“I told them to duck”
The joke didn’t land. The bomb did.
It was fired from a drone and killed multiple occupants of a small vessel in the Caribbean Sea. Those who ordered the strike were now trying to turn the ensuing press conference into a late-night comedy sketch.
“They call me Duck,” he explained, in a futile attempt to pull his joke from the wreckage.
“The people love me and everyone loves cartoons so they call me Duck I don’t mind it’s like water off a duck’s back…”
Between the rambling, a journalist managed to squeeze in a question on the motive for the strike.
“Italians, very bad people. You know, when we had the wildfires in California, horrible things wildfires, well I called Mr Italiano, the president, and I said you have a city, all water – people live on water – so much water, I said send us some water to put out the fires – I know Italian water is extremely wet, but the Italy people didn’t send us any water, so we bombed their boats.”
No immediate questions followed from a press pack still reeling in confusion, so he continued.
“And Venice Beach, in California, now we call it Freedom Beach.”
Younger journalists flocked to Mike Algren hoping that after 34 years in the press gallery he would be able to tell them how to convert delusion into legible copy. He simply reminded them that it wasn’t the first time this had happened.
“You mean, you’ve heard this drivel from someone in this position before?” they asked incredulously.
“Yep, yesterday.”
The ailing performance continued.
“They kill the whales, so we bombed them, and they didn’t duck, so they died…”
“Sir, there are no whales in the Caribbean Sea”
“Yes, there are many whales there, and I love them, so we killed the whalers. I love whales, I invited them to my casinos all the time, big whales, they’re my friends, they loved my casinos, and they eat fish so I gave them lots of fish, I like to eat fish, crab meat, lobster, filet-o-fish, delicious, better than pizza Italians very bad people, and the whales love me so I protect them, I’m a conservationist, from the conservation party, not the democrats, they hate animals, I love them, the whales, the ducks, the piggies, the cats and dogs, they eat the cats and dogs the democrats the Italians, but not me, so we stopped the whalers, now we can free willy, wonderful movie, they asked me to act in it, I’m a great actor, great movie about a whale who’s all alone without his mummy and daddy, I saved willy and I saved the whales…”
Algren knew he must attempt to extract a morsel of logic from the stream of semi-consciousness,
“To clarify, Sir, a small vessel in the Caribbean Sea was bombed in order to send a message to citizens of Venice hunting whales…”
“Yes, it was a warning to Venice Whaler…”
Image: Ross Sokolovski
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