My Dear, Mad Julian: I think it’s any kind of justice but poetic that you’ve replaced the Chilean miners as flavor of the month in the media. We wanted the miners to survive so we could feel good about ourselves, and we want you to be punished so we can feel good about ourselves. So we can feel safe again, knowing that you won’t sniff out our private scandals once you get bored with airing the dirty laundry of superpowers.
My Dear, Mad Julian: It’s impossible to ignore the fact that your face, in nearly any light shone upon it, looks devious. I hear some people are born devious, while others have deviousness thrust upon them. Still others, I’ve read in the Mahabharata and the Mabinogion (and other fine books beginning with M), thrust themselves into deviousness of their own volition.
My Dear, Mad Julian: I fear that many nations will change their laws to muzzle you, which will make you a martyr. There, I said it first. What you’ll be a martyr to, I don’t know. “The truth” is too simple of an answer.
My Dear, Mad Julian: It’s highly entertaining to see nations sidestep blame as you force them to acknowledge their hypocrisy and influence-peddling. I’m reminded of the old Warner Brothers cartoons where one cute animal shoots bullets at the feet of another, making the latter dance. Which cute animal are you? How does it feel to hold the gun?
My Dear, Mad Julian: You wrote something on your blog that I’ve printed up and taped to my wall: “Men in their prime, if they have convictions, are tasked to act upon them.” For this alone you merit a modicum of reverence amidst the suspicion and the clammy, slimy-handed fear you inspire.
My Dear, Mad Julian: I use the phrase slimy-handed because if even ten percent of the things they say about your sex life are true, then your hands have been in places and done things that we’re all better off not knowing about.
My Dear, Mad Julian: I can’t suggest that We the People of America will rescue you by making you a poster child for free speech. You don’t look American enough, and we’re not sure how to pronounce your name. You would fail the most American test of all, the one we usually reserve for gauging the viability of presidential candidates: whether we, the hoi polloi, would like to have a beer with you or not.
My Dear, Mad Julian: I fear your show trial has already begun. The tickets are sold, the soundbytes recorded. A new kind of show trial, for a new kind of social order. Your face will appear on T-shirts, like Che Guevara’s and Bart Simpson’s, but we will not know what that face means.
Steven Wingate | Contributor
Steven Wingate's debut short story collection Wifeshopping won the Bakeless Prize for Fiction from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2008. His fiction, poetry, cross-genre work, and reviews have appeared in Gulf Coast, Witness, Mississippi Review, The Pinch, Colorado Review, The Journal, Brand (UK), Waccamaw, Sonora Review, and elsewhere. His column on the writing craft and life appears regularly in Fiction Writers Review. In 2010-11 he will be Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA.
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