Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

The Coming of the Purple Better One

Congratulations America! Once more you have voted to reverse human evolution! In celebration of this auspicious occasion, I offer the following words from one of your fellow citizens, who foresaw this glorious future:

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The scene is Grants Park Chicago 1968. A full scale model of the Mayflower with American flags for sails has been set up. AJ in his Uncle Sam suit steps to a mike on the deck.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is my coveted privilege and deep honour to introduce you the distinguished senator and former Justice of the Supreme Court Homer Mandrill, known to his friends as the Purple Better One. No doubt you are familiar with a book called The African Genesis, written by Robert Ardrey, a native son of Chicago, and I may add a true son of America. I quote to you from his penetrating work:

"'When I was a boy in Chicago I attended the Sunday School of our neighbouring church. I recall our Wednesday night meetings with the simplest nostalgia. We would meet in the basement. There would be a short prayer and a shorter benediction . . . And we would turn out the lights. . . and in total darkness. . . hit each other over the head with chairs.'

"Mr. Ardrey's early training tempered his character to face and make known the truth about the origins and nature of mankind.

"'Not in innocence and not in Asia was mankind born. The home of our fathers was the African Highland. The most significant of all our gifts was the legacy bequeathed us by our immediate forebears, a race of terrestrial flesh eating killer apes. Raymond A. Dart of the University of Johannesburg was the strident voice from South Africa that would prove the southern ape to be the human ancestor. Dart put forward the simple hypothesis that man emerged form the anthropoid background for one reason and one reason only – because he was a killer.



"'A rock, a stick, a heavy bone, was to our ancestral killer ape the margin of survival, and now we sit in his office at the wrong end of the world. . . Man's original nature imposes itself on any human solution.



"'The aggressive nature of the southern ape, sir, glowing with menace, fought your battles on the perilous veldts of Africa 500,000 years ago. Had he not done so you would not be living here in this great city in this great land of America raising your happy families in peace and prosperity. Who more fitted to represent our Simian heritage in all its glory than Homer Mandrill, himself a descendent of that illustrious line?'


"Who else can restore to this nation the spirit of true conservatism that imposes itself on any human solution? And at a time when this great republic is threatened by enemies foreign and domestic? Actually, there can be only one candidate: The Purple Better One. . .Your future President. . ."

To the battle Hymn of the Republic an American flag is drawn aside to reveal a purple assed mandrill (thunderous applause). Led to the mike by secret service men in dark suits that bulge suggestively here and there, the Purple Better One blinks in bewilderment.

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Well, God bless America, and God help the rest of us. And for those unfortunates who didn’t vote Bush but are stuck in America, my commiserations.