Shoot by Kieran Crowley Read Free Book Online Page A

in what looked like a slave market for green goddesses.
    SOLD! Wall Street’s Coup d’
É
tat.
    My dad was doing what he always did—railing against the powers that be. He was calmly saying something about the Tea Party being neo-secessionists intent on imposing neo-slavery. He had no clue that most people had no idea what coup d’état or neo meant. He was rudely interrupted by a nasty voice.
    “Shut up!” said the voice, as the camera switched to the famous hawk face of TV pundit Bob O’Malley. “Keep your commie crap to yourself!”
    O’Malley routinely invited liberals onto his show,
Free Speech Zone
, to prove how even-handed he was, but usually cut off their mikes and called them names. The show should be called
The Bully Zone
.
    “America’s economy is run by predatory capitalism but our sacred government is based upon one person, one vote— until now!” my father fought back. “You and your corporate-owned supreme court have officially switched our form of government from democracy to capitalism—we are now a cash-based oligarchy, with a stock market and an army.”
    “Cut off this clown’s mike,” O’Malley shouted. “My audience doesn’t have to hear this Marxist malarkey.”
    “Between buying elections and suppressing minority voters, that is the only way you can win the…” My father’s measured voice was cut off.
    “Go back to Moscow!” O’Malley sneered.
    “I’m from Kansas!” my father said in an even but very loud voice, still audible over the air.
    My father was polite, soft-spoken and quoted Emerson, about a gentleman not making any noise. But he was from the Planet 1960s and you couldn’t silence him.
    “I said cut off his mike!” O’Malley yelled again, panic rising in his voice.
    “You cannot silence the voice of an informed electorate, no matter how many lies you tell,” my father continued calmly—at the top of his lungs.
    He sat quite still, the color rising in his round face. His voice was so loud it was picked up by O’Malley’s microphone. The host looked like this had never happened before. It must have been the practice my dad got from all those anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. O’Malley was going berserk. He called for security.
    “Only in gun-crazy, money-mad America could activist judges label cash as free speech and certify that a corporation is a human being—but with
more
rights than a person. Americans have lost their voice, just as I have on this show— because a millionaire shut me up. Wake up! There is no free speech on this show or in the country—unless you’re rich!”
    “Shut the BEEP up!” O’Malley screeched, his obscenity bleeped out. “Cut off my mike, too. Go to BEEP-ing commercial.”
    Uniformed security guards dragged my smiling dad off-screen. O’Malley threw one of my father’s books at him, just before the image froze.
    “That was the wild scene last night on FAX TV’s Bob O’Malley’s
Free Speech Zone
. O’Malley didn’t like what his liberal guest was saying, so he cut off his mike and then had him dragged off camera,” a gorgeous blonde CNN host said. “CNN has learned that the TV host with the famously short temper had political science professor and author James Shepherd ejected from the studio—and also from the luxury hotel where he had been put up by the show. I guess O’Malley forgot that he named his show the
Free Speech Zone
,” the anchor chuckled.
    It cut to a catchy musical commercial: a montage of car crashes, ambulances and a blizzard of green cash and dollar signs. A bandaged guy on crutches danced and belted out a happy tune:
    “Klaus and Fins, injury attorneys—let us sue to score cash for you!”
    I switched to FAX News channel. As usual, former Alaska governor and former vice presidential candidate Miranda Dodge, a right-wing glamor girl, was slamming the president who had defeated her in the last election. Beneath her image, her identification was FORMER AK GOV., AUTHOR OF
W HITE S LAVES