[HaBi 1]    The Dumbest Rip-Off

The Dumbest Rip-Off By RUSSELL BAKER Dear Abbie (Hoffman, that is): In reading your latest work, "Steal This Book," I had just gotten to the directions for cheating the telephone company when, following your command, somebody stole the book. I didn't finish the telephone section and-careless me!-didn't even think to make notes. I do not even remember what size washers you recommended for dropping into pay telephone coin slots to simulate the real thing. What troubles me is something more fundamental. I wonder if you have really thought out the implications of the grand philosophical idea of destroying the telephone company, which underlies your discussion of techniques. I suggest to you that it is simply not sound, that destroying the telephone company would, in fact, be a severe blow to every member of the counter-culture. In the first place, you must have noticed, if you have been in England, France, Italy or Bulgaria, that it is extremely frustrating trying to get along in a country with no telephone system. The English will put up with that, the French and Italians will put up with it, and the Bulgarians will have to put up with it, but you know as well as I do, Abbie, that an American, particularly if he is in the counterculture, needs a telephone the way a monkey needs a banana. To the American counter-culturist, a telephone in the hand is as much a part of his uniform as denim, dried lentils and a coiffure from Michelangelo's Moses. If we destroy the telephone company, who will be the first people to picket the Pentagon to demand a new telephone company? The members of the counter-culture; provided, of course, they can learn to communicate with each other without wires. A new telephone company will inevitably rise to take the place of the old evil telephone company. There is no reason whatever to assume that the new telepbone company will be like the old evil telephone company. There is every reason, on the contrary, to believe that it will profit from its predecessor's fatal errors and do things differently. For example: Remember last summer when members of the counter-culture were telephoning each other across the continent and charging the calls to Paul Newman's credit-card number? Somebody - was it you, Abbie? - had said that Paul Newman was so angry with the telephone company that he had invited everybody in America to telephone across the continent, using his credit-card number, so that when he received the bill he could show his Irritation with the telephone company by refusing to pay it. Well. counter-culturist galore phoned long distance, and the telephone company did not become angry. Not at all. It quietly traced each call back to the telephone of origin, often rousing some parent from his parental stupor. "Those long-distance calls made from your telephone, apparently by your child," said the patient mechanical voices. "represent fraudulent use of a credit-card number belonging to the University of Illinois and not, as the gullible believed, to Paul Newman." "Fraudulent-?" The crime is punishable by Imprisonment of up to five years and-" Well, where breathes there a parent so vile that he would send his heir to Leavenworth rather than pay a piffling $300 to the telephone company? The present telephone company is like that. It does not come knocking at the door with a truncheon and arrest warrant to haul away members of the counter-culture. It knows that money is most easily collected from people who are soft between the ears. "Whether your child serves five years in Leavenworth is entirely up to you, as a parent. Your telephone company, sir, does not make threats." The next telephone company is not likely to he so indulgent if it has seen the present one collapse because its bill collection policy was too softhearted. The new telephone company will almost surely put members of the counter-culture on trial in Chicago for fraud, possibly before Judge Julius Hoffman. Can you really believe that the new telephone company would continue the present one's practice of saying "Sure" when somebody dials the operator in Boston and says, "I want to make $800 worth of long-distance calls to the West Coast and have it all charged to daddy's telephone in West Orange, N. Y."? My bet, Abbie, is that they're going to say, "After seeing how the old telephone company went broke because of a bunch of cheating kids, we make it a policy to call daddy first and ask if your calls are okay with him." Is that the kind of telephone company that counter-culture really wants? A telephone company that brings daddy into the system before the calls are made, instead of presenting him with an $800 fait accompli thirty days later? The present telephone company is the best of all possible telephone companies for the counter-culture. Destroying it would play right into the hands of Mom and Dad. Think about it next time before you reach for one of those washers.

[HaBi 1]    The Dumbest Rip-Off