About This Book
The Swishbucklers, three gay men in flashy costumes, interrupt a preacher’s street corner harangue that homophobia is godly with a counter-message that “God is not a bigot nor does he embrace themâ€. This is taped and featured on many news broadcasts that night. State Representative Rupert Bumbass publicly denounces the Bucklers for interrupting the preacher but finds little public support for his position since by then the preacher’s message of hate is widely known. Meeting in the security of the Undertable Corporation’s Fangtooth Building, Bumbass and wealthy would-be Conservative leaders Farley Schnarkle, and Demi Weiner agree that the Bucklers must be dealt with and soon since they are getting favorable notice. The Bucklers are alerted by the costumer to a P.R. dirty trick when Schnarkle buys three custom made costumes similar to their own and subsequently sends three men to a public event pretending to be the Bucklers but delivering a nasty message. When the real trio show up, the fakes and the scheme are exposed. To double the money in the Movement coffers (without it being their own money) the bigot trio decide to hire men to steal their group’s half million dollars in insured gold coins in a fully staged robbery in view of security cameras as it is being transferred between banks and then collect the insurance (even though they will not have actually lost the gold). Framing the Bucklers as the thieves will make it extra useful and satisfying. The Bucklers support a voter registration drive by appearing in public service ads. The others hate that “those people†are being praised and that people they can’t control are being registered to vote, so they apply pressure in various places trying to keep the ads off the air. That attempt becomes a news story itself, making the voter registration drive more successful and leaving them vehemently denying any attempt to pressure anyone about anything. When the Bucklers, with the help of various anonymous “assistersâ€, embarrass the bigot trio by crashing their national teleconference of like-minded types the Conservative trio become obsessed with identifying and destroying the “fancy pants†guys. That ultimately leads to having a truck the Bucklers might be hiding in rolled over a cliff. Like so many things that trio do though, that doesn’t have the intended result but creates major problems with their Undertable allies, further infuriating them. The Bucklers get word of the gold theft plan via a waiter whom the plotters routinely ignore although he is in full sight where they meet. Bucklers’ supporters quietly install hidden TV cameras where the robbery will happen to document the activity. The planned robbery action begins â€" but is quickly aborted when a 911 call brings the cops on the run. The armored truck guards are startled by the confusion but no more than that. The gold is removed from the bank as scheduled. Once the gold leaves the first bank the plotters must find an excuse to bring it back there so it can be successfully stolen in a second robbery. The second robbery happens and seems successful. It is promptly reported to the police and the news media. The next morning in a live TV broadcast the Bucklers show everyone hidden camera views of what happened and who all were involved, naming names. To avoid many legal problems, the Undertable Corporation lawyer argues that it was all a mistake, that their own employees stole their own gold to test the security measures so it was not a crime. Trying to end all the news attention quickly, they announce that the company wasn’t harmed and they don’t want anything returned since nothing was actually taken from them. That isn’t accurate but the company and the trio of would-be leaders can’t back out after all their lies. The value of the gold that the Swishbucklers didn’t-steal ends up being donated to a local school program that gets kids of all backgrounds working together on academic and community projects.
