Off-the-Cuff: NRA Propaganda

The 19th hour of the day is always one to watch out for, being as full of fun as it is of fanatics. It also happens to be near the end of the workday for telemarketers… if there is such a thing. I’m not at all sure how much has changed since my time in telemarketing slave campss, but the idea of a traditional workday was as mythical as an archaeopteryx. Still, for those few wretched souls confined to the chairs of telemarketing, advocating causes that require them to stick to script lest they fall off-track and speak sensibly, traditional workdays are quite unheard of.

I was getting ready for something relatively important when the call came in. Was it drying my hair? No, I never dry my hair. I am rather confident it revolved around what has become a Christmas break of checking out the back of my eyelids for 30 minutes or so to make sure they are functioning at full capacity. At any rate, the jingling and jangling of the phone at that top of that 19th hour was nerve racking on many levels… and lo and behold! It was a telemarketer! What are the odds, right?

The poor soul on the other end of the line had no clue what he had just gotten into. Not only had he unknowingly got on my last available nerve, but he was unaware of what would soon become the apparent fact that he had, by no real fault of his own, stumbled upon a man who has dedicated his life to stomping out all things wretched and vile… and that telemarketing was somewhere between herpes and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, placing him in bad company.

Luckily, my household has the luxury of Caller ID. This may frustrate the run-of-the-mill pranksters, but not the more creative rabble rousers. No, we see the advent of this technology as a luxury; we see it as an opportunity to turn the tables on those who would dare advertise and plead relentlessly for a chunk of our already dwindling earnings.

“Hello, sir, I am calling on behalf of the National Rifle Association…”

Uh-oh, this called for my old man voice. Yeah, the voice of one who sounds as close to 110 years of age as he does to dementia. I mastered it while in high school, and it has served me well over the last 12 years since.

I knew that the next minute or so would be an apocalyptic message from Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the NRA, about Obama and “liberal thugs” and “gun-hating Dems” who plan to break into homes on Christmas Eve to confiscate all our weapons… even down to little Ralphie’s Red Rider BB Gun! The audacity! The unconstitutionality! 

Once the man gets back on the phone, I go on a tangent about how “I am scared as hell up to my ear drums” and we need to begin work on foxholes immediately. The poor sap tries to keep his composure (as well as to his script), but my talk of shotguns and coon hounds was too much for this young call-boy to handle.

Poor guy tried to swindle me for $100… until I began jabbering on into Looney Land.

“What’s your plan, boy?… A five-year plan? That whipper snapper Bay-Rock will be out of the White House in five years!… Didn’t you and that French Pierre guy talk about how this was at the top of Bay-Rock’s to-do list?… We need action now!… I’m glad you agree… So what are we doing this evening?… Yes, tonight!… Nothing tonight?… $100?… You just want my money?… You want my support? Good! For a second there I thought you only wanted money tonight… $100??… OK, I will support you. How do I get to your location?… To join the team… $100??… I got a better idea!  We’ll surround the White House!… Well, I don’t want one of them liberal bureaucrats you fellas were talking bout coming to my door trying to nab my gun… You keep wanting to get back to that five-year nonsense that costs me $100! I’m getting angry, boy… Well, I tell ya, me and my coon hound may take that $100 and surround the White House… Heck yeah! Better than giving it to some plan that will only begin to work after those bureaucrats take my guns! 

By this time, the telemarketer was trying his hardest to stay on script, and he appeared to be on some kind of laughter-inducing drug. It had also become quite evident that he had decided I was a failed cause. No money to squeeze out of the crazy, old man with a shotgun and a coon hound. So being the efficient worker ant he was, he made the decision that it was in his best interest not to waste any more time with me. He politely thanked me for my time, wished me and my coon hound the best, and hung up the phone.

After all was said and done, I was hit by the truly unexpected: an epiphany. At long-last I knew why I hated telemarketers, especially those advocating social change… because they, unlike a good gun, are all money and no action.