Finally: Team Obama unveils its new slogan; Update: “Was Reply-All taken?”

The whole scene from “A Confederacy of Dunces” is appropriate, here. It ALL works. If you want the specific line for FORWARD, look at the italics.

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Four of the male factory workers were embracing Ignatius around the Smithfield hams that were his thighs and, with considerable effort, were lifting him onto one of the cutting tables. Above the shoulders of his carriers Ignatius barked directions as if he were supervising the loading of the rarest and most precious of cargoes.

“Up and to the right, there!” he shouted down. “Up, up. Becareful. Slowly. Is your grip tight?” “Yeah,” one of the lifters answered.

“It feels rather loose. Please! I am deteriorating into a state of total anxiety.”

The workers watched with interest as the lifters tottered back and forth under their burden.

“Now backward,” Ignatius called nervously. “Backward until the table is directly beneath me.”

“Don’t you worry, Mr. R.,” a lifter panted. “We aimin you right at that table.”

“Apparently you are not,” Ignatius replied, his body slamming into a post. “Oh, my God! My shoulder is dislocated.”

A cry arose from the other workers.

“Hey, watch out with Mr. R.,” someone screamed. “You men gonna bust his haid wide open.”

“Please!” Ignatius cried. “Someone help! In another moment I shall probably be a broken heap.”

“Look, Mr. R.,” a lifter said breathlessly, “the table right behine us now.”

“I shall probably be dumped into one of the furnaces before this misadventure terminates. I suspect that it would have been much wiser to address the group from floor level.”

“Put your feets down, Mr. R. The table right under you.” “Slowly,” Ignatius said, extending his big toe downward with great caution. “Well, so it is. All right. When I have steadied myself, you may release your hold upon my body.”

Ignatius was at last vertically atop the long table, holding the bundled bed sheet over his pelvis to hide from his audience the fact that during the process of being lifted, he had become somewhat stimulated.

“Friends!” Ignatius said grandly and lifted the arm that was not holding the sheet. “At last the day is ours. I hope that you have all remembered to bring your engines of war.” From the group around the cutting table there issued neither confirmation nor denial. “I mean the sticks and chains and clubs and so forth.” Giggling in chorus, the workers waved some fence posts, broomsticks, bicycle chains, and bricks. “My God! You have really assembled a rather formidable and diffuse armory. The violence of our attack may surpass my expectations. However, the more definitive the blow, the more definitive the results. My cursory inspection of your arms, therefore, confirms my faith in the ltimate success of our crusade today. In our wake, we must leave a sacked and pillaged Levy Pants, we must fight fire with fire.”

“What he say?” one worker asked another.

“We shall storm the office very shortly, thereby surprising the foe when his senses are still subject to the psychic mists of early morning.”

“Hey, Mr. R., pardon me,” a man called out from the crowd. “Somebody tell me you in trouble with a po-lice. Is that right?”

A wave of anxiety and uneasiness broke over the workers. “What?” Ignatius screamed. “Where did you hear such slander? That is totally false. Some white supremacist, some upstate red- neck, perhaps even Gonzalez himself no doubt began that vile rumor. How dare you, sir. All of you must realize that our cause has many enemies.”

While the workers were applauding him soundly, Ignatius wondered how that worker had learned of the mongoloid Mancuso’s attempted arrest. Perhaps he had been standing in the crowd before the department store. That patrolman was the fly in everyone’s ointment. However, the moment seemed to have been saved.

“Now this we will carry with us in the vanguard!” Ignatius shouted over the last sprinkled applause. He dramatically whipped from his pelvis the sheet, flapping it open. Among the yellow stains the word FORWARD was printed in high block letters in red crayon. Below this Crusade for Moorish Dignity was written in an intricate blue script.

“I wonder who been sleepin on that old thing,” the intense woman with the spiritual bent, who was to be the leader of the choir, said. “Lord!”

Several other prospective rioters expressed the same curiosity in more explicitly physical terminology.

“Quiet now,” Ignatius said, stomping one foot thunderously on the table. “Please! Two of the more statuesque women here will carry this banner between them as we march into the office.”

“I ain puttin my hand on that,” one woman answered.

“Quiet! Everyone!” Ignatius said furiously. “I am beginning to suspect that you people are not actually deserving of this cause. Apparently you are not prepared to make any of the ultimate sacrifices.”

“How come we gotta take that old sheet with us?” someone asked. “I thought this suppose to be a demonstration dealin with wages.”

“Sheet? What sheet!” Ignatius replied. “I am holding before you the proudest of banners, an identification of our purpose, a visualization of all that we seek.” The workers studied the stains more intensely. “If you wish to simply rush into the office like cattle, you will have participated in nothing more than a riot. This banner alone gives form and credence to the agitation. There is a certain geometry involved in these things, a certain ritual which must be observed. Here, you two ladies standing there, take this between you and wave it thus with honor and pride, hands held high, et cetera.”

The two women whom Ignatius indicated ambled slowly to the cutting table, gingerly took the banner with their thumbs and index fingers, and held it between them as if it were a leper’s shroud.

“That looks even more impressive than I had imagined,” Ignatius said.

“Don wave that thing around me, gal,” someone said to the women, creating another ripple of giggles from the crowd.

Ignatius flipped his camera into action and aimed it at the banner and the workers. “Will all of you please wave your sticks and stones again?” The workers complied merrily. Myrna would choke on her espresso when she saw this. “A bit more violently now. Brandish these weapons fiercely. Make faces. Scream. Perhaps some of you could jump up and down, if you don’t mind.”

They laughingly followed his directions, everyone, that is, but the two women who were sullenly holding the banner.

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Prufrock on April 30, 2012 at 3:24 PM