Hard times in the rectory

The whole world is in a terrible state of chassis

[The old-fashioned, lace-curtain, oak-paneled rectory seen in “Feast Day,” “Opus Duh,” “A Few Drinks After Work,” “Solving the World’s Problems,” and “Get Out the Metal Rulers.” The usual characters are having drinks: ROSS DOUTHAT (B&B), Attorney General BILL BARR (single malt), Supreme Court Associate Justice BOOF KAVANAUGH (the black stuff), and former Secretary of Education WILLIAM BENNETT (the Irish). BENNETT, looking more sour and unsober than usual, comes back from the little service bar.]

BENNETT: It won’t do, I tell ye! There’s too much mischief afoot. The Demmy-crats callin’ Supreme Court Justices to the dock!

[BENNETT points at KAVANAUGH.]

Can yez imagine this one up before the Judiciary Committee? [To KAVANAUGH directly] Ah, and it wouldn’t be patty-fingers like when ye was havin’ the job interview. Oh no, thse Demmy-crats is feelin’ their oats and thirstin’ for blood. They might start askin’ impertinent questions.

KAVANAUGH: [Rabbity] What’re you talking about? What have I got to be afraid of?

[KAVANAUGH drains his pint and steps up to the bar to draw another.]

BARR: Well, the baseball tickets for one thing. I always wondered about that myself – not that I’m asking, Brett! Let a man have his secrets, I say.

[BARR winks.]

KAVANAUGH: You’re a fine one to talk about secrets. I’d like to see you up for a hearing — only it wouldn’t be on Capitol Hill, for you it’d be in The Hague!

BENNETT: [Angrily] Hey! I’ll have no fuzzy-thinkin’ one-worlders in this parish! [To BARR] And don’t you be sassing the lad. The nervous type he is, and if you touch him where he’s sore he might run to the peelers and spill the beans on everybody.

[General laughter. KAVANAUGH’s still drawing his pint.]

KAVANAUGH: That I might, old man.

BARR: Mind your tongue, Mr. Justice.

KAVANAUGH: I will not!

[KAVANAUGH takes a sip and walks into the room, eyeing his comrades warily.]

All of you treating me like an idiot, day after day, and me a Supreme Court Justice! Well, let me tell you, the things I’ve seen and heard on First Street, if I brought ‘em to Mr. Durbin your whole world would go upside down.

BENNETT: Cheeky bastard!

[BENNETT points at DOUTHAT.]

And with a journalist sittin’ in the room!

[General laughter.]

BARR: Well, Bill, Ross isn’t the sort of journalist who, you know, hears things and writes them down and puts them in the paper. No, that’d be too much like work.

BENNETT: Aye, that’s true! An opinion writer, he is. [To DOUTHAT] What was that last thing ye vomited onto the pages of the Times about?

BARR: What else? Tucker Carlson !

BENNETT: Pah! That feckin’ pasty-faced little gobshite. Looks like someone brained him with a shovel. Ye call this a movement? Sweet Jesu, no wonder the young people are runnin’ for the exits.

DOUTHAT: [Weakly] Now hold it, Bill, in my column I show that Tucker Carlson appeals to young conservatives with a new paradigm of —

BENNETT: Paradigm my Aunt Fanny! What was it ye called it — “a comfort with outsider forms of knowledge and conspiratorial theories”? “Outsider forms of knowledge and conspiratorial theories”! That’s just fancy talk for nutcakes and crackpots, fellas what gets radio transmission though th’ fillin’s in their teeth. How are ye goin’ to form a winning coalition with that? Oh, sure, you can go out in the Sun Belt and scoop up all the senior citizens whose brains turned to mush in the heat, but then you have to attract voters who aren’t cracked in the head. Imagine tellin’ one o’ them, “Mrs. Smith, hello, we’re goin’ door-knockin’, your partner today will be this fella with his underwears on his head and he’ll tell you all about how the aliens took him up in their spaceship and stuck a cable up his arse.”

KAVANAUGH: Well, what do you suggest then, Bill?

BENNETT: [Sighs] Nothin’ else for it. Brett, go get Miz Noonan.

[KAVANAUGH leaves. BENNETT gets a laptop computer and a little wheeled desk from behind the bar and sets them up in front of a love seat. KAVANAUGH returns with MIZ NOONAN, a daffy old crone with frazzled hair dressed in muslin and taffeta with sagging flesh-colored stockings and run-down flats and carrying a giant feather-duster. BENNETT gestures her to the love seat.]

Miz Noonan! Another hard day cleanin’ up after us savages, eh? Come and take a load off.

NOONAN: Ah, no, Mr. Bennett, if I slow down now I’ll not get to sleep before midnight!

BENNETT: Forget all that, Miz Noonan, for we have a greater need now for your gifts as a prose stylist.

NOONAN: Ah, it’s a column you’re wantin’? Well, if I ain’t speakin’ out of turn, I’ve a thing or two I’d like to get off me chest about what’s goin’ on with conservatism.

[NOONAN settles in behind the laptop, opens a page, cracks her fingers.]

BENNETT: No doubt you do, Miz Noonan. And tell me, what is it you think is the problem, and what is it you think might be the solution?

NOONAN: Well, the problem as I see it, Mr. Bennett, is all the strange young men what talks on the computer about everybody gettin’ replaced with a theory. Time was when ye had a fella like that, ye sent him away someplace to lick envelopes where no one could see him. But now they’re all you see! Them and that Trump fella.

BENNETT: Ah ha. And what do you think is the solution for this?

NOONAN: [Brightly] Ronald Reagan, o’ course! I recall one time I was in th’ Oval Office, and Ronnie had his feet up —

BENNETT: Now, Miz Noonan – save it for the column! I’ll bring yez a glass of sherry.

NOONAN: A double dirty martini if you don’t mind, Mr. Bennett — this is thirsty work.

[BENNETT nods and head to the bar as NOONAN tucks furiously into her work and the curtain falls.]