Meet Jack and Dr. Jane O’Brien

Jack O’Brien is a retiring “public servant” who owns two (2) multi-million-dollar mansions in the most exclusive areas in his small, corrupt state. In fact, he lives like a king, complete with luxury cars that no middle-class public servant could ever afford.

Jack won a seat in the U.S. Senate, despite having limited legal experience at age 29, and graduating at the bottom of his class from a less than prestigious law school. He tried to earn higher marks through plagiarizing other people’s ideas, but he did not even do that very well and got caught.

What was Jack known for before his senate career? He was a public defender for about a year. He was a county councilman for two years. Basically, he did nothing outstanding or notable. One can only assume that the voters in his state were not that bright.

Jack lived in the senate for nearly 40 years, sharing his luxurious lifestyle with his family. Many people consider him a swell guy, and for some reason, his name is plastered on too many buildings all over his state, even though he isn’t quite dead yet.

While “serving” in the senate, Americans knew O’Brien for a disastrous crime bill, a global trade deal with China in 2000 that sold American manufacturers down the river, and nothing else notable other than dipping his hand in the taxpayer’s money pot too many times, always enriching himself and his family, and especially after he got his promotion as vice-president. Oh, he did invent a new verb - to “bork” someone, so that’s pretty important.

Whispers about Jack’s increasing dementia grew louder and louder, but hey, it’s Jack O’Brien – he’s a bumbling fool, sometimes. And besides, it didn’t matter because the media’s narrative would protect Jack since free speech was as good as banned. It was a crazy time in America.

For nearly a century, Americans relied on the idea that the solution to bad speech is more speech, thanks to Justice Louis D. Brandeis’ classic opinion in Whitney v. California (1927) where he wrote:

If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

Jack, “Crooked Jack” as some called him, was fit as fiddle. He loved to show off his biking prowess when biking at the beautiful Gorden Pond Trail at Cape Henlopen State Park. Of course, that meant Secret Service would close the beloved trail to the residents and tourists so many times that everyone lost count how many times they could not use their own trail, even though they paid for a state park pass to enjoy it.

Somehow, Jack got promoted to President of the USA, even though he sounded like a bumbling fool for too many years. As his former boss said too many times, “Don’t underestimate Jack’s ability to F things up.”

With the assistance of some pharmaceutical pills from the same company that he owned stocks in, Jack could perform as well as any trained monkey.

Jack’s wife, Jane, oooopps, that’s Dr. Jane, as she likes to be called (she has a PhD in education) made Cruella de Vil look like an angel from heaven.

Jack and Dr. Jane were having an affair before a drunk driver crashed into the car driven by Jack’s first wife, Janet, tragically killing Janet and their infant daughter, Juni. Jack and Janet’s two little boys, Dumb and Dumber, were also in the car with Janet and Juni, but they survived the crash to become grifters like their old pop, Jack, but with an addiction to trouble, to boot.

Dumb and Dumber frequently closed out local bars with the bar owners locking them inside with all that booze and some of the white stuff.

For reasons that amaze some, too many people voted for big brother Dumb to be the attorney general of Jack’s state. Dumb and his wife, Donna, still enjoyed their cocaine, and this fact perplexed some people when Dumb imposed draconian drug enforcement laws like mandating that little 80-year-old ladies prove they were not drug addicts before their doctor could prescribe them a pain reliever. Guilty before innocent, as Dumb would say.

Dumb died tragically from all that drug use, and that broke Jack’s heart. But there was still Dumber, who Jack referred to as “the smartest person I know.”

Dumber fell in love with Dumb’s widowed wife, Donna, and they enjoyed smoking crack together until she dumped Dumber after Dumber’s stripper girlfriend bore him a new child.

Dumber remained a crack head till his dying days. To support himself, Dumber sold his poop as art that apparently sold for big bucks, along with his bestselling memoir, Beautiful Nepo Boy Has Crackhead Teeth Now.

Some people referred to the O’Briens as a crime family.

Jack frequently showered with Jack and Dr. Jane’s daughter, Jina, when she was a pre-teen and teenager, and Dr. Jane liked to watch, presumably for educational purposes.

Ewwwww, this story is going sideways.

And so it goes.

[There was little time for research and writing this week, so I thought I’d take a stab at writing a little fiction.]