THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER16, 2019 29
SHOUTS& MURMURS
LUCI GUTIÉRREZ
According to a recent Gallup poll, ninety-four per
cent of Americans would vote for a woman for
President. So why haven’t we had a female in
the White House? Simple! We haven’t had the
right candidate.
T
he electable female candidate
reaches across the aisle with soft,
moisturized hands. She knows how to
fire a gun, but also has never held a gun,
and doesn’t know what a gun is. She’s
becoming a vegan, but stands behind
Arby’s in its commitment to the Meats.
She would never eat her salad with
a comb, because she knows that the only
acceptable non-hair-related uses of a
comb are scratching your back and play-
ing it like a kazoo. She has never taken
a DNA test, because she already knows
that she’s a hundred per cent that bitch.
She has the charisma of a charlatan
but the integrity of Charlie from “Char-
lie and the Chocolate Factory.” She’s
able to radically reshape society, but
moderately. She was raised on a farm
in the middle of Central Park.
Her paternal grandfather is Ronald
Reagan. Her maternal grandfather is
F.D.R. Her son is Keanu Reeves. Her
other son got on the U.S.C. crew team
by practicing. She went to Harvard, but
hated it.
She has a diversified portfolio with
a healthy annual yield of eighteen per
cent, even though she invests only in
companies that turn Styrofoam cups
into schools in Africa. She plans to do-
nate her estate to charity upon her de-
mise, which doctors say won’t happen
until at least 2039. She pays herself only
ten per cent less than what she pays the
men who work for her.
She promises to make a golden re-
triever her Veep. His name is Buddy,
and he has only three legs, because he
lost one in Nam. Buddy is socially lib-
eral but fiscally conservative.
She’ll implement universal health
care but fund the entire program her-
self by holding a gluten-free bake sale.
She enjoys cooking festive dinners for
her family and obliterating North Korea
with nuclear weapons.
When she gets an iPhone-update
alert, she installs it immediately. She
never posts screenshots of her fortune-
cookie fortunes on Instagram, because
she knows that no one cares. She does
not aspire to host her own comedy pod-
cast one day. She survived the Sooper-
DooperLooper at Hershey Park.
She is Beyoncé.
She knows how to change a tire, fix
a 3-D printer, launch a torpedo, un-
launch a torpedo, and juggle wet bars
of soap. She’s a boomer, but she has a
great sense of humor about the phrase
“O.K., boomer.”
She wears sensible shoes that are hot.
She can bench-press two-fifty but has
the lean muscles of a Zumba instructor.
She’s six feet tall and a quarter of a foot
wide. Her breasts are large but not ob-
scene. Her rear is juicy. The only symp-
tom of her period is that it makes her
skinny. She glows in the dark, but in an
extremely healthy, nonradioactive way.
She loves babies, even the ugly ones,
although she has never participated in
a gender-reveal party.
She is everything to everyone.
She would be pleased to be the Pres-
ident, but she is not ambitious enough
to run.
THE ELECTABLE FEMALE CANDIDATE
BYCLAIRE FRIEDMAN
