow-cake fracas and because his wife, Valerie Plame, was some sort of a secret CIa agent, although, in retrospect, every person alive inside the beltway knew who she was.
Valerie was the toast of the liberal cocktail circuit with arlen "Si Senor" Specter, Chris "Flapjack" Dodd and Patrick Kennedy, when he strayed in an ambient stupor from the Hawk ‘n' Dove.
Joe Wilson, you see, just can't keep his trap shut about his wife, Karl Rove, the President, John Kerry, the Democrats, the gaming tables at Biarritz, fake beards, hot cars or, I guess, about nearly anything.
and somewhere along that long, muddy and distaff trail that leads from inside the labyrinthine brain of Joe Wilson and ends at his non-stop mouth, he issued his famous statement about hoping or wishing or living to see the day that Karl Rove would be frog marched out of the White House in handcuffs for all to see. He even opined that dead Democratic voters, those who had let their survivors know their wishes, and the blind should be able to witness this supreme spectacle.
Joe firmly believes - despite the adumbrations of Patrick Fitzgerald and the testimony of a multitude of ham sandwiches, the lack of credible evidence, reams of secret grand jury proceedings, the lies routinely found in the main stream press, the cussedly long atonal pronouncements of John Kerry, the blessings of Pinch Sulzberger, the patented mewlings of David Gregory, and the rich platitudes of Chuck Schumer and his illegal calls for a report — that Karl Rove must absolutely be guilty of all counts and then some.
Last night after many weeks of rain in New England, where some of my town's roads are still washed out, I heard the peepers and the bullfrogs over the air conditioning system, gamely ribbiting away near our brook.
Suddenly the beam of a flashlight drilling through the darkness in the back yard spurred me to action.
I put my book down and ran to the sliding doors and yelled, "Joe? Is that you Joe Wilson? Looking for someone to frog march somewhere tonight? Karl Rove is free at last." Whoops, lifting another line, this time from MLK.
I'd better watch in case Jesse Jackson's caravan and camp followers arrive at any minute. Jesse claims to be the inheritor of all things this great man said and did, and stands ready to pursue those who indiscriminately use his sayings with a threat to show up for a meal, a hand out or to block their driveway with a sit down until the apologies and the money flow like the Spice.
"No, you idiot, it's your wife and I'm looking for the dog!"
I withdrew inside, chastened, and returned to my reveries.
But I'm here to tell you, I've seen frog marching in handcuffs and it isn't pretty.
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