Several posts back, the Maximum Leader felt pressured by his wife to ease any offense I might have taken over our gay-marriage debate.

While the Minister of Agriculture appreciates Mrs. Villain’s touching concern, he assures her that her husband’s ripostes do not wound or offend this humble smallholder. The Maximum Leader and I have been going at each other’s political positions hammer and tongs since our political philosophy class lo so many years ago. The Maximum Leader, in a clever nod at my liberalism, might even say that we have been going at it “hammer and sickle and tongs.”

Nonetheless, I was very pleased to hear of the Maximum Leader’s staffing decisions for the Ministry of Agriculture. While I personally would have nominated Miss Pressly for the “Undersecretary position,” I am looking forward to working with her to meet the Maximum Leader’s five-year plans for food production. I have joked for years that when the Mike World Order arrived I would begin tying my own blindfold and learning to smoke so that I could enjoy that last cigarette. Mike always smiles and assures me that, despite my heretical left-wing philosophy, I will have a high place in his administration. He was confident that every man has his price and that I could be bought by the MWO. He has found my price.

In reading my Maximum Leader’s most recent post, I had to smile. As a history teacher, this would be an excellent example of the unreliability of oral history and primary sources recorded long after the event. I believe, and I could be mistaken, that only the Maximum Leader was pitching woo at the Virginia Historical Society Party. I was playing the well-honored position of wingman.

Your Maximum Leader (and master of his blog domain) responds: The more I think back, the more I concur with the Minister of Agriculture. He was my Wingman and I was trying to pitch woo.

If I recall correctly, I was in a relationship at the time. The undeniably attractive young woman’s desire to burnish her status using her Confederate antecedents was eating me alive. I desperately wanted to issue a riposte that had I been next in line after Mr. Wilkes’ crime, her ancestor would have been shot for treason. I would probably have followed up by refuting her whole “The Civil War was about state’s rights, not slavery” inanities with reference to South Carolina”s Ordinance of Secession (To paraphrase Clinton’s campaign team, South Carolina’s leading politicians openly said “It’s about slavery, stupid”) and a discussion of the South’s desire to see federal power exercised when Wisconsin exercised her state rights by nullifying the Fugitive Slave Act.

However, out of my friendship for the Maximum Leader, I bit mytongue and smiled encouragingly at the beautiful young lady, working in as many positive stories about Mike as possible. I was also actively encouraging the Maximum Leader to step up the directness of his woo-pitching. Since the young lady began inquiring about our after party plans, his woo-pitching seemed poised for success. I believe that I have previously discussed the Maximum Leader’s willingness to stand on principle. Despite having success in his grasp, her Southern Belle schtick finally irked him enough to produce his Churchillian-in-its-pithiness put-down. While I was disappointed at the failure of my wing leader’s campaign, the puzzled, distressed look on her face was priceless.

This will probably get me shot, but I feel I must relate two other Maximum Leader woo-pitching stories.

Your Maximum Leader holds his breath.

Your Maximum Leader, while an excellent tyrant-in-waiting, was always the subtle sort when it came to pitching woo. We were the Yin-and-Yang of woo-pitching. I was constantly encouraging him to “pass a resolution authorizing monies for the invasion of the ‘continent,’” but he had to work at his own pace. For one solid week, his roommate and I heard stories of Maximum Leader’s gradually escalating woo-pitching towards a young lady in the political science department. The roommate and I ran into her at a party that weekend, and began chatting. We decided to advance our ally‚àövᬨv s cause, and inquired about her state of mind. Her response? An incredulous “Mike’s been hitting on me?”

Your Maximum Leader responds: I believe I was laying ground-work for woo pitching. But alas, the object of my wooing was still hung up on her recent break up. A few short weeks later, for the record, the woman and her former beau reunited. When last I heard, the two were happily married.

The one and only time I remember active woo-pitching from the Maximum Leader was when he ditched my 21st birthday party for a couple of hours when things looked promising with another of the bar’s patrons. While some might have been hurt, I simply sent him positive vibes from across the bar. My reward? When the woo-pitching failed, he returned to our group, and promptly tricked me into the trunk of the designated driver’s car. “Hey, Mark, it would be cool to take a gag picture of you being so drunk that we put you in the trunk of the car.” Ever the affable inebriate, I crawled into the trunk and turned to pose. They slammed shut the trunk and drove me around town for the next hour.

Maximum Leader comments: Now THIS I remember! It was not one hour. It would only seem that way if you were inebriated.

Now that I think about it, perhaps Ms. Pressly is not enough of a bribe to keep me from joining the counter-revolution.

Maximum Leader responds: Think again. Ms. Pressly is the only bribe you may get…