THENEWYORKER, NOVEMBER 18, 2019 29
SHOUTS & MURMURS
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ
G
ood evening. Thank you all for
coming. These past six months,
I’ve been to thirty-five states and done
more than eighty town halls. You talked,
and I listened. And the one thing I came
away with, above all else, is that we have
a lot of first-world problems in this coun-
try. Problems that are often overlooked
and ignored. Just hearing about them
has made me a better candidate—and
a better person.
So many of you have opened your
lives to me. There’s Blair, the Silicon Val-
ley executive who walked into her closet
one morning to find that many of her
cashmere sweaters were marred by moth
holes. These sweaters cannot be repaired,
and if you love cashmere—and, really,
who doesn’t?—you can appreciate how
upsetting this would be, especially when
you consider that every other item in
Blair’s closet had to be sent to the dry
cleaner. Fortunately, she didn’t have to
go herself, but she did have to deal with
not having her whole wardrobe available
to her during a period of many social
obligations. Blair broke down as she told
me this. I put my hand on her shoulder
and assured her that someday she’d get
her clothes back and that, in the mean-
time, shopping for new cashmere sweat-
ers could be fun. This seemed to cheer
her up, but I couldn’t stop thinking about
Blair’s story. Let’s face facts: we have a
moth problem in this country, and the
sooner we recognize it the better.
Then there was Rob, a hedge-fund
manager from Scarsdale, who took a
golf vacation in Miami Beach with his
buddies and found himself on the first
tee with no sunblock. He went into the
pro shop to buy some, but they only had
the kind that wasn’t organic. Fortunately,
he was wearing a hat that protected his
face, but his arms and legs got so sun-
burned that he was unable to play the
next day. Sadly, he was reduced to lying
poolside under an umbrella while his
buddies teed off.
Of course, the sun kept shifting,
which required him to move his um-
brella every ten minutes. No easy task—
those umbrellas are unwieldy. He asked
the pool boy to do it once and gave him
a tip, but he didn’t want to tip the kid
every single time the sun shifted. So he
moved the umbrella himself and wound
up pulling a muscle in his back. Imag-
ine: you work hard at Sullivan, Fairchild,
Renfro, & Lieberman trying to help
people. Sure, you’re well compensated,
but no one deserves this.
What’s worse is that the injury
could’ve been avoided if these resorts had
a no-tipping policy. Then the pool boy,
who’s trained to move the umbrella, would
have moved it. Who can blame Rob for
not wanting to give him ten dollars every
ten minutes? Who brings that kind of
cash on a trip? It’s hard to hear Rob’s
story and not be moved by it. I promise
that as President I will not rest until we
do something about the tipping-policy
fiasco that has long plagued, and con-
tinues to plague, this nation.
When Rob woke from a poolside
nap, he ordered lunch, and it took more
than an hour to arrive. He liked his veg-
gie burger well enough, but they didn’t
have any gluten-free buns. It’s time that
these resorts realize that some people
have gluten allergies. And that others,
like myself, are just under the impres-
sion that there’s something wrong with
gluten and try to avoid it. When I’m
President, there will be a much greater
emphasis on gluten. That’s a promise.
After lunch, Rob went to the spa for
a facial. Another bust: the facialist didn’t
massage Rob’s hands and feet during
the mud mask. And they didn’t even
have a micro-needling machine—un-
heard of! The result? Rob left with no
facial glow. That’s right. You heard me.
No facial glow. Later, at dinner with his
buddies, Rob ordered a pricey bottle of
wine, but it didn’t taste right, so he sent
it back. Sure enough, Rob’s pal Stan
made a snarky comment, and before long
the two were going at it. Rob, with his
sunburn and pulled muscle, could not
defend himself against the smaller and
wilier Stan, who punched him in the
nose, causing him to bleed all over the
mushroom flatbread. Rob had to sleep
with toilet paper in both nostrils, which,
combined with the unusually high pil-
lows, made it impossible to get any rest.
Rob paused at this point in his story,
unable to go on. This wine incident cuts
to the core of who we are as a people. It
took courage to send that wine back.
Rob is an example to all of us, and he’s
here tonight. Rob, stand up!
In closing, when you hear about peo-
ple like Rob or Blair—people with first-
world problems—remember that they
are still human beings. I’ll be taking a
break from my campaign next week and
heading to the Four Seasons in Maui,
where, rest assured, I’ll be focussing on
ways to improve this great first-world
country. I’d appreciate your vote.
ON THE FIRST-WORLD
CAMPAIGN TRAIL
BY LARRY DAVID
