By Mabel Doge Luhan
TIMES ARE TOUGH in the CNMI, and everyone is looking for a way to make a buck! It’s been decades since I’ve had any inquiries thrown my way on Seeking Arrangement, even when I advertised a Christmas all-night, all-holes special! But I have a great NEW idea on how any one of us can earn an HONEST PROFIT!
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Go around uneducated, unsophisticated folks in the poorer parts of China or Korea, and tell them you’re building a gazillion-dollar mega-resort in Saipan. Take their money. Tell them it’s a hot investment. Promise you’ll make them rich.
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Dig up some land in Saipan. Scatter around some construction equipment. Say that you “unexpectedly” can’t finish the project because of federal regulations that have been public information since 2009. Wink wink.
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Next, wait until the local government is desperate. Get them to “partner” with you and approach a hotel brand, asking to hire them to manage the hotel once it’s completed. The good news here is that you can make it sound as if the hotel brand is hiring you to build a hotel, while in reality, you’re promising to hire them to run a hotel! You can use the last of your money to make some kind of good-faith payment to the hotel brand. Because remember: you are the customer, and you are promising to pay them big money to manage this hotel. Of course they’ll show up to a signing ceremony and whatever else, if you’re promising to pay them. It’s not like they’re handing over any money to you!
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Go back to those unsophisticated folks, especially in China, where real estate (where people hold all their wealth) is collapsing, jobs are hard to come by, and financial insecurity is at all time highs — and ask them for more money, and show them photos of you shaking hands with a “government official” and with a white person from a big American hotel company! These people will think you are a real bigshot and they’ll give you the last of their money.
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Make sure your public events are covered only by the Saipan local press. They will never ask any difficult questions. They won’t even ask basic things such as how much money you have, where the money is coming from, whether there’s a construction bond, and whether the hotel brand has invested anything into the project besides posing for a photo. Those Saipan “newspapers” will work as your unpaid PR agencies, not as the guardians of the public interest. They will even run interference for you against potential critics, telling critics that it wasn’t your fault you couldn’t finish the hotel last time. If needed, buy the “reporter” lunch at Shirley’s, for no more than $12.95. That $12.95 should ensure you glowingly positive coverage — at least within the “reporter’s” limited English abilities — for several years.
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Once in a while, make up some excuses and repeat.
Of course, this plan is PURELY IMAGINARY, and has NEVER BEEN TESTED IN REAL LIFE. But it sounds as if it could work, doesn’t it?
You can get the Saipan “press” to publish anything you want. They never ask any questions. After all, do you remember when a teenager who doesn’t even live in the CNMI was able to con a Saipan “reporter” into printing not one, not two, not three, but four entirely fictitious “news” stories in the Marianas Variety? The Variety never even ran a correction or an apology, because why should they? Nobody calls them out. It’s a facts-free free-for-all! You can claim anything you want, and they’ll print it.
You and your hunting, fishing, and homoerotic Harleying buddies can even rob the public purse for eight years, and those “reporters” will be totally complicit. They won’t raise a peep. That would be a great way to make money, wouldn’t it? Unless maybe it’s been done already.
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Mabel Doge Luhan is a rootless cosmopolitan and a woman of loose morals. She resides in Kagman V, where she pursues her passions of crocheting, beatboxing, and falconry.
