One attempt after another has been made to find something -- anything! -- to use against me, or to trap me into doing wrong. These “fishing” expeditions have been going on for 25 years, a whole generation. It all started when I wrote CYPRUS. Their great hope1 is to find some proof of wrong doing on my part, hopefully illegal; but barring this, at least something that would prove extremely embarrassing to me -- or, far far better still, anything that would support the many lies and slanders they2 have bombarded me with over the years. For instance, Child Molesting, Racism, anti-Americanism, to name only a few. The simple fact that they have been trying to pin something on me for so long speaks eloquently of their determination -- no, of their fanaticism. And their hatred for CYPRUS. These people are obsessed with “getting” me. It goes without saying they don’t give a damn about Free Speech.

It’s not just my e-mail, or just my phone calls anymore. By now they know everything -- probably more than I know about myself. (Certainly, if they think I’m a Child Molester, a Racist, anti-American, etc.) Not a single stone has been left unturned. Even the contents of my house was at their disposal. They had my whole life before them. Well, not quite -- there I go exaggerating again -- not what was in my Safety Deposit Box. Just everything else (unless you count what’s in my head): my financial
statements/ my tax returns/ my address book/ the amount and who I wrote my checks to/ all my private papers/ anything I did or said that I kept a record of/ my photographs/ the phone numbers of my long distance calls/ my CYPRUS Papers (which, by the way, prove conclusively that I wrote CYPRUS3)/ my computer (oh boy, yummy yummy, lots and lots of juicy e-mail, and hopefully other private-personal-incriminating stuff)/ the Movie I’m writing/ any correspondence I kept/ my faxes/ my 2 dirty videos (They must have wept bitter tears when they found both were heterosexual.) But go ahead, name something. What, above all, would you not want other people to see? . . . Yes, they had access to that too. I was an open book, completely exposed. I was wearing The “Emperor’s New Clothes:” I was naked.

Nothing! They found nothing! Not a single solitary thing. Zip Zero Zilch! After 25 years, a generation of searching -- ever since I wrote CYPRUS -- they still had nothing to pin on me. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Not a blasted thing! Not an itty-bitty teeny-weeny tiny little almost insignificant something. A speck of dust even. (I bet you if I had all their information I could do better.) THEY STILL DON’T, AND THEY NEVER WILL, HAVE A POT TO PISS IN.

HaHaHa. Ever since I wrote CYPRUS -- nothing. . . . (Can’t you see me? . . . I’m dancing & skipping around!) . . . There’s always been nothing. . . . There’s never been anything.

. . . Whoopee! . . .

It’s always been a Witch Hunt.

Admit! Confess! Repent! The Moment of Truth is upon you.
Admit that you tried to kill Free Speech.
Confess that you’re a disgrace to the County.

Penance, please. . . . (shouting:) DO PENANCE!

“Do not ask for whom the bells toll; they toll for thee.”

. . . Phew, I’m out of breath.

TO CONTINUE . . .

Embarrassing, you say -- even humiliating? I say, CATASTROPHIC. After 25 years of searching, pretending and slander? And still to be empty handed? Zip Zero Zilch in thousands of e-mails, in all my phone calls, or anywhere in my house -- or around the world for that matter (you can bet they circulated my picture far and wide). Nothing means Nothing: absolutely no Child Molesting; absolutely no Racial Slurs; absolutely no anti-Americanism; absolutely no Etceteras. Nothing even remotely embarrassing.4
Admit it, I’m damn near perfect. I’m a hell of a lot better than they are, anyway. Not only am I none of the above, I never tried to deprive anyone of Free Speech. If that doesn’t make me a better American I don’t know what does. Confess: They’re anti-American -- one of the very epithets they’ve been rubbing my nose in for years.

The Country’s great, there’s nothing wrong with the Country, it’s just some of the people in it. If no one likes to be caught with their pants down in public, imagine what it’s like for people with big egos. The ones that play God and lay down the law and crush individuals they don’t agree with. In other words, great big Literary America5 against little old Me. Never, never forget, they tried everything in their power to stop me from sending CYPRUS around so you couldn’t make up your own mind.6 If they had their way, they wouldn’t allow me to write this either, or anything else, or have a web site to publish it on. After they backed me into a corner and knocked me down, evidently I was supposed to just roll over and let them kick me. How dare I get up and come out fighting! After all, they’re the Big Cheese, the Taste Makers; they write the news papers, the magazines; they’re on TV. How dare you listen to anybody else! If they serve up garbage, you damn well better like it -- and believe it.

With diddle-squat against me? After 25 years? Can anybody believe anymore they’re not going to try and frame me? It’s the biggest persecution of a Writer in history -- in the U.S., anyway. (And get this, participated in, in part, by other writers! If that doesn’t make your blood run cold, nothing will.) These people can’t stand to be made fools of -- that they made fools of themselves only makes it worse. Now, for sure, to save face, they have to “get” me. That they found nothing to hate me for will only make them hate me more. But what am I talking about?! They’ve already started; they’ve been framing me for years -- with their slander, with their lies. They just haven’t finished me off, is all. And what’s the hurry? For all I know, they still could be “recovering” e-mail I deleted; or they haven’t torn up the floor boards yet; or dug up the back yard. And then again, I’m 71: maybe they’re waiting to frame my corpse (no, I’m not kidding!) -- so I can’t fight back. It would be just like them. They’re Cowards.7 Slander is a stab in the back. They’d be right in character.

BOTTOM LINE

They found nothing to charge me with; nothing to embarrass me with. Nothing. Not a thing. Not this time. Not before. Never. They found what they found all along: that I was a good guy -- not a Child Molester, not a Racist, not anti-American, not Etc. So how come it took so long for the good news to get out -- or start to get out? If they knew all along I was a good guy, why did they pretend I was a bad guy -- a Child Molester, a Racist, anti-American, etc.? When they knew better all along. . . . Why would they still be calling me a Child Molester today if they hadn‘t “cried wolf” too often before? Why were they always about to charge me with something just around the corner? (Twenty-five years has a lot of corners.) Why? Never once did they have a shred of evidence against me. If they had, why did they try so hard to entrap me? Why? Why? Why?

It has to be -- there are no other answers -- CYPRUS. More than just an attack on me, first and foremost this is an attack on Free Speech. They hate CYPRUS. They hate me for writing it. Other than writing CYPRUS, I have done nothing that could possibly piss anybody off. I’m the kind of guy who wouldn’t hurt a flea. They simply have no other reason to “get” me. Sorry, but I’m the good guy here. . . . No, really. After a generation of lies and slander, I know that’s hard to believe. As for them, the masquerade is over; I have defrocked them for what they are, the bad guys, the would be Assassins of Free Speech in America. (“I have done the State some service -- enough of that.”) Far worse than anything they have done to me, or would have done to me, or still might, is the fact that they don’t believe in Free Speech -- either that or they don’t know what’s good. (They don’t know that CYPRUS is good.) Which would Literary America rather be, anti-American or stupid?

For 25 years they made me out a monster -- ostensibly, because I wrote CYPRUS, I don’t know. I only know that’s when it all started: when I started sending CYPRUS around. You heard their lies. You figure it out.

Freedom Fighter
James Johnson Briggs

p.s. How do I know they never found anything? I know there was nothing to find. Besides, if they had, don’t you think you would have heard about it by now? 25 years is a long time.

March/06