"I tell you, old sport—I've never met anyone as committed to a single cause as that man Weelykta. Why, I daresay he'd be a sterling example to all of us, if he manages to accomplish anything, of course." —Jay Gatsby
"Gatsby's a rotten bastard, a hopeless lightweight. Terminal amateurs like him make us all look bad." —Frank Weelykta
"Tequila and tabasco/Formaldehyde and gin/Hell yes we're gonna drink it all!/Hell yes we're gonna win!" —Singing delegates at the 1924 Weelykta Party National Convention
Sustaining political enthusiasm is a hard racket—it starts ugly and ends uglier—and I know this is true because in my case it began early. As a seventeen-year-old budding party hack, I had an AP U.S. History term paper to complete, with two topics to choose from: the unjust tragedy of Executive Order 9066 or the gluttonous comedy of the Twenty-First Amendment. Being a righteous (but not yet terminally gonzo) adolescent, I chose the former, and have regretted it ever since. But now—now I can come clean.
