SLICK VALLEY, TEXAS — Jasper P. Egoïste’s story is not an uncommon American tale. Egoïste was born into an extremely wealthy family that made their fortune in the oil industry. Jasper, like so many Americans, attended private, parochial schools in his formative years, elite boarding schools during his adolescence, and thanks to his 2.56 GPA and a healthy donation from the Egoïste Family Trust, attended Yale, Harvard and The Texas State Institute of Book Learning and Jesus Worshiping — the finest university in all the Lone Star state. Egoïste was born into enormous wealth and opulence, like so many of his fellow Americans, and became a top lobbyist for his family’s industry in Washington, overseeing a period of tremendous profit for the oil companies he represents to the Federal government.
But Egoïste is afraid his life is taking a turn for the worse, and he says the falling gas prices all over the country are all the evidence you need of it.
“Sure,” Egoïste said from his Swiss chalet on a recent Ski Week vacation with his family, “Americans all over the country are finally able to fill their gas tanks for about twenty dollars again, but ask yourself this, ‘At what cost?'” Jasper answered his own question, “I’ll tell you the cost, my sixth vacation home in Turks and Caicos, that’s what.”
We asked Egoïste how he could try to elicit sympathy for himself and his family in the wake of the worst economic meltdown in a lifetime, and after more than a decade and a half of steadily rising oil prices that gave families like his and oil companies like the one the Egoïste family owns the highest levels revenue their industry had ever seen. “I’ll tell you how,” Egoïste said tersely, “with my mouth. That’s how. My mouth is attached to a rich guy. That means, according to the Supreme Court, that I have more speech in my bank accounts than you, or anyone else, so I get to say and do whatever I want. Just like Thomas Jefferson intended it when he chopped down Abe Lincoln’s burning bush!”
Egoïste told The Political Garbage Chute that while it was true his family — and so many families like his — had amassed so much money that even with the price of oil falling like it is he and his great-great-great-great grandchildren couldn’t possibly spend through it all, “That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t feel bad for us as they fill their tanks. I want everyone out there to feel sorry for me while you fill your gas tanks for the first time in five years!”
Jasper then took us to his den where he poured our reporter a glass of 25 year old Scotch from the world’s smallest distillery in a tiny little town in Scotland. He handed our reporter a freshly cooked 52-ounce cut of choice, Kobe beef, and a Cuban cigar to finish it all off with. “Of course my family will be fine for several dozen generations. Of course we’re never going to know the horror of living paycheck-to-paycheck, worrying about what happens if the hot water breaks the same week they have to pay their mortgage. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put my feelings above everyone else’s. I’m a Job Creator, guys. A job creator!”
Egoïste is currently considering either a run for president on the Republican ticket, or barring that, giving at least a couple-dozen million dollars to a Republican SuperPAC in an attempt to sway the outcome. “It’s not buying a candidate,” Egoïste insists, “It’s gaining access via my enormous pile of free speech in my money bin to people who want to be president and reminding them who paid for their wife’s campaign trail outfits, is all.”
As our reporter bade Egoïste farewell, the oil tycoon gave one last impassioned call for sympathy. “If something isn’t done soon about these falling oil prices, people are going to have a lot of extra money in their budget, and that money could get spent in other places other than at the gas pump. Is that the America you want to live in?”
