Chapter 1: Tuna Newton, Press Secretary to President Bahama Odrama

She was a tuna sandwich some days, other days a fig Newton. Her name, Tuna Newton, made her job as press secretary to the President somewhat awkward. No matter. The Press Corps loved her, as did MSNBC’s Chris Mathews and CBS’s Katie Couric. Fox News, however, considered her a joke—a cross between Charlie Sheen and Muammar Gaddafi. True, Tuna Newton was neither a troubled TV personality, nor an ousted Mideast ruler; she was, as we have said, a sandwich when she wasn’t a cookie.

Some background. Born on the East Coast, Tuna grew up on the West Coast, in Redondo Beach, California, to be precise. She had worshipped her late mother, never met her biological father and cared little for her two stepfathers. Her two younger sisters were happily married, which she suffered with relative grace. Tuna was divorced.

She did not date and was not gay. Tuna was heterosexual to a fault. Had Tuna been gay, it would have given her something other than a black President to fight for, namely same-sex marriage.

No, Tuna had to be satisfied with her heterosexual bent, unrewarding as it was of late.

I’m letting my mind wander again, darn it.

She had a press briefing in an hour, and here she was musing away when monumental events were exploding domestically and around the world. Well, not everything in the news on that March day in 2011 was monumental. Tuna wondered if any of the press corps would ask about the President’s response to the Charlie Sheen debacle. Celebrity nonsense could take precedence over Iraq, Afghanistan and gas prices, especially if she neglected to think of a smart answer beforehand.

When it came to Sheen, the truth would not do. Tuna had overheard the President’s off-hand remark about the "Two and a Half Men" star in the privacy of his morning briefing. “What an imbecile,” Odrama had said, waving the subject away with a swipe of his hand.

Disparaging remarks like “imbecile” had been declared verboten ever since 2009, when President Odrama had announced that the Massachusetts police had “acted stupidly” in arresting a prominent black Harvard professor after a confrontation at the man’s home. The now infamous comment had resulted in the “Beer Summit” between the professor, the arresting officer and the President and Vice President in the Rose Garden.

After that embarrassing episode, not even someone like Gaddafi could be called “stupid” or “an imbecile." Gaddafi could only be called “not good for Libya.” “Not good for Libya” was the kind of Presidentspeak Tuna was not yet accustomed to—careful phrasing the press often called her on. Not today, however. She would declare Sheen not worth President Odrama’s attention, not when upheavals in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia had exploded almost overnight.