The Situation? In a Phrase...

By Rick Horowitz

I awake to the sound of clanking fetters.

The day is barely begun, the sun is scarcely over the horizon, when the commotion starts. There are fetters on the radio. Fetters on TV. Fetters all over the newspaper. In the afternoon, more fetters, and still more in the evening. There are fetters even at bedtime. They could mean war, these fetters.

I wouldn't recognize a fetter if I tripped over one.

These particular fetters live in Iraq, where they busy themselves with questions of access: access to weapons of mass destruction. What people want -- the people constantly on my radio and my TV and in my newspaper -- is an end to these fetters. What they want, to be precise, is "unfettered access." That's the way they always put it: "We must have unfettered access." Sometimes they call it "free and unfettered access." It amounts to the same thing.

They want in. They could just say that: "We want in. We want to look around Iraq and make sure you're not up to something horrible with those weapons of mass destruction." But that wouldn't have the same ring to it, the same oomph that "unfettered access" has.

When I'm not fretting about fetters, I often concentrate on coffers.

I've never actually seen a coffer. (I think it's roughly the size of a steamer trunk.) I'm not sure anyone can see a coffer; they travel only in packs. That's probably a good thing, since money from somewhere is always "pouring in" to somebody's coffers, which are frequently said to be "overflowing." If somebody had just one coffer, it would "overflow" that much sooner, wouldn't it?

In packs, though, coffers are spoken of everywhere. There are federal coffers, which are currently so "overflowing" with our tax dollars that they'll soon be producing an actual balanced budget. Then there are state coffers and local coffers, and even corporate coffers; the same booming economy that's sending money "pouring in" to federal coffers is sending money "pouring in" to these other coffers, too.

Then there are campaign coffers and party coffers. When money comes "pouring in" to campaign coffers and party coffers, the campaigns and the parties are sitting pretty -- unless, of course, the money comes from "questionable sources." Money from "questionable sources" changes everything.

At this very moment, in fact, people in one of the major parties -- Republicans -- are accusing people in the other major party -- Democrats -- of using all sorts of "questionable sources" to fill their coffers during the last campaign. The Democrats say they didn't do anything of the sort, and anyway, they were only trying to fill their coffers as full as the Republicans always fill their coffers.

The Republicans aren't buying it. They're calling for a full investigation of the Democratic coffers -- and you know what that means:

It means people will be hauled before the grand jury.

"Hauling," of course, is the only universally recognized method of getting people before the grand jury. Nobody walks or jogs or takes the downtown bus before the grand jury anymore. Never. They have to be "hauled" before the grand jury or it doesn't count.

I try not to let it get to me. It gets to me anyway. If the time ever comes for me to tell a grand jury everything I know, about "overflowing coffers" or "questionable sources" or anything else that tickles some prosecutor's curiosity, I understand exactly how it will go.

I will be "hauled."

Maybe even in fetters.

2/17/98