Chapter XXVI:
The President in the Newspaper

WITH THE PRESIDENT’S visit looming on my calendar, and with the rest of the day as clear as it ever gets (aside from the standing breakfast meeting with the GM, and a long luncheon scheduled with the Knights’ brand-new patron), I employed Clarice’s advice and called up a Net search using the keywords “President Hinton” and “Nîmes”. This combination yielded me over a million results in 0.0023 seconds, the most relevant of which being four hundred thirty-two newspaper articles bearing such headlines as:

 

American President Unsympathetic to Homeless Plight

 

And the even more damning:

 

President Hinton Despises Homeless

 

Oh, my. Clarice’s declaration of Malory’s “little trouble” had been an utter understatement. I read on:

 

Associated Press, Nîmes, France, 10 June 2085. US President Malory Beckham Hinton flew her true colours to-day in commenting upon the violence that broke out between local constables and a dozen homeless people living beside the amphitheatre: “They brought it on themselves in being too lazy to hold proper jobs.”

It had been a routine operation to clear the streets for the safety of ticket holders prior to the Crocodiles-Knights game. Investigation continues to determine why these dozen men had resisted being moved, resulting in the death of one and injuries to seven others…

 

That was merely the beginning of the Times’ newspaper account—the Times of London, that is, in case you number among the America-centric readers who believe I refer to the newspaper published in New York. And please forgive my habit of using the archaic term “newspaper,” since the day’s news is no longer printed on flattened, dried tree pulp for mass production, a form of communication Sir Boss had tried to introduce during my century with middling success. I had seen his newspapers and was not impressed. As curiosities, they were amusing enough and would suffice for villagers, if they could afford to part with the tuppence a sheet The Boss had charged. But for castle folk, newspapers would not do at all. Give me a choice between hearing the tale of a deed told by the dashing knight who performed it, imbued with all the excitement and glory of the original event, or reading a dry, bland accounting of that same deed on dry, bland parchment, and I shall take the knight any day… or night.

The other million hits uncovered by my search of course were a million fold worse, attacking the President with all manner of rude speech and derisive caricatures and mean-spirited jests, and for what purpose, really? To give vent to their petty jealousies, and to plump their vanities into believing that some other body in the world gives a fig for their silly opinions, when in reality the only opinions anyone ever cares about are one’s own.

Opinions are like derrieres: everybody has one, and there exists an excellent reason why people must keep theirs covered except during the brief daily interludes when having to flush what comes out. And people’s opinions waft just as much stench.

If this is the result of the exercise of “free speech,” then you may keep it with my full blessing—for all the good that will do you—because in the end, you always receive exactly that for which you have paid.

The laughable-to-the-point-of-tears irony was that the President had been correct in her assessment; I had borne witness to the incident, too, and there had not been one infirm man in the lot, at least physically. Since they had chosen to pick a fight with armed authorities, an argument could be made in favor of their possible mental infirmity,—but that argument can be applied to all testosterone-poisoned men. Therefore, the particular men in question could not have possessed any valid reason for their situation other than sheer laziness magnified by their violent refusal to walk a few steps out of the way of the baseball crowd.

So Malory had been crucified in print for an honest observation—an observation that, because of the high-profile nature of her political position, she should have kept to herself but for some unfathomable reason did not. Said reason did not matter, though I could guess it readily enough: she was at her core a product of her privileged upbringing and could no sooner act in a manner contrary to that upbringing (no matter how much she was advised to hide it) than a turtle could shed its shell.

Of course, she had tried to undo the damage wrought by that handful of truth by publishing apologies and explanations and clarifications until she must have turned blue. And of course, none of it had helped.

In my era, no one would have ever thought twice about the statement she had made: life was brutal by cause of wars, famines, plagues, thefts, late frosts, early snows, too much rain, too little rain, and every other trial and tribulation God in His loving mercy chose to dispense; everyone of every rank and station knew this, accepted it as immutable fact, and either worked hard to overcome their sundry obstacles, or died; and if they died, they possessed the grace to die quietly and uncomplainingly, not while bemoaning their entitlement to a better earthly fate by the mere fact of their existence. But since this was not my era, I saw that I had by necessity to come to the aid of my distressed friend and repair her reputation.

It sounded so simple. I never foresaw how very challenging that process would prove to be.