The Next Debate's Moderator: Samuel L. Jackson

Word had it that Sam was going to run a tight ship, and there for a while, when the candidates walked onto the stage and shook hands, smiling, trying to look taller than the other, Romney whispering to Obama that he liked the shine on his shoes, that he could see up his pant leg, and Obama retorting that Romney's fly was open, chucking him on the arm then, grinning big, waving to the crowd, "Made you look," there was hope.

They went to their podiums and Jackson leveled a hard, bad-assed expression at them both. "Listen up, Motherfuckers, cuz I'm only gonna say this once," he began. "When I say you're done talking, you're done fucking talking. Are we clear? Cuz if I gotta tell ya twice, I'll be gettin up there, Secret Service or no Secret Service, and getting goddam Yosemite Fucking Sam on your asses ..."

Hearing this, Romney's eyes got wide with excitement, an excitement he hadn't felt since he hazed that sissy with the lavender hair back in prep school. He had to admit this was more fun than Old Man Lehrer, that PBS pussy, moderating. Obama, meanwhile, simply grinned in his cool, good-natured way. It was good to have a brother up there asking the questions, keeping it fair, after the other night in Denver.

"All right, then," Jackson said when he had their attention. "First question ... How do y'all feel about two mouthy, in-your-fucking-face gay brothers from the Castro, say, gettin married and adopting some Mormon kids? Not the pretty ones, mind you—I can see you're freakin out over there, Governor—but no, we're not talking about the smart motherfuckers who when they get older we'll all be so proud of and take all the credit ... no, not them, I'm talking about the more fucked up ones, the ones nobody wants, back of the 47% corral kinda kids, you might say. What are your fucking thoughts? Governor, you getta go first."

Romney looked around, not sure whether to laugh or tell this guy to go fuck himself. He'd never told someone to go fuck himself before. He wondered if it would be exciting. "Why me? I thought we were going to talk about the economy ..."

"We'll talk about the fucking economy when I decide to, Motherfucker.  Right now, however, we're talking about two brothers—hell, since I see you're wincing, that both you motherfuckers have your assholes in a pucker, let's make it two sisters. Two hot-looking dikes—I've got a couple in mind—wanna get married and adopt some Mormon kid that no one, not even the Mormons, want—"

"Why do I have to go first?" Romney asked again, a little louder than before.

"Because you always wanna go last," Jackson replied—he'd watched the last debate. "And because I'm the moderator and I fucking said so."

Obama, who'd been cool up till now, felt it was time to speak up. He was the president after all. "Sam, come on. This isn't quiz night at some dance club in West Oakland. This is a Presidential Debate."

Jackson leaned back and folded his arms. "Answer the question."

"What if I just took the kid," Romney offered after four or five seconds of silence. "And then hired someone. What if I created a job for someone, an opportunity, of the sort one can have in this country if one works hard, if my opponent isn't raising taxes on him or her at every turn ..."

"Now there's a novel idea," Obama cut in. "I'd have figured you'd buy the orphanage and let your buddy Sheldon turn it into a casino. Have the kids work the tables. Dress the place up in neon—"

"You laugh, Mr. President, but that kind of hard scrapping ingenuity worked wonders for the Indians—I mean, of course, the Native American population that had prior to that time been beaten down with government handouts—"

"And the fucking cavalry," Jackson put in.

Romney turned to Obama. "He can't say that. He's the moderator."

Obama turned to Jackson. "Sam, you aren't the peanut gallery. You're the moderator—"

"Fine, I'm the moderator. I ask a question about homosexuals getting married and adopting undesirable little Mormons and you start talking about casinos and Indians. What's a brother to think, other than, apparently, you're both cool with it—"

"Cool with what?" Romney wondered aloud. He'd never used the word cool in that particular context before. It gave him a strange tingle.

Jackson answered, "The sisters ... gettin married ... and giving the little 47% percenter Mormon boy a home."

"No! Of course not—" Romney shot back. Was this man insane?

"So what about you?" Jackson asked Obama, who had thus far kept cool on the question.

He stammered a bit, then said, "Well, I think ... yes ... possibly. As you know, I'm the president of everyone, the president to all of America, from the richest of the rich to the dirtiest, sneakiest little weasal—" He stopped himself "But I think reasonable folks would agree, that even Governor Romney would agree, that we need to consider some of the potential complications that could arise—"

Jackson leaned back in his chair, looked up and ran his hand over his scalp. "Mr. President, I am not asking you if the sisters I have in mind can be allowed to change this little Mormon motherfucker's name to some shit like Elijah, or some goofy-assed one like yours. I'm just saying, Can These Sisters get married? Like all the rest of us poor motherfuckers, right? And by the way—" He eyed Obama knowingly "—I bet that was some anniversary you had the other night, some real joyous shit to be sure after the way you let that lyin motherfucker run all over your ass the other night—"

"Excuse me," Romney remarked indignantly. "What did he just call me? He can't say that. He can't be calling everyone a—"

"He's right," said Obama, raising his eyebrows at Jackson. That no nonsense, worn-out-being-the-president-and-having-to-listen-to-assholes-go-on-all-day-long look. "Sam ... I think we need to talk about the economy. Right now. I really do. We need to talk about jobs, and giving hope to the middle class, to the whole country and not just the sisters who want to get married and the Mormon orphans and those of us who have done well and should pay a little more. And one more thing ... if you say one more word about my anniversary, I'll be turning my wife loose on you, and she'll be putting a whup ass on yours that'll make the one she put on me the other night look like a—"

"Can we talk about the economy now?" Romney interjected petulantly. "For instance, Mr. President, tell me why, if I, or someone even richer than me, someone like Sheldon, for instance, is willing to create a job for someone, to take care of this young child you spoke of, to give just one example, so that he doesn't end up in a parade some day wearing chaps—"

Obama, ever presidential, nonetheless cut in, "Now hold on, Governor, I think we can all agree there are worse things, far worse fates that any of us could end up with, particularly if you and your running mate get elected, than going to a parade wearing chaps—"

But Romney wasn't so sure. In fact he disagreed. No, you wouldn't see his children going to a parade in chaps. If anyone he hired in the private workforce to raise a child (rather than let a couple of lesbians get their hands on him) let that child go off to a parade in chaps, well, let's just say someone's head would roll. There'd be some firing going on.

Jackson, incredulous, was heard to say, with relative calm at first, "Did I say that either of you motherfuckers could talk?"

Perhaps he said it too softly, because both Romney and Obama ignored him. As they did, repeatedly, with Jim Lehrer during the first debate. They continued on, bickering, talking over the top of each other.

"Tell me this, Mr. President, what if your girls—"

"My girls? My girls are on a tighter leash than I am. They're doing calculus right now. Either that or they're in bed—"

"Gentlemen—" Jackson tried once.

"Assuming they've finished reading their Zora Neale Hurston for the night," Obama added.

"Who?" Romney had never heard of no Zora Neale Hurston. Figured she was probably one of his aunts from Kenya.

"Gentlemen, please—" Jackson tried twice, his tone betraying annoyance. He was not in the habit of being ignored, not even by motherfuckers with armed guards.

"I have to say I'm not at all surprised," Obama said to Romney, squaring off with him, looking, to the close observer, like he might throw down with the Mitt if he kept on. After the anniversary he'd had—or rather, didn't—with Michelle after the first debate, he really wasn't in the mood for any shit tonight. "Then again, you probably had your hands full with Horatio Alger and Dale Carnegie, reading up on how Jesus hauled ass from Nazareth to Missouri just ahead of Lewis and Clark—"

Now, Romney thought, he didn't need to say that. There was no need of that. It wasn't like he was Dan Quayle going on about Jack Kennedy. "I'll have you know, Mr. President, that while you were smoking your grass and doing your blow and dreaming about your father, I was out in the business world, stealing money fair and square and without caffeine or any other dangerous drugs—"

Obama squared his jaw, stuck out his not so intimidating chest. "What say you and I go play a little basketball?"

Romney smiled and kept on. "I was pursuing the American Dream. Paying way too much in capital gains before Ronald Reagan, and the president whose name we don't speak—"

"Would you both SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Jackson shouted.

Both candidates stopped talking. Romney looked at Jackson. "Whoa." It was the first time he'd ever said the word Whoa, anywhere.

Obama, seeing one of the Secret Service snipers aiming at Jackson's head now, waved him off. "Sam," he said with all the reasonableness he could muster, "This isn't the set for "Pulp Fiction." You aren't sitting in the front seat of a car with John talking about cheeseburgers at a Paris McDonalds. This is serious. This is a Presidential Debate. And, by the way, if I don't do better at this one, something of mine is going to be in the ringer afterwards, so I'd appreciate it if—"

"You know what I think?" Romney remarked, his eyes sparkling in the lights. "I think we're going to win this election!" He remembered Walter Mondale saying the same thing at a debate with Reagan back in 1984, after he'd imagined he'd wiped the floor with the president, who was probably in the early stages of Alzeimer's at the time. At least he acted like he was. Then and after he beat Mondale in a landslide—it was a memory Romney only wanted to see out so far.

Jackson, hearing him, turned to Romney and said, "I'll bet you a hundred fucking dollars that you don't."

 Romney thought a moment, and wanting so much to be cool like the president, stepped out from behind the podium now and walked toward the front of the stage, toward the moderator's desk. He held out his hand. "Brother, you're on."

Jackson stood up. "Who the fuck you calling brother, Motherfucker?"

There was the sound of guns cocking. Lots of them. Obama, once again, made the kind of gesture he did with his girls when they started back-talking Michelle at dinner; the Secret Service stood down. "Guys," he said, "you can't be placing bets on the election. This isn't Las Vegas—" He frowned and looked to his handlers, to the sniper with the rifle. "We're not in Las Vegas, are we?"

"We're in an Alternate Universe!" someone from the crowd yelled.

Obama looked into the audience, dead into the camera as it turned out, and offered his best smile of the night. The pundits later on would say it was his best moment of the debate. "So what about gambling?" he asked—to crowd, anyone. "Can folks gamble out here, in this Alternate Universe?"

No one was sure whether they could or not. Apparently a lot of things were still getting ironed out. Laws and regulations, just how much a citizen could get by with in this Alternate Universe before it became a problem for the others. Obama looked to Romney, fearing that Mitt might try to shake hands with Jackson soul man style to seal their bet (he tried so hard—it was touching, really, as he'd told Michelle the other night, after which Michelle told him that if he ever wanted to get touched again he'd better wipe the floor with this equivocating clown tonight) and having already called the Secret Service off twice, put his arm around him, his less hapless than before challenger, and said, "Come on, Governor, time for you and me to clock out. You don't want to end up like Pete Rose, do you?"

"I can't have lesbians raising one our children," Romney confided. "The base would shackle me in a dungeon somewhere."

"It'll be fine," Obama assured him. "Sam got a little too far over his skis on that one."

"Let's make it a thousand!" Jackson shouted menacingly as the two candidates headed arm in arm into the wings.

"Are we going to have him again next time?" Romney wondered, mortified at the possibility.

"I don't think so. I heard we got Rachel Maddow next time."

Romney gasped—even while he was secretly excited. He had a thing for Rachel Maddow. It was something he'd never shared with anyone. He'd see her on the television and want to reach inside the thing and kiss her. It made no sense at all.

"Really?" he said.

"No—" Obama gave him a light elbow to the ribs and shook his head. "It's a presidential debate, Mitt. We can't be having lesbians moderating a presidential debate. Not even in an alternate universe does that happen ... yet." He watched Romney's expression and swatted him on the arm. "I'm just messing with you."

Romney chuckled nervously. It was hard to tell sometimes.

Just then two African-American knockouts, legs as long and beautiful as the dancer Stephanie Pope's, walked up, handed each of them a cosmo and walked away, holding hands.

"I like it here," Romney said, taking a sip—it was an alternate universe, after all. The rules regarding Mormons were still getting worked out.

Obama, wondering if it would hurt him to sneak a cigarette, if not a joint, had to admit he found the place agreeable as well. "Helluva a lot better than Denver," he sighed.

"All we have to do is keep it interesting," Romney reminded him.

Obama, tired, wishing it were otherwise, nevertheless raised his glass. "To a satisfying pageant!"

Cheers!