After his recent visit to Tokyo, Vice President Mondale revealed that he and the Japanese had discussed a broad range of issues. Anyone who has ever gazed on this magnificent range can imagine the poetic nature of the Vice President’s talk with the Japanese, for it is one of the most moving spectacles nature affords.
Rising majestically out of the bleak Areas of Responsibility, the Broad Range of Issues stretches from the amusing Heights of Absurdity on the north to the historic Peaks of Achievement in the south. It is not clear whether Mr. Mondale has actually seen the Broad Range of Issues or whether his discussions were merely based on study of old National Geographics. The latter seems likelier, for few persons have survived the harrowing journey to that remote paradise.
T. E. Burton, who made the trip in 1923, with nothing more than six camels and a dictionary of clichés, kept a diary of the expedition. Although Burton met a dreadful death on his return journey when he fell into the roaring torrents of the infamous Flow of Information, his diary survived.
At his death, Burton was exploring for the mysterious Reliable Sources, where he believed the Flow of Information originated. Burton’s expedition to the Broad Range of Issues started from the east and ran into trouble almost immediately as it passed into the steamy Erogenous Zones. His diary, feverishly sketchy at this point, describes months of struggle to climb out of the squalid Depths of Degradation, which pitted the Zones’ landscape.
Indeed, he might have died there had he not seen, one cold winter night, an extraordinary display of the beautiful Rising Expectations light the western sky. Reinvigorated by this atmospheric spectacle, he hauled himself out of the Erogenous Zones and found himself breathing a strangely baffling air.
This, as subsequent geographers have discovered, was the inexplicable Air of Mystery, which blows off the mosquito-infested Miasma of Suspicion and Hate. Luckily for Burton, the sky was clear that night and he was able to navigate safely around the Miasma by following the familiar, if somewhat tired, Aura of Romance, which shimmered in the southern sky.
The southern detour, however, carried him directly into the dreaded Sands of Time, where he wandered for years, surviving only because his camels had taught him how to store water in his hump. One day he stumbled into an orchard. It seemed a mirage, for scarcely a hundred yards distant lay another orchard. Burton sent his camels to explore it for reality, and as they stood there looking at his orchard and he stood looking at their orchard, he suddenly realized the magnitude of his accomplishment. He had discovered the Fruitful Exchange of Views.
Refreshed in spirit, he plunged ahead, ignoring the terrors of the notorious Political Extremes to his left and to his right, and noticed that he was approaching a series of well-defined levels. These, of course, were the well-charted Income Levels—Lower, Middle and Upper.
Then, in a terrifying instant of atmospheric violence, Burton was abruptly picked up into the air and just as abruptly hurled to the ground. We now know that he was in the grip of the whimsical Unanticipated Windfall, which is quite common at the Upper Income Level.
Burton, however, was determined to reach New Heights, an elevation from which, according to ancient lore, one could catch a glimpse of the Areas of Responsibility. Burton spent weeks struggling upward, always upward, and when he at last reached the summit, satisfied that he had reached either New Heights or the equally rewarding Higher Level of Understanding, he fell into a stuporous sleep.
On awaking, he found a graffito cut into rock. It said, “Chauvinist pigs to the wall.” This was not New Heights. It was simply Raised Consciousness, and Burton realized that he was looking out on the world from the Feminist Viewpoint. “At least,” he noted in his diary, “it is better than finding myself at the Unorthodox View.”
The following year, Burton crossed the Chasm of Misunderstanding, canoed down the Labor Pool and hurled himself through the Language Barrier with such force that he plunged into the fetid Emotional Depression. Only his fierce resolve to enter New Fields of Endeavor kept him going, and when at last he entered the always stimulating New Fields, he met a speech-writer who gave him his first glimpse of the Broad Range of Issues from the ancient Well-Balanced Perspective. “Someday,” the awestruck Burton predicted, “this range will be discussed even by Vice Presidents.” Not even Burton, of course, could have realized the Japanese would join in.