Frolicking Among Good Friends

Ian Urbina

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Really, it was the court jesters who said it all.

At the 103rd annual Wallow of the semi-secretive Military Order of the Carabao -- founded by veterans of the American occupation of the Philippines -- 1,200 barrel-chested, bemedaled Carabaos and guests were in for a treat as they settled their tuxedoed and kilted rumps into their seats for a post-prandial soiree of songs and spoofs. In addition to much raucous celebration of George W. Bush's upcoming war, the Wallow's entertainers offered them a hilarious skewering of the press. The revelers' mood was nothing short of rambunctiously drunken as the theatrical production wore on, but the high point came with a campy rendition of "The Man of La Mancha," set in a mythical yet strangely familiar land called Pentagonia.

Rummy Quixote, a talented baritone, bellowed bravely about his travails tilting at penny-pinching Congressional windmills, while his sidekick Sancho Wolfowitz rendered unto Pentagonia's Caesar a lilting ode of undying loyalty. A portly white guy in pigtails daintily played Princess Condoleia -- modeled on the literary Quixote's love Dulcinea -- for whose affections, it was said, Sir Colin and Rummy Quixote regularly joust. But the prancing court jesters elicited the most deafening uproar from the assembled menagerie of highly placed politicos, defense contractors and septuagenarian seamen.

"In Pentagonia, the court jesters are the press corps, but you probably knew that already," the narrator deadpanned.    

"The jesters sit in daily anticipation of what Rummy Quixote may tell them in briefings at the Pentagonia press room about his quests through daunting and distant landsÉand though Rummy tells them very little, the press corps jesters stand in awe of him." Deep into the throes of Bush's permanent wartime presidency, even the military sees fit to poke fun at our nation's scribblers for being too soft on the Department of Defense. Indeed, bygone are the days of those Vietnam-era critics.

Soon enough, the jesters got the chance to tell their side of the story. Swaying from side to side, heads tilted and eyelashes batting, they regaled the Wallowers with their "Paean to Rummy":

Other songs on the docket also got a rise from the crowd. A soaring "Aria for Martha" (Stewart) pointed out that after the many corporate scandals of 2002, "Congress finally realized that our $600 toilet seats are small potatoes." The "Harvey Pitt Stomp," belted out to the tune of the pop hit "Taking Care of Business," lampooned the former SEC chairman for handling Wall Street robber barons with kid gloves. As the rousing coda of "Saddam's Campaign Song" faded into the cigar-choked evening air, the narrator marveled at the Iraqi leader's 100 percent voter approval rating in the last plebiscite. No one, he added, previously realized that Saddam had grown up in Chicago. "Preemption" -- a timely peroration toward the end of the performance -- was sung with particular gusto. This musical statement, the emcee intoned, is our "commander-in-chief's infallible answer to whatever lies ahead: hit the other guy before he hits us." The Carabaos and their friends responded with loud "hoo-ahhhs" of approval. "So that's how it will be, that's how the cookie cuts," the lyrics concluded in a preview of the Bush-Powell presentation to the Security Council. "We hope to hell our allies will get up off their butts."

Throughout the onstage proceedings, another officer of the Order interrupted with reports from locales scattered throughout the Carabao corral. The Bombinero's job is to ensure that the Herd stays adequately "wetted down" at all times, meaning that every table's stock of booze is regularly replenished. As Historiador Rear Admiral Ralph Ghormley explains in his official chronicle of the Carabaos, "The carabao is a docile beast of pacific demeanor -- as long as it stays wet. But deprive that animal of its right to unlimited moisture, deprive it of time to wallow in the muddy shallows -- in short keep it dry and thirsty -- and it becomes a very different, a very formidable and indeed distinctly dangerous beast."

Perhaps because their cup runneth over, few Carabaos seemed nervous about the possible dangers of Bush's Mesopotamian adventure. "For us, WMD are not so daunting," one speaker announced. "For us WMD only means: whiskey, make mine a double."

Carabao Wallows are never short on star power. This year, Casper Weinberger, defense secretary under the soon-to-be-sainted Ronald Reagan, showed up to deliver a brief and barely audible thank-you for his Distinguished Service Award. Former Virginia Senator Chuck Robb, a Carabao, hunkered down for his repast near the front, as did Missouri Congressman Ike Skelton.

Also on the seating chart was retired General Barry McCaffrey, who commanded a division in the Persian Gulf War which was famous for its bloody tank drive across the "highway of death" in 1991 Iraq. General McCaffrey has hardly rested on the laurels won during Desert Storm, serving as "drug czar" under the unlamented President Clinton and, since last year, handicapping Desert Storm II for the media. When the Washington Post asked McCaffrey whether the space shuttle disaster would slow down the White House's war plans, the general replied with Rummyesque directness: "My instinct is that it will break the intense media focus, repeating the same endless cycle of two or three questions which were not really answerable: Why now? Why [North] Korea? Are there really WMD [weapons of mass destruction] smoking guns?"

If the Wallow is any indication, McCaffrey is correct that the press will take its cue to look elsewhere while military planners retain a single-minded focus on Iraq. No Carabao acknowledged the empty chair at the head table, scheduled to be filled by NASA Director Sean O'Keefe. Unless it occurred during your correspondent's bathroom break, throughout four hours of food and fun there was nary a speech nor a moment of silence for the seven astronauts, on the very night of the Columbia tragedy. Even the military chaplain who uttered the closing prayer declined to strike a somber chord. As he instead exhorted the Herd to "stir up and sustain the hearts of all citizens in defense of our liberties," the chaplain brought the room boisterously alive once more.

Indeed, everyone seemed to have a grand time at the Wallow, including the journalists in attendance. After the show, the bar was packed. One writer from a major news service invited your correspondent to an "informal after-party" hosted by Northrup-Grumman for the Carabao Players and their friends. "There'll be free liquor. Really, you should come, it promises to be a lot of fun," he coaxed. Clearly, not only card-holding Carabaos like to be wetted down.

The last time the gala drew fire in print occurred in 1913, when President Woodrow Wilson lambasted the boys for their unseemly behavior. The Herd has never forgotten the criticism. Several attendees boasted that no president since William Howard Taft had darkened a Wallow door, "and we're the happier for it." But the Carabaos despised the Wilson administration for reasons besides the genteel Wilson's public rebuke. It is not clear which made them angrier: Wilson's having granted the Philippines independence or his administration's order (which stands to this day) to ban all "non-medicinal" alcohol from Navy ships.

But that was a long time ago. At the dawn of the twentieth century, the term "anti-imperialist" was not an ideological buzzword at the fringes of accepted speech, but a label unapologetically adopted by mainstream journalists like Mark Twain and William Jennings Bryan, Wilson's Secretary of State. 

It was all among good friends. But there was one brief moment when the frolicsome spirit of press-military relations seemed like it might turn a tad bit rough. Heads craned as the evening's military Chaplain stepped to the mike to file his candid opinion on the topic. "The media blames the military for just about everything," adding firmly, "and I, for one, am quite fed up with it." But after a pregnant pause, it turned out, that the good Chaplain spoke only in mock anger in order to set up his succeeding joke. "They even say that the military is not environmentally friendly, and that we do not recycle enough. Well, what about Cheney and Rumsfeld? We've recycled them plenty."

Back in 1978, it was a Washington Post columnist assigned to cover the Wallow who seems to have best summed up the collegial spirit. "You either understand these occasions or you don't, and it's no great matter," he wrote. "I was never anybody's hero and didn't even drink the free booze, except for a toast, so I know you don't have to be bombed past your skull to have a fine time and feel marvelously at home."

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