JESUS NATION SEX REBEL, mini-chapter 33

33. THE LUNCH

Joshua Grant was tall, patrician, elegantly attired, and somewhat worn. He spoke in a hoarse whisper, as if his responsibilities lay heavy on his larynx.

“You will get a free hand,” he said. “All we ask for is controversy. A Creationist free-for-all. Opinionated guests. Conflict. Struggle. No quiet discussions. The rough and tumble of debate.”

“I imagine I can organize that.”

Adam dismembered his lobster with delicate gusto. He chased down every morsel of resilient white flesh. Joshua Grant ate a baked potato and a salad. Adam would have thought him the meat-eating kind, but Joshua was a small eater, neat, precise, persnickety. He did, however, polish off two bottles of a ludicrously expensive wine.

“One day,” he said, “I want to retire to a farm, and create my own vintages.”

His accent still carried traces of his Australian origin. His father-in-law had started with one newspaper in that faraway land, and through a mixture of tabloid sensationalism and semi-nude pictures of girls built a newspaper empire in Australia and then in England, and then tackled America. Here he had branched out into television, and today the Sunday Fox Media group was the biggest media business on the planet. The owner had passed away, and Joshua Grant had moved quickly and decisively to take the reins. The nudie pictures and lascivious TV shows had gone: now Sunday Fox Media sold religion. Unlike other proprietors, Joshua Grant took a close interest in all his programming. Adam was not surprised that Joshua had made the overture to him personally. It was part of the man’s style.

“You will be paid enough to leave your job at the university, but I want you to stay on there. We need the credibility.”

Adam nodded. This was the kind of assignment that came with perks. He was sure his new job would allow him to become one of those Americans allowed to get a passport and travel outside the country. Would he have enough power to get a female permission to come along, too?

“I would like to have guests from overseas. That would really create inordinate conflict.”

Joshua smiled. “What a good idea. You will have to travel. You will need a passport.”

“Can I take a companion with me?”

“Does she have overseas status?”

“Females seldom do.”

“Well, I’m sure we can arrange something.”

Power cut through everything. Adam looked at Joshua Grant’s eyebrows: they had a clear-cut, bristly definition about them.

“Meanwhile, you can bring a female to a party I’m having next weekend. At my house.”

An opportunity to see how the richest of the rich lived. “Thank you.”

“What happened with your Patriot Board?”

“The Dean came to see me in person and apologized.”

Joshua Grant laughed, in a barking way he had, ringing from the back of his throat. “These Patriot Boards can get a bit uppity,” he said. “Always ready to hammer any stray unpatriotic soul. The Boards were put in for the appearance of control, to intimidate by their mere existence, not to be as actively punitive as they turned out to be. But that’s human nature. Even a little power corrupts. They need to be reminded that they are not all-powerful.”

Adam felt weirdly elevated to be in the presence of someone who could talk so lightly about the feared Patriot Boards, which prevailed everywhere, open to any suggestion from any informant. There were notices all over: “If you hear something, say something.” Every neighborhood had its vigilant, interfering Patriot Board. Every apartment block, every business, every organization, every club, every association. They welcomed informants.

“It’s bizarre how a little power can go to some people’s heads,” continued Joshua Grant. “When I’m president, I’d like to cut down on the powers of these Patriot Boards. We need more oversight. I’d also like to do something about all these Internet rumors.”

“You mean the business about Pat Robertson’s penis?”

“Not just that. There’s a new rumor that the Reverend James Dobson, a good friend of mine, got AIDS from sleeping with an experimentally AIDS-infected monkey. When I’m president, I’d like to lock up everybody spreading this filth.”

“You’re going to be president?”

“I hope so.”

“You want to run against the latest Bush? You know what they say -- you can’t beat a Bush. And excuse me for saying this, you’re a CEO. You’re not a politician.”
“You don’t necessarily have to be a politician to run for president. Just rich. There was a man who ran for president back in the 20th century, Ross Perot, who got twenty percent of the vote. He wasn’t a politician, just a rich businessman like me.”

“But at the end of the day you weren’t born an American.”

“That law has been changed, to allow the Austrian to become president.”

Adam remembered. There was a very famous body builder and actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a born Austrian, who had become a famous governor of California, a very ambitious man, for whose candidacy the law had been changed. If you’d been an American citizen for thirty years, you could run for the highest office in the land.

He looked at Joshua Grant. There was something he had to know, being an inquisitive academic, so he asked: “In the final analysis, why do you want to be President?”