The Wedding of Hudge and Gudge

As the Society and Gossip columnist for The Distributist Review, I was thrilled recently to have been assigned to cover the social event of the season, to which that threadbare affair of William and Kate pales by comparison. I mean the Wedding of Hudge and Gudge.Trillions were spent. The honeymoon has begun. And we’re the ones losing our innocence.There was Gudge in his corporate best, a stunning three-piece suit, his Rolex watch and team of corporate lawyers the perfect accessories. They were, in a sense, accessories to the crime.There was Hudge, veiled in the Constitution of the United States, torn and tattered just enough to reveal his lustful desire to serve Gudge underneath.And there was Smudge, the little tyke they fathered out-of-wedlock, in his twenties or thirties by now, looking every bit the bastard he is.The minister was none other than a famous anchorman from CNN, who looked the other way during the whole ceremony.I chatted briefly with the Best Man at the reception. A confirmed neo-conservative libertarian and graduate of a certain Austrian school, he seemed thrilled to have stood up for the two grooms at this exciting ceremony.DR: Does it bother you that Mr. Hudge and Mr. Gudge are tying the knot?BM: Bother me?  I’m enabling it! I’m the Best Man! They’ve been living together for so long, anyway, we thought we might as well make it official. Now little Smudge can call them both “Daddy”.DR: Living together?  I thought they were merely dating.BM:  Well, look at the film Inside Job. Take a gander at the Rolling Stone piece from a few months ago, in which it’s quite clear that the Justice Department has simply refused to prosecute the Wall Street movers and shakers who deliberately led us into this financial crisis through fraud on a massive scale and who profited from it enormously, to the tune of trillions of dollars. Or the current Rolling Stone piece on the crimes of Goldman Sachs , crimes President Obama is no more willing to go after than his many predecessors. Get me another drink.DR: I don’t understand. What does all this talk about money and politics have to do with a wedding?BM: You nitwit! Don’t you read Chesterton? A great writer, but wrong about everything, especially Distributism, which is neither a philosophy nor an economy, but a mood.DR: Oh, but -BM: Well, G. K. Chesterton started the whole thing by creating two characters, Hudge and Gudge, who were allegorical figures representing Big Business and Big Government respectively. I forget which is which, but the important thing is they’re married now. And they’ve been shacking up for a long time, anyway, but now it’s official. At least we know the honeymoon will be fun.DR: Why?BM: Gudge told Hudge, “Don’t worry, honey! I’m too big to fail!”DR: I see. And Smudge?BM: Smudge is the odd amalgam of them both, a kind of slow moving half-wit who is nonetheless dangerous and who seeks to enslave us all – but not directly, only as the byproduct of his limitless greed and selfishness. So it’s nothing personal. Chesterton was kind of right, and so was Belloc, when they said that Great Britain, even the Great Britain of a hundred years ago, was a plutocracy, not a democracy. Only they had no idea how bad it really is. Bad for them, but great for us. Another Scotch!DR: Watch it, you’re starting to spill that.BM: Hey, I’m the Best Man. I can do what I want.DR: But aren’t you, as a neo-conservative libertarian, compromising your own integrity when you serve as Best Man for the wedding of Big Government to Big Business?BM: Look, I love Gudge. And I hate Hudge, and I want Hudge to get out-of-the-way, but for a while there Hudge refused to budge. Now that they’re married, Gudge will lord it over Hudge, who’s got that middle-aged pudge and is glad somebody as attractive as Gudge has even taken an interest in him.DR: But you believe in a “totally free market” –BM: Hey, look. The freest of all markets is one where no government exists to regulate it. Or even prosecute those who abuse it. Hand me that drink. I’m just getting going. You want to know something? This is the New World Order. There is no United States of America. There’s only Bank of America. And Morgan Stanley. And AIG. And Lehman Brothers. There is no common good. There’s only making good. And making out. There is no drug like other people’s money, and it’s just the prescription this Christian needed. Hit me again. And if that “other people’s money” happens to be the money of some Wal-Mart greeter who’s got a pension that’s gone sour from CDOs and who’s got a mortgage he can’t afford, tough. Blessed are the poor – who else is there for us to rob? The meek shall be left holding the bag. That’s the new gospel. Get real. This frigging wedding is the best thing that’s ever happened to this firm-slash-country. You should have been at the bachelor party! It was sensational! Strauss-Kahn got some waitress from Shoney’s he abducted at gun point to pop out of a cake. It was fabulous! She was in tears! It was better than the closing credits for the movie The Hangover.DR: Your eyes are bloodshot. You’re slurring your words.BM: I am the Best Man! I am the B.M! I am the Austrian uber-mensch !I left him that way, in his cups. And the reception, which was taking place on a floating ocean liner, “unsinkable”, I was told, had begun to take on water. The band continued to play. Nobody seemed concerned.The galley slaves were busy handling the bail.