Rachel Shukert
P.O. Box ____
Omaha, NE 681__
February 28, 1998
Rep. Newt Gingrich
Speaker of the House
U.S. House of Representatives
Capitol Building
Capitol Hill
Washington, D.C. 20001
Dear Mr. Speaker,
Hello. My name is Rachel Shukert. I am a high school senior in Omaha, Nebraska (a staunchly conservative state, as you know). I hope this letter finds you well.
As you and your colleagues in Washington proceed with your investigation of improper conduct on the part of President Clinton, I am sure that you have been deluged with letters of late. Processing this mountain of correspondence can be no small task, and I have no desire to keep you from the important business of guaranteeing the right of every American to the full disclosure of all pertinent identifying marks found on the Presidential genitalia. However, I wish to bring a small matter to your attention.
I will begin, if I may, with a story.
Last Sunday, as is my custom, I paid an afternoon visit to my grandparents’ house. My grandmother served me an afternoon snack of cashews, Swiss cheese, and hard candy retrieved from the hollow body of a wooden clown. As I savored this motley repast, she suggested that we look through some old family photos together. Obviously, I had no choice but to agree.
We settled onto the yellow couch in the living room, facing the pair of three-foot porcelain cockatoos perching above the unused fireplace, and gave ourselves over to the gossamer veil of memory.
“That’s your cousin Ida,” said my grandmother, pointing at a youngish woman, reclining on a lawn chair, her pudgy torso encased in a plaid one piece. “Boy, did she think she was hot stuff. You know, she never got married.”
The screen door leading to downstairs garage slammed shut as my grandfather climbed the stairs, his golf clothes damp and rich with the scent of sweat and Aramis.
“Do you believe this shit?” He brandished a copy of Newsweek, with Monica Lewinsky’s eager, oblivious face grinning from the cover. “These jackasses, the second they get someone in there who knows what the goddamn hell he’s doing, and they have to tear him down.”
Mr. Gingrich, my grandparents are Democrats. Rabidly, reflexively liberal on every issue, and in a manner that is charmingly antique; my grandmother regularly brings herself tears lamenting the misery of the “poor little colored children starving to death” and the people discriminated against because of their “alternative” lifestyles.
YOU ARE READING
Have You No Shame? And Other Regrettable Stories
Non-FictionGrowing up in white-bread Omaha, Nebraska, Rachel Shukert was one of thirty-seven students (circa 1990) in Nebraska’s only Jewish elementary school. She spent her days dreaming of a fantasy Aryan boyfriend named Chris McPresbyterian, a tall blond go...
