Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_ A Fair & Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken [107]
And then there were the calls.
“Hi! Is Joe there?”
“Um, who may I say is calling?”
“Josie Martin from Bob Jones University.”
“Oh. Joe’s not here now.”
“When will he be back?”
“Um, hmmm, I . . . don’t know.”
This happened a lot. A lot. And because I’m a busy man and my wife wasn’t vigilant enough, Joe actually answered a few times, getting angrier and angrier at me because he was now being forced to lie. Something we Frankens don’t do. Unless it’s absolutely necessary.
The last straw was the call from a junior at BJU who was from Manhattan. “Where,” he asked Joe, “do you go to church?”
“I don’t go to church,” Joe answered reflexively. On the other end of the phone, he heard a shocked GASP.
“. . . in Manhattan,” he quickly recovered. “I go to church on Long Island.”
“Oh,” said the very nice young man whom my son was lying to.
Joe charged out of his room and confronted me. “This has got to stop! I don’t like lying to people!” He told me to call Bob Jones and tell them he had decided to go to a secular college. Which was, of course, entirely true.
So the next day, I had Liz call and tell BJU the bad news. They were disappointed, but understood. And were extremely nice about it.
CUT TO: TeamFranken. Present day. A good idea never dies. I needed a kid without Joe’s integrity. Fortunately, I was at Harvard. Among the fourteen members of TeamFranken, I had fourteen volunteers, including Owen Kane, a thirty-eight-year-old mid-career Kennedy School grad student.
But to maximize the chances of our little scheme working, it was important that my “son” or “daughter” be able to pass for a high school junior. Owen was out.
Andrew Barr was in. A sophomore at the college, Andrew was perfect. Fresh-faced, eager, he could easily pass for seventeen. Valedictorian at Boston Latin, the top public school in Boston, Andrew was razor sharp and quick on his feet. Only one problem. The Jewish thing. Neither Andrew nor I knew jack about Christianity, particularly the weird, freakish kind practiced by these incredibly nice people at Bob Jones University.
We decided to do our homework. Learning about Christianity would be too difficult and time-consuming. Also, boring. Instead, we checked out BJU’s website, hoping not just to learn enough to pull off our scam, but also to find stuff to make fun of.
Unfortunately, we discovered that the interracial dating policy had been discarded altogether. Shit. There went the Tiger Woods joke.
But not to worry. There was plenty of other fodder. First of all, the “university” is not accredited. That’s right. They have the same degree-granting power as Schlotsky’s Deli. They claim it’s because they don’t want to be accredited. We think it’s because they don’t believe in science. You see, they stand without apology for the absolute authority of the Bible. God created the Earth in six days. And He didn’t put gays in it, either.
Then, there’s the BJU policy on student use of the Internet, which is “a source of much content antagonistic to Godliness.” No argument there. Chat rooms, instant messaging, and web-based e-mail accounts are banned. Students are not allowed to access websites with “Biblically offensive material.” In addition to the usual pornography and violence, this includes “crude, vulgar language or gestures, tasteless humor (excretory functions, etc.), and graphic medical photos.” Fortunately, BJU has an automatic filter, updated daily, to block these websites. And since nobody’s perfect (i.e., we’re all sinners), if the filter picks up a student attempting to access one of these websites, the “incident” is logged for an Internet administrator. In fact, all Internet use is constantly monitored by the “university,” giving parents real peace of mind. Like the incredible friendliness, “constant monitoring” would also become a theme of life at BJU.
And speaking of parents, Andrew and I found the linchpin for what would become “our elaborate ruse.” On the BJU