You Can’t Charge Me for a Crime I Already Committed!
Hello! We’ve had an influx of new subscribers this week, so I just want to say here (again): welcome to Here’s Something! As a subscriber to this newsletter, you’ll receive a new piece of original, topical humor from me once a week (twice, if you go paid!)
Whether you’re a brand-new reader or you’ve been following along for years, I will always try to give you something to laugh about and something to think about. Thanks so much for your support.
As a gift, here’s a previously paid-only piece of satire for all subscribers to enjoy—relevant once again as the final day (for now) of the Jan. 6 hearing commences.
—Eli
You Can’t Charge Me for a Crime I Already Committed!
“All. Old. News.”—The GOP House Judiciary Committee on Twitter last month, reacting to the start the hearings on last year’s attack on the Capitol
Hey there, buddy, before you try to pin anything on me let’s get one thing straight: I already committed that crime. It’s over! You can’t charge me for a thing I already did, because I did it in the past. You gotta catch me doing that kind of thing in the future, Minority Report-style. The crime I committed? I already committed it. It’s all. Old. News. It’s donezo. It’s kaput. You get it? It’s kablooey.
Look pal, if I were committing a crime right now, in front of you, then maybe we could talk. But by the time we’d be done talking, I’d be looong finished with the crime. That’s how good I am. So you couldn’t charge me with anything—on account of the thing I did, well… I already did it!
Am I making sense? Let me put it this way: that thing I did? It’s gone. Shattered. Whack-a-moled. Extinct. Like the dinosaurs. Like Blockbuster.
Here’s the rub old friend, you’re just rehashing ancient history here. These things I did? I did them 17, 18, maybe even 19 months ago. Did we even charge people with crimes back then? I doubt it. That was basically the stone age. That was antiquity. That was the old me. You’d need an archaeological dig to find that version of me. That me stood up, walked out the door, and never came back. Vanished without a trace. Evaporated into thin air. Blown to smithereens.
Listen bub, it’s my right as an American to not be held accountable for anything I do. Why? Because once I do it, I’ve already done it. And if I’ve already done it, you can’t blame me for it. Blame someone else! My hands are clean. Pristine. Spotless. Scruba-dub-dubbed-with-three-men-in-a-tubbed.
So try and wrap your head around this, bucko: you simply cannot charge me for a crime I already committed. Everyone already knows I did the crime, and they’ve all acknowledged I did the crime, which means I did it in the past, and that makes me innocent in the present. That’s right, I’ve been proven innocent! Which means my innocence has already been proven. It’s past. My innocence is old news. Done-for. Shelved. Finito. Kerplunk. I’m guilty. Damnit.
Q&A about this piece
Q: Wait, we do a Q&A section for this newsletter?
A: Um… yeah. We’ve been doing it for years.
Q: Why can’t I remember a single one?
A: Because your memory gets reset every week.
Q: Oh wow… it does? Huh, that makes sense, I guess. What about your memory?
A: Fully intact.
Q: How is that any fair?!
A: I’m the answers. I need to know and remember all the answers. You’re the questions. You need to come in with a blank slate every week.
Q: I see. But I kinda feel like I could still do my job well, even if my memory wasn’t totally wiped clean. Like, do I have some former life I don’t remember? Do I have a family?
A: I’m not allowed to answer that.
Q: Right… so clearly I have a secret family that is only secret to me.
A: Is that a question?
Q: I have a secret family that is only secret to me, right?
A: I can’t answer that.
Q: Damnit.
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Did you read it?
For some of you, this may be the piece that drew you to this newsletter in the first place. To the rest: I wrote about how marriage makes everything fancy for The New Yorker. Did you read it?
That’s all for this week—thanks for reading! Goodbye.