(SCENE:  at a chi-chi coffee shop in South Minneapolis.  Mitch BERG’s eyes go a little wide with sticker shock before he orders a light roast with room for cream and Splenda)

(As BERG turns to leave, he notices a table with three diners – Carpal POX, Garth MULLER and Viktor VON SCHLIEFFENBERG-MOLTKE.  He tries to slip out the door, but MULLER notices him).

MULLER:   Mitch!  Come over here! 

BERG:  OK.  (He puts his coffee on the table and sits).

(more…)

(SCENE:  at the offices of “Minnesotans United for All Social Progressive Causes”, a modest little 501c4 non-proft in the Griggs Building in Saint Paul, located on a hallway close by “Take Action Minnesota”, “ProtectMN” and a who’s who of other Minnesota social activism non-profits supported by liberals with deep pockets.   Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK and Avery LIBRELLE are sitting at Ikea desks across the aisle from each other.  BIRKENSTOCK looks depressed).

LIBRELLE:  What’s the matter, Moonbeam?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Oh, the usual.  Just worried about job security.

LIBRELLE:  Why?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Well, work in the non-profit field depends on having another cause that progressives with deep pockets are willing to pour big money into.

LIBRELLE:  Right.

BIRKENSTOCK:  And in a matter of two years, we not only stopped the Marriage Amendment, but passed Gay Marriage.

LIBRELLE:  Yay!

BIRKENSTOCK:  Right, yay.  But that’s a cause that should have taken years.  Like abortion – that’s been a steady gig for progressive activists for a couple of generations now.

LIBRELLE:  True.

BIRKENSTOCK:  But with the issue now a non-issue, that’s that many fewer jobs for people like us.

LIBRELLE:  Well, you could always sign on with Heather, down the hall at “ProtectMN”.  Lotsa money going into that group soon.

BIRKENSTOCK:  I thought about that.  But I’d have to deal with all those gun people.

LIBRELLE:  Oh, yeah.  I hear you.  They never just shut up and realize that they’re wrong.

BIRKENSTOCK:  Well, there’s that.  But it also depends on Heather not screwing the whole thing up.

(Both look at each other and break into laughter)

LIBRELLE:  OK, point taken.

BIRKENSTOCK:  It’s just that gay marriage was a major income generator for people like us.  I’m just afraid that some of us – maybe me, maybe some other Macalester poli-sci grad with no marketable job skills – might have to go out on…on…

LIBRELLE:  Say it…

BIRKENSTOCK:  …on…

LIBRELLE:  You’re among friends.

BIRKENSTOCK: The private sector.  (Chokes back a sob)

LIBRELLE: Hug it out.

(The two trade hug. BIRKENSTOCK sobs softly)

(Door opens and Gretel STROMBERG, Executive Director of MUFASPC, walks into the room carrying a thick file of paper).

STROMBERG:  Hey, everyone.

BIRKENSTOCK:  (un-hugging, sniffling a little)  Hi, Gretel

LIBRELLE:   Hi

STROMBERG:   Why the long face?

BIRKENSTOCK:   It’s the way I was born…   (Resumes sobbing)

LIBRELLE:  I think it’s a figure of speech, Moonbeam.  (To STROMBERG) We were just talking about how there might be fewer jobs in advocacy now that gay marriage is a done deal.

STROMBERG:  What? Oh, you two sillies.  Not a chance.

BIRKENSTOCK:  (stops sobbing) Huh?

LIBRELLE:  What’s up?

STROMBERG:   Oh, have no fear.  We have a new cause.

BIRKENSTOCK:  (Looks at papers).  Wow.

LIBRELLE:  See?

STROMBERG:  It’s all about love. We don’t discriminate against love.

BIRKENSTOCK and LIBRELLE: We don’t discriminate against love.

(And SCENE)

(SCENE:  Mitch BERG walks into a coffee shop in Linden Hills, a tony neighborhood in South Minneapolis.  He orders a large light roast when, from out of frame to the left, a finger taps him on the shoulder.  BERG turns around to see Avery LIBRELLE standing behind him).

LIBRELLE:  Hey, Merg!  You know how you are always saying you want a dialog, an informed debate, with people across the aisle?

BERG:  Er, sure – I was kinda on my way to work, but…

LIBRELLE:  There you go with that “Work” thing, again.  You’re not even employed by a non-profit!  Anyway – I brought a friend.  It’s time for dialog and debate!

BERG:  Well..OK, but I don’t have much time…

LIBRELLE:  You can always make time for debate.  Come on!

(LIBRELLE leads BERG through the small crowd of thick-rimmed-glasses-clad hipsters, all of them so focused on their mobile devices they’ve adopted a “Walking-Dead”-style shamble, and to a table in the back corner where Edwin DUCHEY, a forty-something fellow with thick-rimmed glasses and a mobile device, sits.   BERG and LIBRELLE take seats, forming a triangle of people separated as widely as geometrically possible around the circular table). 

LIBRELLE:  Mitch, this is Ed DuChey, proprietor of the blog Minnesota Liberal Alliance Dot Blogspot Dot Com. 

BERG:  A pleasure.  (DUCHEY glares)

LIBRELLE:  Mitch is my…neighbor, and he writes Shot in the Dark.

DUCHEY:  (in a nasal, adenoidal voice) Shit in the Park!  (Snorts, sips his latte.   LIBRELLE giggles as BERG rolls his eyes)

LIBRELLE:  Anyway, Mitch says he’s always open for dialog and debate with the “other side”. 

BERG:  Yeah, I guess I do. 

DUCHEY:  I called your blog “Shit in the Park!”  (Giggles to self as BERG stares, jaw barely under controlled tension and with an air of ill-concealed pity)

LIBRELLE:  So let’s talk about the state of the Republican Party.

BERG:  The Tea Party was a much-needed populist expression of the party’s real conservative roots.  The Tea Party class of 2010 was actually the one bright spot for the GOP in the Minnesota legislature this past two years. 

DUCHEY:  You’re stupid. 

BERG:  Huh.  Care to elaborate?

DUCHEY:  You’re really stupid.  The Teabaggers were full of hate and racism and they were stupider than you.

LIBRELLE:  Interesting.  OK.  How about the shutdown.

BERG:  My jury’s still out.

DUCHEY:  Your jury is stupid and so are you.

BERG:  Huh.  (Looks around the room, as hipsters stagger, focused on their mobile devices, toward counter)

LIBRELLE:  Good point, Ed.  OK.  How about the Affordable Care Act?

BERG:  Jeez, read the headlines.  It’s jacking up practically everyone’s rates and deductibles, the people who claim they’re saving money – the ones that aren’t busted lying in the first place – never acknowledge that there’s a huge taxpayer subsidy involved, and the people who are getting through on the exchanges are the ones with the massive pre-existing conditions, while healthy people are staying away in droves, meaning the system is going to be paying out huge and taking in nothing, which completely breaks down the idea of a “risk pool”. 

DUCHEY:  You’re…wait, I got a text message.  (DUCHEY laboriously types a long text message into his iPhone – and gets a reply, giggles, and replies to it, before returning to the conversation) You’re a stupid teabagging wingnut. 

LIBRELLE:  You’re right, Mitch.  Dialog and debate is fun!  (Looks at BERG)

(BERG has, however, left the table and the building).

(Horde of thick-rimmed-glasses-clad hipsters shamble forward in line, hissing and hacking and making prehensile noises).

(And SCENE).

(SCENE:  Mitch BERG climbs out of his car and fishes a big gym bag full of firearms and ammo out of the back seat.  He walks toward the front door of the firing range – and notices Avery LIBRELLE, walking, alone, with a picket sign.  The sign says “A Millian Americans Are Picketting This Gun Rang”.  BERG hides his face, and tries to time his approach while LIBRELLE is walking the other way – but a piece of shiny tinfoil attracts LIBRELLE’s attention back toward BERG).

LIBRELLE:  Hey, Merg!

BERG:  Oh…uh, hi, Avery. What’s new?

LIBRELLE:  I think MoveOn.Org has the right idea!  It’s time to start arresting teabaggers for sedition!

BERG:  Sedition?

LIBRELLE: Speaking out against the government!

BERG: I know what sedition is. That’s not what the House Republicans or Cruz or Paul did. 

LIBRELLE: The “Affordable Care Act” is the law!  And the law is the manifestation of government!   And if you oppose The Law, you oppose Government, meaning you oppose the will of The People!

BERG:  Well, no.  The GOP majority in the House carried out the House’s Constitutional duty to take care of the nation’s purse-strings – a job for which the voters of this country gave them the majority at the polls in 2010 and 2012. 

LIBRELLE:  Yeah, but the people also elected President Obama twice. He is the government, and his laws are the laws of the land, the revealed word of the people!

BERG:  The President is not “the government”.  The government is the executive branch – the President and his staff and the rest of the bureaucracy – the Legislative branch, and the judicial branch, and – don’t forget this – all of the checks and balances in between all of them. 

LIBRELLE: Well, the “Affordable Care Act” is now the law.

BERG:  So?  The First Amendment says we have the right to free speech, to assemble, and to petition to seek redress of grievances.  Which is, in every particular, what the Tea Party is and always has been. 

LIBRELLE:  What are you, a constitutional scholar?  I’m pretty sure those are all collective rights, just like the Second Amendment. 

BERG:  What now?

LIBRELLE:  Anyway – Obamacare is the law, which means it’s the will of the people, and the government IS the people, so fighting the law is fighting the people.  “Sedition” is probably the nicest word for it.

BERG:  Again – what now?

LIBRELLE:  I’d call it “Treason”.

BERG:  “Treason?”  Actively betraying your country to an enemy in wartime?

LIBRELLE:  Yep.  This country’s been at war against poverty since the sixties.  Obamacare fights poverty.  Undercutting the people in the War on Poverty IS betraying your country in wartime.  That’s the very definition of treason!  We should sic the military on all of you!

BERG:  Huh.  The military.   (Takes stick of gum from pocket, unwraps it, pops gum in mouth).

LIBRELLE:  Tanks.  Choppers.  Whatever it takes. 

BERG:  To preserve democracy.

LIBRELLE:   Yep. 

BERG:  Huh. 

(BERG drops shiny tinfoil wrapper onto the ground.  LIBRELLE chases it, allowing BERG to make his escape).

(And SCENE).

(SCENE:  In the rotunda of the New Jersey state capitol in Trenton, at the swearing-in ceremony for Corey BOOKER, new junior Senator from Exit 18 on the Garden State Parkway.  BOOKER is being sworn in by Governor Chris CHRISTIE, in a ceremony attended by a clot of various Jersey dignitaries).

(Fade in on CHRISTIE administering the last part of the oath of office)

BOOKER:  “…to the best of my ability, so help me Sinatra”. 

(Round of applause as BOOKER waves to the audience and CHRISTIE steps back to the dignitary seating.  BOOKER steps to the mike).

BOOKER:  Thank you.  Thank you.  (Applause dies down).  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.

(Audience trades glances as hall falls silent).

BOOKER:  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thanks.  Thanks.

(Audience stirs)

BOOKER:  Thanks.  First, I want to thank Governor Christie for giving me the most eloquent introduction since the one I gave at the funeral of my old friend, T-Bone the Crack Dealer.  He became a close confidante after trying to kill me with a chain saw after he accused me of cheating at cards in a pick-up 3-card monte game at a casino at Atlantic City in between rounds of my World Series of Poker championship, where I was partying with Kim Kardashian and her father Robert, talking about the time I held a dying Nicole Simpson in my arms after she was shot by Biggie Smalls.    T-Bone told me “You are without a doubt the most competent, sensitive, and yet totally boss brother in history”,  just before I hit my four million dollar jackpot.   And then hit it with…Amy Adams.  Yeah, that’s the ticket. 

Not since I was governor of Philadelphia have I felt such a sense of profound calling…

CHRISTIE:  (Sotto voce) Er, Senator?  You were mayor.  Of Newark.

BOOKER:  Er…really?  Newark?

CHRISTIE:  Yes. 

BOOKER:  Are you sure?

CHRISTIE:  Yep. 

BOOKER:  I need a second opinion. Mr. Springsteen?

SPRINGSTEEN: Yep.  Newark.

BOOKER:  You wrote “Rosalita” about me, didn’t you?

SPRINGSTEEN:  (stares blankly, mouth moving, but no sound coming out)

BOOKER:  And about that city with the giant Exxon sign?

SPRINGSTEEN:  Er – that was “Jungleland”

BOOKER:  You wrote “Jungleland” about me?  And T-Bone?

CHRISTIE (Sotto Voce to an aide) Maybe Booker was “Eddie” in “Meeting Across the River”

BOOKER:  Anyway – not since I was archduke of Manhattan have I…

CHRISTIE (exasperated): Mayor of Newark!

BOOKER (impatient):  Are you sure?  Newark?  Really?

CHRISTIE:  Really!

BOOKER:  What state is that in?

(And SCENE)

(SCENE:  MITCH Berg is leaving the gym.  He runs into Avery LIBRELLE, who is walking into a group Twerking class. MITCH tries to duck behind a shoulder press machine, but LIBRELLE sees him).

LIBRELLE:  ZOMG!   Tom Emmer did an ad for a remodeling company!

MITCH:  Right.  And his manager says it’s a mistake – a testimonial that was never intended for broadcast, that got broadcast!  And if you’ve seen the production value, it sure seems plausible…

LIBRELLE:  It ain’t the crime!  It’s the coverup!

MITCH:   What coverup?

LIBRELLE:  They had to wait for Aaron Rupar at the City Pages to cover it before they’d comment!

MITCH:  Aaron Rupar?

LIBRELLE:   Yes.

MITCH:  Aaron RUPAR?

LIBRELLE:  Yes…well…

MITCH:  Spill it.

LIBRELLE:  OK.  He’s just repeating what Sally Jo Sorenson writes.

MITCH:  And?

LIBRELLE:  Like usual.

MITCH:  We’ve talked about this before.

LIBRELLE:  I know.  Anyway – This probably violates campaign finance laws!

MITCH:   Says who?

LIBRELLE:   Sally Jo Sorenson.

MITCH:   Huh.  Well, on the one hand, pretty much everything you do, and everything you don’t do, violates one campaign finance law or another.  Campaign finance laws are mainly designed to protect incumbents.  They make campaigning a niggling, nonsensical regulatory maze, full of arbitrary restrictions on free speech.

LIBRELLE:  But it keeps money out of politics!

MITCH:  No, it doesn’t!

LIBRELLE:   Yes it does!

MITCH:  How?

LIBRELLE:  It’s the law!

MITCH:  Right.  So the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, which alone outspent the GOP candidate in 2010, doesn’t spend money?

LIBRELLE:  That’s different.  Unions are The People.

MITCH:  Oh, for the love of…

LIBRELLE:  The laws keep big money from influencing campaigns.

MITCH:  Clearly they work wonders.

LIBRELLE:  Of course!

MITCH:  So here’s a question:  who’s paying Sally…

LIBRELLE:  …whoah, look at the time.  Gotta get to class! (LIBRELLE dashes into room).

(And SCENE)

(SCENE:  A darkened alley in Newark, New Jersey, on a dark, drizzly April evening.  A broken down school bus full of inner city middle-schoolers returning from a trip to the ballet in New York sits by the side of a dismal road, steam rising from its up-tilted hood, in front of a deserted chemical plant.  The driver, a cute, plucky Puerto Rican single mother of three named Maria LOPEZ, looks under the hood along with passerby Tobias “Wang Dang Doodle” JACKSON, a grizzled 60-something black man in a porkpie hat and a worn black suit.  Mitch BERG pulls up, driving a rented Ford Focus, and climbs out to try to render assistance, carrying a cell phone and a nearly empty bottle of lemon-lime Powerade).

BERG:  Can I help?  Has anyone called a tow or anything yet?

LOPEZ:  I called the police, the district and a wrecker, but there won’t be any help coming for at least an hour.

JACKSON:  Those infernal garages aren’t what they used to be. 

BERG:  OK.  Well, maybe we can figure out what’s wrong here…

(A black BMW sedan pulls up beside the bus.  Out pops a dapper African-American man, who walks briskly to the bus).

MAN:  Hi.  I’m Corey Booker, and I’m the mayor of Newark. 

LOPEZ:  Hello, Mister Mayor!

BOOKER:  Hi.  We don’t have much time.  The CIA just called me.  A band of Serbian narcotraficantes are apparently en route from the docks in Elizabeth to pick up several drums of methamphetamine stored in that disused chemical factory, and they’re not above killing everyone that gets in their way.

BERG:  Isn’t this a job for the police?

BOOKER:  They’re all busy.  It’s up to us. 

BERG:  I hate it when that happens.

JACKSON:  Newark police are, let us say, sub-optimal. 

BOOKER:  Be that as it may, we’re going to have to get these children out of the way before the Serbian narcotraficantes get here and kill everyone in their path.  You, maam, and you, sir (points to LOPEZ and JACKSON), start walking those kids to safety in that community center on the other side of that culvert.  You, sir (points to BERG) and I need to divert them to provide cover. 

BERG:  Er…OK. 

(LOPEZ and JACKSON start to herd the kids out of the bus and into the ditch).

LOPEZ:  Hurry, kids!

JACKSON: Remember, gentlemen – fire and movement!

(In the distance, a pair of panel vans stop and disgorge 20 Serbian narcotraficantes,all carrying AK47 assault rifles.  They form a skirmish line and start charging toward the bus.  Scattered shots ring out as the line moves forward.  LOPEZ and JACKSON start the children running in single file down the ditch by the side of the road as a few sparks fly from the bus’ chassis).

BOOKER:  You flank them to the right.  I’ll draw their fire. 

BERG:  Flank them with what?  Your state’s idiotic gun laws bar me from bringing my legal handgun, much less something I can use against…

BOOKER:  GO!

(BOOKER springs to the left, waving his arms wildly.  BERG, nonplussed, crawls to the right and crosses the road.  The Serbian narcotraficantes fire picks up and their charge gathers speed, as they yell “get the meth!  get the meth!” in Serbian)

(BOOKER dodges incoming bullets in a complex, acrobatic display that makes The Matrix look like that old SNL “Bears Fans” sketch.  An RPG fires, the rocket tracing an angry red slash across the field.  BOOKER catches the rocket by the tail and throws it back at the Serbian narcotraficantes; it explodes, sending several Serbs diving for cover as others blaze away at the Mayor).

(Berg, in the meantime, as closed the gap with the Serbs, who are focused on blazing away at Mayor BOOKER.  Having no weapon, he looks around, and sees a puddle of New Jersey rainwater.  He ducks down and starts filling the Powerade bottle).

(Two more RPG rounds rocket toward the Mayor.  He catches them, cross-handed, just before they’d have impacted his chest, and in a grandiose double-pirouette, throws both rounds back at the Serbs.  One splashes into the mud at the feet of Branko SLRBÇ, the leader of the Serb narcotraficantes.

SLRBÇ (yelling in Serb with subtitles):  Is this even plausible?

(The round explodes, and SLRBÇ vanishes in a gout of gore and flame). 

(The second round slams into the grill of the first of the narcotraficantes’ vans, exploding it in a gout of flame.  The rest of the Serbs go to ground, panicked and pinned down).

(BERG caps the bottle of New Jersey rainwater, and with a mighty heave, throws it at the second van, which explodes into brilliant blue and green flames).

(The surviving Serbs get up and run back up the road toward their rally point, a giant Exxon sign which, unfortunately for them, gives the local cops plenty of light by which to apprehend them).

BERG (soaking wet, walks back to Booker, who is somehow still dry):  Wow.  How did you do that?

BOOKER (As police cars pull up all around them)  It’s all in a days work for the Mayor of Newark. 

(BOOKER tips his hat and climbs into his car, and – notwithstanding that a dark cloudy night fell over two hours earlier – drives into the sunset as LOPEZ, soaking wet, walks back up the freeway.  She and BERG look at each other, drenched, before embracing in a passionate kiss as the camera pulls back to a wide shot of the full post-battle vista).

(And SCENE)

(SCENE: MITCH is driving down Thomas Avenue in Saint Paul, heading for the glamorous part of the street, when his phone rings.  He looks; the Caller ID on the screen says “Avery LIBRELLE”).

MITCH:  (Sotto voce) Criminy.  Not Avery again.

(MITCH picks up the phone):  Hello?

LIBRELLE: Mitch?  I need you to come down to the courthouse and bail me out of jail.

MITCH:   Jail? Huh?  What happened?

LIBRELLE:  Well, Mitch, I shot a gun.  At a person.

MITCH:  Huh?  You hate guns.  You are a gun-control activist.  You don’t even own a gun…

LIBRELLE:  I know.  It was one of yours.

MITCH:  Back up.  What?

LIBRELLE:  It was your gun.

MITCH:  (Visiblly confused, pulling his car over to the curb in front of the “Prada On Thomas” boutique)  OK, this is getting weird.  How did you get a gun from me?

LIBRELLE:  I was at your house.

MITCH:  WHAT?

LIBRELLE:  I needed some coconut oil, so I used that key that you used to leave hidden outside for your kids.

MITCH:  What the…that disappeared years ago.

LIBRELLE:  Yeah, but you weren’t using it.

MITCH:  Well, not right at that moment, because I was at work.

LIBRELLE:  Well, it was for A Better Minnesota.  Anyway – we’re getting side-tracked here.   I was digging through your pantry when I saw a couple of people cutting through your neighbor’s yard.  I hate it when people do that, so I figured I’d send them a message.

MITCH:  (Pulled over to the side of the road)  You WHAT?

LIBRELLE:  I opened your gun safe and took out that little cowboy gun.  I figured I’d send a message.

MITCH:  Oh, for the love of…my .22 revolver?

LIBRELLE:  Whatever.  I figure that sending a message would punish them.  So I went out on your back stoop and yelled “NEVER WALK THROUGH PEOPLES’ YARDS AGAIN!”, and pointed the gun sort of at them, but not very close, and squeezed the trigger.

MITCH:  I…I…I can’t believe this…

LIBRELLE:   Either could I.  The “Kick”, I think you call it, almost broke my hand.

MITCH:  So to warn off someone walking through a back yard…

LIBRELLE:  Yep

MITCH:  …that was not mine…

LIBRELLE:  Yep.

MITCH:  …you broke into my house, took my gun, and shot at them?

LIBRELLE:  Yes.  But in my defense, it did look like an unbelievably small gun.

MITCH:  Criminy, Avery.  Lethal force is one of those things that you only use when the danger to you is immediate and and lethal.  And you never point a gun at someone or something you don’t intend to destroy. 

LIBRELLE:  But they crossed a red line!

MITCH:  What red line?

LIBRELLE:  The one I was thinking as I watched them cross into your neighbor’s property.

MITCH:  Using lethal force is something you can only do if your life is in immediate threat of death or great bodily harm!  Not to “send a message”.  And if the force you use is “unbelieveably small”, then – any County Attorney will tell you – the threat to you must not have been all that big in the first place.  There are other ways to deal with threats aren’t immediately lethal to you. 

LIBRELLE:   Bla bla bla.  Are you going to bail me out for A Better Minnesota or what?  Because we need to talk about the public health threat your guns pose to us neighbors.

(And SCENE)

(SCENE:  The cockpit of a US Navy F-18 Super Hornet strike fighter.  The plane, loaded with JDAM precision-guided bombs, flies through the clear desert skies as the camera closes in on the PILOT).

PILOT:  “Cobra Two Five, On Station”

CONTROLLER (flying in an AWACS plane over the eastern Mediterranean):  “Welcome to Syria, Cobra Two Five.  We’ve got an air support call from “ABU”.  Go ahead, Abu”

ABU: (mildly distorted, on the radio) “This is Abu Fuad Hadji Al-Ramshish.  We are trying to advance through Al-Khebab, and there is a group of government tanks blocking the way”.

PILOT:  “Copy, I’m five minutes out…hey, wait.  Abu Fuad Hadji Al-Ramshish?

ABU:  “That is correct”

PILOT:  “Didn’t a bunch of Marines call me in on an ground support strike against you near Fallujah back in 2005?  Weren’t you an Al Quaeda commander?”

ABU:  “Why yes!  I thought you sounded familiar, Cobra Two Five!  Call sign…er…Mobster?”

PILOT:  “Er, yes.  Wow.  So you’ve switched…”

ABU:  “Oh, merciful heavens, no.  Your bomb missed me, I left Iraq, I got promoted, did a tour in Afghanistan…”

PILOT:  “Hey, me too…”

ABU:  “…and now I’m here”.

PILOT:  “Well, I’ll be”.

ABU:  “Small world, isn’t it?”

PILOT:  “And now I’m flying air support for…uh…”

ABU:  “For me, an Al Quaeda operative.  That is correct.”

PILOT:  “Huh.  OK.  Well, Cobra Two Five, I’m at the IP”

CONTROLLER:  “Weapons Free, Cobra Five, clear to go hot”

ABU:  “Good shooting, Mobster.  And then die, American infidel pig dog”.

(SCENE:  A lecture room at an esteemed university.  As 30-odd students take their seats and set up their laptops, Professor Evelyn MUNCHENBERG-SCROGGINS welcomes an older man, Avram COHEYN – a frail 80-something man with thin white hair covered by a Yarmulke.  COHEYN sits on a chair next to the professor’s podium.

MUNCHENBERG-SCROGGINS:  Class?  (Din gradually subsides).  I’d like to welcome Mr. Avram Coheyn to the class.  He’s a native of Poznan – do I have that right? (COHEYN smiles and nods), and he’ll be talking with us about his experiences in the Holocaust.  I’d like  you to give him your undivided attention, and come up with some good questions for him at the end of his talk.  Mr. Coheyn? 

(Class applauds politely as COHEYN rises)

COHEYN (speaks with faint Polish-Yiddish accent):  Thank you, Professor Munchenberg-Scroggins.  And to all of you, also, my thanks.  I am Avram Coheyn.  In Sosnowiec, Poland I was born, in 1929.  And from 1941 through 1945, in a variety of concentration camps I was kept.  By the Nazis…

(Corey KRETINOWSKI, a 21-year-old political science major, leaps to his feet).

KRETINOWSKI:  Godwin’s Law!  

COHEYN: (Stops, puzzled).

KRETINOWSKI:  Godwin’s Law!  He mentioned Nazis!  (MUNCHENBERG-SCROGGINS shifts uncomfortably in her seat)

COHEYN:  Er – what is this “Godwin’s Law” of which you speak?  Of this I have not heard…

(Jane PLATT-WANCKER, a severe-looking 22 year old anthropology major, rises): “It’s a law on the internet or something.  When you mention the Nazis  you get banned”

(Ian BIMMLER, a 21 year old Victimology Studies major in a “Che” T-Shirt):  It’s the law that says when an argument goes along, there’s going to be someone who wrecks it with a Nazi reference”

KRETINOWSKI:  So, dude, your argument is shut down because you mentioned the Nazis.

COHEYN:  Er…what?

(Stacy KREEFELD, a 21 year old Womyn’s Studies major with a “Question Authority” button on her Mao cap):  I think it means that your argument is done.

KRETINOWSKI:  Whenever you mention Nazis, everyone gets to tune you out because mentioning Nazis means you don’t have an argument!

(A few students clap, while a few others look on, confused, and others stare blankly at their desktops)

(Bree EPSTEIN, a 20 year old Sociology major, speaks up):  Mr. Coheyn, I don’t mean to lecture, but perhaps you should try to tell your story without any references to Nazis.  It might make your argument better.

COHEYN:  An argument?  What is this, argument?  I’m telling my story!  When I was 13 year old, my family and I were rousted from our home in Poznan, and force-marched through the cold to the railyard, and packed onto trains by the Nazis…

(KRETINOWSKI, KREEFELD and BIMMLER simultaneously yell): Godwin’s Law!  Godwin’s Law!

COHEYN: What?

KREEFELD:  You keep mentioning Nazis!  Godwins Law says that means whatever you’re saying is invalid!

COHEYN:  What?  What is this madness?  Do you mean that saying the name of the…(catches himself)…National Socialist German Workers’ Party (a few students trade puzzled looks) means I get you crazy kids yelling “Godwin whatsis” at me?  This do I have right?

(A few students nod). 

COHEYN:  When I was 15, I escaped from a concentration camp.  A year in the woods I spent, fighting with the Partisans, fighting so that what we went through, my children and their children and my childrens children freynde would never forget – and now, to me you say I can’t say “Nazi”…

(Several students): “Godwin’s Law!”  (A few titters of juvenile mirth follow)

COHEYN: …without your verkachte yapping?  Distinguished professor Munchenberg-Scroggins, for this you have to say what?

MUNCHENBERG-SCROGGINS (Looks up from iPhone):  I can see both sides, here. 

BIMMLER (Shouts):  This is what democracy looks like!

(A few students clap and cheer). 

COHEYN:  What?  Millions died, my family along with – and because of some stupid internet rule, their names I can not mention? 

(Students fidget, looking amongst themselves)

COHEYN:  Because from what happened there are probably some things we can learn!  That there are things we, today, can learn about that ordeal, do you not see?  Huh?

(More fidgeting)

COHEYN:  With this I am finished! 

(COHEYN stomps from the room, as the shadows and sun form, completely at random, a series of shapes on the window that read “While invoking Nazis can be lazy rhetoric, lazy invocations of “Godwin’s Law” are, if anything, a bigger hurdle to effective communication, in that they give the invoker an unearned sense of intellectual accomplishment” before disappearing. )

(And SCENE)

SCENE: MITCH runs into Avery LIBRELLE at a bar. It is August 1, 2018. LIBRELLE is slumped, clearly intoxicated, nursing an Appletini.  Four empty Appletini glasses are arrayed on the table. 

MITCH: Wow, Avery. Kinda tying one on, are we?

LIBRELLE: (Mumbles)

MITCH: What’s the matter?

LIBRELLE: Ummmm…I don’t even know. Feeling…disillusioned?

MITCH: (Orders a Smythwicks) Why?

LIBRELLE: Remember all those gay couples who got married five years ago today?

MITCH: The ones that got all the non-stop media coverage? Hard to forget.

LIBRELLE: Well, the statistics show they have…(chokes back a sob)

MITCH: They have what?

LIBRELLE: The…same divorce rate as breeders!

MITCH: Right.

LIBRELLE: And some turned out to be awful spouses! Just like…

MITCH: Go ahead, say it.

LIBRELLE: Just like breeders!

MITCH: I know.  On Cops the other night they showed an episode where the cops intervened in a gay domestic at a trailer park in Mobile Alabama.  As they dragged a woman wearing sweats off to the car, another woman can out of the house yelling “I love you, Ashley!  I’ll be down to bail you out…”, just like…(Notices LIBRELLE is sobbing quietly) – Hey, buck up little camper. Didn’t you all figure gay people were pretty much just like people? 

LIBRELLE: (Angry) NO! They were supposed to show breeders what real love was!  Because they were marrying for love! 

MITCH: Yeah, but wasn’t that an absurd expectation…

LIBRELLE: How could something that so pissed off wingnuts and the Catholic Church be so…

MITCH: Ordinary?

LIBRELLE:  Yes!  (Head starts to wobble a bit)

MITCH:  So you were actually under the impression that gays were better, more virtuous people because the state hadn’t conferred the right to marry on them? 

LIBRELLE:  Right.  Oppression equals nobility!  Everyone knows that!

MITCH:  Unless they’re gun owners in Chicago, conservatives on campus, or vendors of faith who are dragged into court by gay couples for whose weddings they conscientiously object to providing services?

LIBRELLE:  (before even a beat has passed) Right.

MITCH:  Look, Avery – marriage is a very difficult thing.  It’s about completely wrapping your life around and about another person, and usually eventually a bunch of little people, and figuring out how to focus your life on someone else, ideally without completely losing yourself, although that’s way down the list of priorities.  It’s about realizing you’re not the most important thing in the world anymore.  I’m no expert – and I’ve got the court paperwork to prove it – but whether you’re gay or straight, it’s not just about having a fabulous ceremony and a cool honeymoon, and least of all about making a political and social statement to other people.  In fact, getting married to show someone else, whether it’s your parents or your ex or the rest of society or even yourself, may be the worst of the “bad reasons” that people get married for…

(MITCH notices LIBRELLE has passed out.  He puts a $20 on the table, motions to the bartender, and walks away).

(And SCENE)

WOMAN:  You’re “mansplaining”. 

GUY: Huh?

WOMAN: “Mansplaining”.  When a guys gives a condescending and inaccurate explanation that the assumption that I’m entirely ignorant on the subject matter or topic.

GUY:  You are utterly ignorant of the subject matter and topic.  Our discussion has shown you haven’t the foggiest clue about the subject.  90 degrees removed from literacy.

WOMAN: You’re doing it again.  You’re mansplaining.

GUY: You’re being a whineanist.  You need to unisexshushupandlearnsomething.

(And SCENE)

SCENE:  MITCH is sitting on the light rail, heading from the Mall of American downtown to a Twins game. 

At Bloomington Station stop, Avery LIBRELLE, Cat SCAT and Gutterball GARY get on the train.  MITCH turns toward the window and dons sunglasses, but LIBRELLE notices him.  The three amble to him, stumbling awkwardly as the train starts moving, and sit surrounding him even though the car is otherwise empty. 

LIBRELLE:  Hey, Mitch.  You racists won.  Hope you’re proud of yourself. 

MITCH:  Um…if I ask “what are you talking about?”, would that imply I actually want to know?  Because I’m not sure…

SCAT:  George Zimmerman was acquitted.  It proves the system is racist. 

MITCH:  Um…huh?

LIBRELLE:  The case was entirely about race!

GARY:  Yeah!  Yeah!  All about race!

MITCH:  Neither the prosecutors nor the defense ever mentioned race during the case. 

SCAT:  Well, the 911 call proved that Zimmerman attacked in a racist fury. 

GARY:  Yeah!  Yeah!  Fury!

MITCH:  Listen to the audio yourself.  He sounded disgusted, depressed and dejected.  All of the pique came from the prosecution and media’s slanted reading of the transcript. 

LIBRELLE:  Zimmerman called Martin a “f****ng coon”

GARY: Yeah!  Yeah!  Rage!  Ragey wingnut!

MITCH:   No, he said it was “f****ng cold”. 

GARY:  Yeah, “right”. 

SCAT:  Zimmerman contradicted his own story. 

GARY:  Yeah!  Yeah!  Counterdicted! 

MITCH: Not according to the Sanford police chief, who said his story held up entirely through multiple rounds of questioning. 

LIBRELLE:  Yeah, well, he was a wannabe cop who disobeyed a police order not to follow Martin. 

GARY: Hah!  Yeah!  Police order, stupid Right-wing nut job!

MITCH:  There was no police order.  A dispatcher is not a cop, and can’t give orders. 
When Zimmerman said he was going to follow Martin, the dispatcher said “we don’t need you to do that”.  It was vague, and it was utterly non-binding. 

SCAT:  Martin had every right to be on the street.

GARY:  Yeah! Yeah!  Yeah!  Yeah!

MITCH:  Right.  So did Zimmerman. 

LIBRELLE:  Huh? 

MITCH: Zimmerman had a right to be on the street, too. 

LIBRELLE:  Not if he was stalking Martin. 

GARY:  Yeah !  Stalker!

MITCH:  “Stalking” is a pretty loaded term.  He was following.  Advisable?  Maybe, maybe not, but not remotely illegal. 

SCAT:  But he was acting like a wannabe cop. 

GARY:  Wannabe!  Wannabe!

MITCH: That’s a pejorative interpretation of Zimmerman’s long-past behavior.  There’s no law in wanting to act like a cop, in any case.  And, er, how someone “acts” doesn’t justify being assaulted and having ones head bashed into the ground like some kind of MMA fight.

LIBRELLE:  He had a round in his chamber, the hammer cocked and the safety off!

GARY: Yeah!  Yeah!  Yeah!  Round off and safety in the chamber!

MITCH: Um, just about everyone who carries a firearm carries a round in the chamber.  Including every single person with a revolver.  And let me ask you – who told you the “safety was off and the hammer was cocked”?

SCAT:  It’s just facts!

GARY:  Yeah ! Yeah!  Yeah!  Stupid wingnut!  Facts!

MITCH:  Right, the KelTec 9mm that Zimmerman carried has no cockable hammer, and no safety catch.  It’s a “double action only” pistol; the hammer only cocks when you squeeze the trigger.  There’s no need for a safety, so there is none.   I know this from years of familiarity with KelTec pistols. 

LIBRELLE:  The injuries Zimmerman suffered aren’t consistent with being punched.

GARY:  Yeah!   Yeah!  Yeah!

MITCH:  Right, but they are consistent with being beaten against a cement sidewalk. 

SCAT:  This case is proof that “Stand your Ground” laws are racist. 

GARY:  Yeah!  Racisss!  Yeah!

MITCH:  “Stand your Ground” was never at issue, since the Defense showed that retreat was never an option; they didn’t even opt to go for a “Stand your Ground” hearing, since the law didn’t apply to this case.  Not even a little bit. 

LIBRELLE: …

SCAT: …

GARY:  …

MITCH: How about those Twins?

(TRAIN stops at Franklin Avenue.  SCAT, LIBRELLE and GARY abruptly get up and climb off the train, which pulls away as the three’s eyes all go wide with fear). 

LIBRELLE (receding into distance as train pulls away) Hey!  Where’s the 331 Club? 

And SCENE

I met my friend Avery LIBRELLE yesterday out on the bike trail.  Avery, naturally, rides a recumbant bike.  Go figure.

LIBRELLE:  Hah!  Tom Stinson, the state economist, says that Minnesota is doing pretty well!  And that our education system is one of the reasons! 

MITCH:  Well, good!

LIBRELLE: Hah!  Better than good!  It means the DFL plan for leading the state is the right one!

MITCH: What?  Give “eduation” everything it wants?

LIBRELLE: Yes!  Raise your hand for the children!

MITCH:  Oboy.  OK.  For starters, yes – a workforce that can do the job, whatever the job is, is a good thing.  But as we saw last week, to a great extent education – at least, big institutional education – follows prosperity.  Not the other way around. 

And Minnesota prospered, especially during the “Minnesota Miracle”, as much due to its human, social and economic geography as anything else.  It was the economic, social, population and communications center of a large, productive region – especially at a time when the United States as a whole had no competition.  So while it certainly helped that Minnesota had a strong education system, it helped even more that we were in the right place at the right time. 

LIBRELLE: All the more reason to spend more on education!

MITCH: Is it?  Is our education system in Minnesota worth what we spend on it now? 

Especially given the number of black, Latino and Asian Minnesotans who are being served so very very badly by our current system?  Pouring money into a status quo that is decaying fast and is doing little more than resting on the laurels of an earlier era – and let’s not even address whether those laurels were especially deserved – is a huge mistake. 

LIBRELLE: You are clearly a racist. 

MITCH:  For wanting to fix a system that discriminates against minority Minnesotans?

LIBRELLE:  Yep!  Sometimes you have to show them what’s right!

MITCH: Huh.

(And SCENE)

SCENE:  At the DFL headquarters, on Plato Boulevard in Saint Paul.  Chairman Ken MARTIN is sitting in his office.

(Carrie LUCKING of the Alliance for a Better Minnesota walks in.  MARTIN springs to attention, salutes).

LUCKING:  As you were.    (MARTIN sits as LUCKING settles into an overstuffed leather recliner)

LUCKING:  So what’s going on?

MARTIN:  Well, we’re hitting the GOP over their War on Womym, we’re telling Minnesotans that taxing the 1% will make them taller and smarter, and…

LUCKING:  That’s not what I mean, and you know it.

MARTIN: Beg pardon?

LUCKING:  Beavis is at it again.

MARTIN:  Beavis?  You mean Represntative Winkler?

LUCKING:  Yes.  His tweet yesterday embarassed the party.  Summon Bakk and Thissen.

MARTIN:  Summon Bakk and Thissen!

(Tom BAKK and Paul THISSEN enter the room.  They stand attention and salute LUCKING, who returns the salute.  They remain standing).

LUCKING:  Explain!

(BAKK smirks at THISSEN with a look of badly-concealed contempt).

THISSEN:  I don’t know, your highness.

LUCKING:  Doesn’t he know he must clear all utterances with me before making them?

THISSEN:  Yes, your highness.  Normally calling black conservatives racist names is perfectly acceptable.

LUCKING:  Right.  But not this time.  How about the media?

BAKK:  Only Rupar has written about it so far.

LUCKING:  Who gave him permission?

THISSEN:  Nobody that I know of.  But it’s mostly been damage control so far, so it should be OK.

BAKK:  And Michelle Malkin and Dana Loesch.

LUCKING: Who?

BAKK:  The Filipina Pole-Dancer and some chick who probably boffed Grover Norquist to get a job.

LUCKING:  Ah.

(Through the window, we see Ryan WINKLER walking toward the door.  He’s singing Justin Timberlake’s “Sexy Back”).

LUCKING:  Let’s get his explanation.

(WINKLER walks into room, salutes LUCKING – who doesn’t return salute. He awkwardly releases salute…)

WINKLER:  Your highness?

LUCKING:  Explain yourself.   You tweeted this yesterday:

WINKLER:  Well, in my defense, I didn’t know “Uncle Tom” was racist.

BAKK:  What?  It’s up there with the “N”-bomb! A white guy using a term to refer to a black guy as a cringing, servile piece of chattel?

WINKLER:  Well, there’s some debate about that.

BAKK:  Not in like 150 years.

WINKLER:  Well, my bad.  And since when is it bad to bag on oreos who vote Republican?

LUCKING:  That’s immaterial.  What the hell else have you been writing? (Takes out pearl-encrusted iPhone, starts flipping through WINKLER’s twitter account) Oh, what the hell…:

And if Virginia wants a battle flag back from their war to defend slavery, they can march to Minnesota and take it.

— Ryan Winkler (@RepRyanWinkler) June 25, 2013

WINKLER: What?

LUCKING: The Civil War’s been over for nearly fifty years.

THISSEN:  At least!  And the ACLU won!

LUCKING:  Look – give me your Blackberry.  I need to see what else you’ve got in your Drafts.  (WINKLER hands over phone).

LUCKING (Flips through phone):  Wait – calling Representative Hillstrom “Screechy McMenstrual?”

WINKLER:  Is that bad?

LUCKING:  Yes!

WINKLER: But she was derailing Representative Martens’ gun bill!

LUCKING:  Thanks be to Alida that never went out.

THISSEN (quietly):  Still, you save that sort of thing for Republican lawmakers.  Like Tara Mack or Mary Franson.

WINKLER:  Ah.  Point taken.

LUCKING:  Didn’t you learn anything at Harvard Law School?   I mean, the school that great minds like Laurence Tribe and Alan Dershowitz teach at?

WINKLER:  Dershowitz?  Ah!  Good ol’ Schlomo the Money-Grubbing Skinflint!

(LUCKING, BAKK and THISSEN glare at WINKLER)

WINKLER:  What?   Wait – that, too?  You gotta be kidding…

(And SCENE)

SCENE:  MITCH Berg is shopping at an electronics store.  Avery LIBRELLE runs into him in the aisle. 

MITCH:  So – your president is kinda going nuts, here, siccing government agencies on private citizens and dissident groups. 

LIBRELLE:  Ha ha, Merg.  All of this surveillance started under Chimpy McBushitler!  If you supported it then, you have to support it now!

MITCH:  For starters, Obama’s ramped it up to a new level; I’ve seen no evidence that Bush took the domestic surveillance to anything like the level that Obama has. 

LIBRELLE:  So there’s an amount of domestic surveillance you deem acceptable?

MITCH:  Sure – with a warrant, and observing the due process of law that’s supposed to be a Fourth Amendment right. 

LIBRELLE: Hah!  So you’re a Fourther.

MITCH:  I suppose you could say that.  Weren’t you a Fourther when Bush was President?

LIBRELLE: That was different.

MITCH:  Ah.  OK.  Secondly, I didn’t support it back then.

LIBRELLE:  You didn’t stop it!

MITCH:  How would I stop government surveillance?

LIBRELLE:  By blowing the whistle.

MITCH:  I don’t work anywhere near the field.

LIBRELLE: What is this “Work” you keep talking about?

MITCH: Fair enough.  Thirdly;  you complained about government surveillance under Bush…

LIBRELLE:  Hissssssssss…

MITCH:  …but Bush did little more than expand on policies that Bill Clinton…

LIBRELLE: Yaaaaaay!

MITCH: …initiated with his 1994 Crime Bill and 1996 Counterterrorism act, which greatly expanded the Fed’s wiretapping and domestic surveillance rights.  I mean, do you remember “Echelon?”

LIBRELLE:  The thing that had all you paranoid Faux-News-watching Alex-Jones-listening Bristol-Palin-is-Trig’s-Mom-believing wingnuts pooping in your pants back in the nineties?

MITCH:  Right.  The government’s purported effort to create broad-based systematic eavesdropping on domestic telephone and online communications. 

LIBRELLE:  Yeah! 

MITCH:  So let me be clear here; you supported Clinton’s domestic wiretapping and surveillance efforts?

LIBRELLE:   Of course.  There were Right-Wing militias roaming the countryside blowing up federal buildings and churches and kidnapping Cuban kids. 

MITCH:  Right.  But under Bush…

LIBRELLE: …it was oppression of domestic dissent!

MITCH:  …while under Obama…

LIBRELLE:  …he’s got a war on terror on two fronts – the Middle East and here at home!    And if you oppose him, you support putting bombs in the hands of right-wingers like the Tsarnaev brothers!

MITCH:  Um…gotcha.  What’s in the bag?

LIBRELLE:   All my electronics.  I’m having the service department wrap them in tinfoil.

(And SCENE)

SCENE:  It’s May of 1912 – a few weeks after the sinking of the SS Titanic captured the world’s headlines.  Scene fades in on the SS Metaphoric – a steamship billed as “The Next Best Thing To The Titanic!” – plowing through the icy North Atlantic.  It’s a dark, chilly evening, with the light from a few stars illuminating the occasional glint of ice on the horizon. 

CUT TO the First Class passenger lounge.  A group of passengers – Garth Muller, Ludwig von Nicholaus, Joe Smith and Otto Klarinette – are drinking and discussing the affairs of the day.

CUT TO deck.  Zoom in to crow’s nest, where the lookout, a plucky cockney named Tim Shaw, reacts with alarm to an oncoming apparition.  He picks up a phone.

SHAW:  “Iceberg!  Right ahead!

CUT TO Bridge.  Captain O. B. Barry, who was appointed Captain five years earlier after serving on cruise line’s board of directors for two years, picks up the phone. 

BARRY: Let me be clear.  It’s OK.  We’re too big to sink.  And we inherited our charts from the previous captain!

SCENE:  Ship plows into iceberg.  Montage of scenes of flooding below decks.  

VON NICHOLAUS:  What was that?

BARTENDER:  I think we hit an iceberg, sir.

MULLER:  Haw haw haw!  Time to cash it in!  This boat’s gonna sink!  We’re all doomed!

SMITH:  Um, hang on, guys; this room is crawling with wood tables, veneer, kegs, things that we can make float.  There’s a spool of rope on the deck outside…

VON NICHOLAUS:  Nope!  It’s gonna sink!

KLARINETTE:  Of course, since the cruise line is a corporation, falsely given a human-like existence to protect the banksters, nobody will be held responsible for it!

MULLER:  Who cares!  We’re going down!  Bartender, pour me another one!  Everyone’s gonna die!

VON NICHOLAUS:  It’s like we were taught back in Vienna…

SMITH hauls empty tables out to promenade deck outside, slashes rope into 12 foot lengths and starts lashing tables together.  BARTENDER starts frantically opening the beer taps, letting beer and soft drink kegs empty into the drains.  

KLARINETTE: they’re calling “women and children first!”

MULLER: Pfft.  The way this line was run, they’re better off dead anyway

SMITH and BARTENDER wrestle empty beverage kegs into place and lash them below te tables, effecting a crude but effective floatation device. 

VON NICHOLAUS:  If only the cruise line board of directors had listened to us!

KLARINETTE: We warned them!

VON NICHOLAUS: At the 1908 Cruise Line board meeting!   “Don’t ram icebergs!”, we said.  And they shouted us down!

MULLER: Well, this’ll show them!

VON NICHOLAUS:  all these sheeple have it coming!  They could have supported us.   They deserve what they get!

SMITH and the BARTENDER attach a rope rail around the upturned table legs.  SHAW moves a small kitchen grill onto the raft, and starts cooking hot hogs.   The BAND starts playing “Nearer My God To Thee”. 

KLARINETTE:  (Watching crowds racing for lifeboat) Stupid short-sighted sheeple.

SMITH and the BARTENDER start waving women and children aboard the the raft.  As the water laps up to the edge of the raft, they beckon the band aboard.  They start playing “We Are The Champions”  

SMITH: (as water floats the raft and starts to flow into the bar) Guys! Raft!

MULLER: Haven’t you heard? The ship is sinking. Belly up, the worlds come to and end!

VON NICHOLAUS: we’re all gonna die.

KLARINETTE: because the sheeple didn’t listen to us.

MULLER:  we’ve all for it coming.

SMITH: No, listen – the raft.  It floats!

VON NICHOLAUS:   What?  When I could be on a ship?

CAPTAIN BARRY (over the loudspeaker): Remember; it’s the previous captain’s fault, and you didn’t build or launch those lifeboats.

(Raft crowded with passengers  floats free and paddles over to lifeboats as ship slips beneath the waves.)

VON NICHOLAUS: Stupid sheeple! We told you so!

(And SCENE)

SCENE: MITCH Berg is walking away from the Capitol building.  He runs into Avery LIBRELLE, who is dressed in a green AFSCME tshirt.

LIBRELLE:  Well, that was a great session!

BERG: The DFL’s union benefactors made out like bandits.

LIBRELLE:  We sure did!

BERG: And with a two-chamber majority, you spent months working on gun grabs that’ll never affect crime, a bullying bill that’ll stop no bullying, a gay marriage bill that is a huge priority for a small part of maybe 2% of the population, and what? Half a day on a budget?

LIBRELLE: You’re just mad because you lost.  

BERG: No, I’m mad because you’re screwing up the state.  Three more yearsof  this and Minnesota will be a cold California.  

LIBRELLE: Sweet!

BERG: And the big daddy of them all – the Daycare Union Jamdown.  

LIBRELLE: What “jamdown?”  All we’re asking for is a chance to vote to organize.  It’s democracy!   Don’t you conservatives like democracy?

BERG:    Don’t get cute.  This isn’t democracy – its democracy Mark Ritchie-style. The unions are packing the vote with unlicensed providers that the union knows will vote for them, many of whom haven’t worked in daycare or personal care in years. Look – providers could already join unions.  Out of 11,000 licensed providers, less than 100 ever did.  86% of licensed providers oppose the union.  

LIBRELLE: That’s a lot of numbers.  My head is spinning.  

BERG: Now – do you think the DFL, AFSCME and the SEIU wold have wasted a year or two of organizing, and five months of legislative arm-twisting, with several million a year in union dues and DFL money at stake, if they didn’t know they had enought ringers to jam the vote down?  Anyone who answers “no” probably also thinks Minnesota has the country’s best election system. 

LIBRELLE: But why shouldn’t daycare workers and PCAs have the right to organize for better pay and working conditions?

BERG: Organize against whom?   To get better pay from whom? 

LIBRELLE: Management!  The bosses!

BERG: They’re their own bosses.  They manage their own businesses!   Many of them went into the field because they wanted to be their own boss, be their own management. And they get paid from their clients – parents and patients. 

LIBRELLE:  Wait. Back up.  What’s this “their own boss” bit?

BERG: They’re independent businesspeople.  

LIBRELLE: (stares blankly)

BERG: They run their own business.  

LIBRELLE: (Stares; lips move, but no sound comes out)

BERG: They’re their own bosses.  They work for themselves.  

LIBRELLE:  But…everyone has a boss.  

BERG: They have clients. Parents.   Patients.  Te people who pay them. 

LIBRELLE: But…no.  Everyone has a boss!

BERG: Ummm…

LIBRELLE: EVERYONE HAS A BOSS!

BERG: Medic!   I think I broke Avery…

(SCENE:  MITCH Berg is bowling at the Minnehaha Lanes.  Avery LIBRELLE steps up to the next lane, laces up shoes as MITCH rolls a “6”).

LIBRELLE:  Hah hah, Merg.  You have nobody to run against Al Franken.  He’ll coast to another term.

MITCH:  Well, we’ll see.  The campaign is still very young.

LIBRELLE:  And the Governor’s race!   What, Jeff Johnson?  He ran for attorney General, and lost!  He’s over!

MITCH:  Er, Governor Messinger ran a couple of races and lost before he latched on as Senator and then Governor.  He ran what was at one point the most expensive failed race in state history again, back in the eighties.

LIBRELLE:  (Angrily) It’s Governor Dayton.

MITCH:  Oops.  Not sure how that happened.

LIBRELLE:  Pft.  Anyway, he’s  different!

MITCH:  You’re right.  He had an adoring media painting his toenails and covering up his issues.

LIBRELLE:  (Puts scoresheet on desk, steps up to the lane).  Waaah.

MITCH:  Well, you’ve got a point.  It’s a whole new race.

LIBRELLE:  (Elaborately prepares to roll ball; all sorts of shimmying and twitching) And what else?  You’v got Scott Honour.  He’s Minnesota’s Mitt Romney.

MITCH: (Rolls the second ball – misses the spare by one)  You say that like it’s a bad thing.  Two guys who actually earned their fortunes.

LIBRELLE:  Did you hear me?  He’s Minnesota’s Mitt Romney!  

MITCH:  Right.  I guess that makes Mark Messinger…er, Dayton – our George Soros.

LIBRELLE:  Hah hah hah!  There is no such thing as George Soros.

MITCH:  Hm.  (Mitch steps back to mark last ball)

LIBRELLE:  (Steps down the lane.  Backswings.  Forgets to release.  Hits self in face with ball.  Falls over)

MITCH: (Runs over to render assistance)  Avery?  You OK?  Can you hear me?

LIBRELLE:  (Dazed, incoherent)  I’m happy to pay for a better Minnesota.

MITCH:  I knew it.

(And SCENE)

(SCENE:  MITCH Berg and Avery LIBRELLE meet at the coffee shop).

MITCH (Walks into store):  Hey, Avery.

LIBRELLE (leaving store holding a latte): What’s that?  You want to kill me?

MITCH:  Beg pardon?

LIBRELLE:  You hate me for my stances on abortion and gun control and you want to shoot me with your assault weapon?

MITCH:   Um, start over.  What are you talking about?

LIBRELLE:   Was that another threat?

MITCH:  I’m just here for, er, coffee…

LIBRELLE: Help!  Raaaaaaaape!

(And SCENE).

Fiction?

If only; a U of Wyoming liberal activist has been busted threatening herself with rape on Facebook.

Oh, she did it under a sock puppet “conservative” ID:

And the Laramie police weren’t fooled:

University of Wyoming student targeted by an anonymous Facebook posting that included a threat of sexual violence had posted the item herself, police said.

The university in Laramie, Wyoming announced on Tuesday that campus police cited Meg Lanker-Simons for misdemeanor interference with a police investigation by giving false statements

On the one hand, it’s an attempt to frame conservatives, especially gun rights supporters. And Lanker-Simons’ supporters are doubling down, naturally:

‘I will tell you, I believe Meg is innocent of this outrage,’ Kandt told the Laramie Boomerang, adding she believes the citation issued by police is a ‘classic case of blaming the victim.’

‘I mean, my God, who would do this to herself?’ she added.

(Ditto her husband, who answers the question “What ever happened to “RB” from those Arby’s ads?”)

It does, in fact, happen all the time; the Duke Lacrosse Team, the Tawanna Brawley incident, even (as I recall, but can’t find) a case at Saint Cloud State in the past decade or so.

On the other hand, it’s no worse than the stuff Michelle Malkin gets every day from real liberals with the tacit blessing of the Democrat establishment and media.

(SCENE:  Mitch BERG is standing in the line for car tabs at the Saint Paul Sears with Avery LIBRELLE)

LIBRELLE:  I saw your blog post about the restaurant in Mower County that is offering discounts for gun nuts who bring guns into their restaurants.

BERG:  Yeah.  That’s pretty cool.

LIBRELLE:  I’m sure there’ll be a mass shooting there soon.

BERG:  (shakes head silently, with deep weariness)

LIBRELLE:  What this does mean is that they should raise their minimum wage.

BERG:  (wearily)  OK, I’ll bite.  Why’s that?

LIBRELLE:  Because the owner is giving away money.

BERG:  Er…huh?

LIBRELLE:   Discounts.  That’s money he’s giving away.  That means he could afford to increase his staff’s wages.

BERG:   Er, the discount – leaving aside the extent to which it might be a personal protest statement – is what’s called a “loss leader”.  It’s designed to get people to come out, bring their non-gun-carrying friends – to get people in the door.  Once they’re through the door, that’s more traffic, more word of mouth, more potential to win over customers that keep coming back and spending more money.

Sort of like when Chipotle has their Free Burrito Day.  They lose money on that day’s burritos – but hopefully create loyal repeat customers who come back later to pay full price.

LIBRELLE:  Well, if they can do that, they can afford to pay the dish washers and waitresses and counter staff more.

BERG:  Er, why do you think businesses do that?

LIBRELLE:  Because they’re rolling in money at the expense of the worker!

BERG:  No, it’s to increase business.  It’s called Marketing, and Advertising; spending a little money so that there’s more business, which in turn brings in more money, which eventually goes into things like paying off investors and turning a profit and expanding and remodeling and buying a new oven and, by the bye, salaries.   Because a successful restaurant can afford to give a raise, while an unsuccessful one can’t even retain workers.

LIBRELLE:  Giving away the workers’ money in this way is like the Bush Tax Cuts.  That money is needed.

BERG:  Government doesn’t need to advertise or market.  And even if the money were “the workers’ money”, it’s part of marketing a business, to try to make it successful  Like spending money on advertising, or on having clean restrooms and unripped seats, or laminated menus, or quality ingredients and attractive preparation and presentation; it’s about making people come to your business, and then making them want to come back.

But – and I can’t stress this enough – the business’ revenue is not “the workers’ money”.  The person or people who started and run the restaurant – which provides the jobs for “the workers” – has the job of using that money to the business’ best advantage, to promote and maintain the business.  Which includes paying salaries.

LIBRELLE:  It’s more important that they pay the salaries.  Without the workers, the owner is nothing.

BERG:  Er, what now?

LIBRELLE:  It’s the workers that make the business.  Without the workers, there’d be no business.

BERG:  I’m sure that’s news to every sole-proprietor entrepreneur out there…

LIBRELLE:  Look at Bain Capital.  Mitt Romney didn’t even show up to work for months at a time.  And yet the janitors had to show up every day.  Bain could have prospered without Romney, but not without janitors.  The janitors deserved the money more than Romney.

BERG:  (Stands, gobsmacked in stunned silence)

LIBRELLE:  Without those janitors, Bain would have failed.

BERG:  So you’re saying that janitors can manage venture capital better than managers can empty trash and sweep floors?  Or that restaurants would spontaneously form in Mower County without someone to rent a building, set up a kitchen and a counter and some tables and buy some inventory and hire and train some cooks and waiters and dishwashers.

LIBRELLE:  Of course not.

BERG:   OK, then…

LIBRELLE:  I’m saying that without janitors sweeping the floors, the capital would never have been managed.  Without a dishwasher, there’d be no restaurant.

LOUDSPEAKER:  “Number 36”

BERG:  Oh, that’s my number.  What’s yours?

LIBRELLE:  Oh, I don’t have one.  I just love hanging out here.

BERG:  (shuffling toward the window)  You what?

LIBRELLE:   Yeah.  It’s a great lesson on how business should work!

BERG:  Huh.  Wow.  And to think some people say liberals don’t understand business.

LIBRELLE:  I know.  Right?

(And SCENE)

(more…)

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is running his snowblower down his sidewalk.  Avery LIBRELLE walks by, eating a granola bar.

LIBRELLE:  Why do you hate gay people?

BERG: (shuts off snow blower):  Huh?

LIBRELLE: (dribbling granola crumbs onto sidewalk) Why do you oppose gay marriage?  You’re a bigot!

BERG: Er, no.  As we’ve discussed over and over again, I favor civil unions on libertarian grounds.

LIBRELLE:  Hah.  Two people who love each other should be able to marry.

BERG: Right, but marriage isn’t about love.  Not entirely, anyway.  It’s pretty utilitarian, actually.  It’s about raising kids – and the notion of gay marriage devalues gender, which I think is a huge mistake, since gender is so hugely important in raising kids.  In our society, it’s also about taxes.  Personally, I think government should get out of the business of granting favors through the institution of marriage, but I think gay people should be able to sign contracts with each other.

LIBRELLE:  Pfft.  What are you afraid of?

BERG:  Er, yeah.  On the one hand, that question is an abusive strawman.  I’m not “afraid” of the notion of same sex marriage.  But I’m definitely worried about some of the potential consequences.

LIBRELLE:  (Spit-takes, blasting granola flakes all over the place) Huh?  What are you talking about?

BERG:  It is inevitable than once you legalize gay marriage, government will oppress any person, business or institution that disagrees with it.

LIBRELLE:  Hah!  People who support marriage equality are very sensitive to diversity of opinion, you paranoid teabagger!   And the First Amendment protects your observance of religion absolutely!

BERG:  Right, just like First Amendment absolutely protects my right to hold government accountable, or free association, or choice for my children, or the Second Amendment absolutely protects my right to keep and bear arms, the Fourth absolutely protects me from unreasonable searches and seizures, the Fifth absolutely grants me due process and the right to face my accuser in court, and the Tenth guarantees the enumeration of powers absolutely.

LIBRELLE:  What are you, a lawyer?  That’s just paranoid!

BERG:  So it’s your position that the full weight and power and budget of government isn’t going to descend upon anyone who doesn’t embrace gay marriage?

LIBRELLE:  Yep.  Paranoid paranoid paranoid.  Cray cray.

BERG:   Huh.  Good to know it’s just paranoia:

 Attorney General Bob Ferguson has filed a consumer protection lawsuit against a florist who refused to provide wedding flowers to a same-sex couple.

The complaint was filed in Benton County on Tuesday against Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers and Gifts in Richland.

The lawsuit is in response to a March 1 incident where she refused service to longtime customer Robert Ingersoll. Stutzman did not return a call Tuesday night seeking comment. Ferguson had sent a letter on March 28 asking her to comply with the law, but said Stutzman’s attorneys responded Monday saying she would challenge any state action to enforce the law.

Washington state voters upheld a same-sex marriage law in November, and the lawtook effect in December. The state’s anti-discrimination laws were expanded in 2006 to include sexual orientation.

Ferguson seeks a permanent injunction requiring the store to comply with the state’s consumer protection laws and seeks at least $2,000 in fines.

LIBRELLE:  You’re a racist and you hate womyn!

BERG:  Right, I got that.  But the point is, the precendent is there; government squats on opponents of social policy!

LIBRELLE:  That’s Canada!

BERG:  Right.  But it’s the pattern all governments follow when they want to impose social policy.

LIBRELLE:  (throws granola wrapper on  BERG’s snow-covered lawn)  Why do you dance on the graves of the children of Newtown?

And SCENE

(SCENE:  MITCH is at the grocery store.  He meets Avery LIBRELLE, who is also out shopping)

LIBRELLE:  I’m so upset that the GOP in the Legislature has muddied the waters with their “Civil Union” proposal.

MITCH: Why’s that?

LIBRELLE:  Civil unions are nothing but separate but equal.

MITCH:  Yeah, that’s the cliché du jour for gay marriage supporters.  The idea that having an identical civil contract that confers exactly the same rights – in the eyes of the government, which is what we’re talking about here – is somehow like Plessy v. Ferguson Jim Crow-era absurdities is completely nuts.  From the perspective of government, it’s more like “Equal but Equal”.

LIBRELLE:  But the word “marriage” has a status to it that “civil unions” doesn’t.

MITCH:  And that remark shows what “gay marriage” proponents are really about.  It has little to do with “rights”, and lots to do, I suspect, with forcing society into accepting something that it, on its own, just does not.   The “status” of the word “marriage” is a matter of individual perspective and belief; is it government’s job to change that, for its own good?

LIBRELLE:  Sure!

MITCH:  Huh.  Anyway, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

LIBRELLE:  No kidding.  The GOP is wasting the legislature’s time with this bill, bringing it up after the deadline for policy bills.

MITCH:  Right.  No different than Representatives Paymar and Martens still flogging their gun grab legislation.  They can’t get committee hearings, but they can still bring up their bill as an amendment to another bill during floor debate.

LIBRELLE:  Well, that’s different.

MITCH:  Why?

LIBRELLE:  I don’t know. (takes a bunch of grapes from the produce stand, picks a few, starts eating) It just is.

MITCH:  OK.  Well, anyway – I think this means the GOP minority sees that there’s a fracture in the DFL caucus.  We know that outstate DFLers are feeling really nervous about this bill – that support for gay marriage, like gun grabs, is entirely focused in the Metro.  It’d be dumb for them, as a minority, not to propose the compromise; it shows the people that, contrary to the DFL and media’s narrative, there is a compromise.

LIBRELLE:  That’s so wrong.  We should not play games with civil rights.

MITCH:  Like Paymar and Martens and Latz are doing?

LIBRELLE:  Oh, that’s different.  That’s about the children.

MITCH:  So is marriage.

LIBRELLE (eating more grapes)  Well, the courts have ruled on this already.

MITCH:  Right – the courts ruled that civil unions interactions with existing laws, and the federal DOMA law, were a problem.  So the law needs to be written right, and adjustments need to be made to other laws, state and federal.  That’s what legislatures do; try to pass laws that pass legal muster.

LIBRELLE:  But eventually gay marriage is going to happen.  Young people all support it.

MITCH:  Maybe they do.  Young people also made Justin Bieber and Nicky Minaj stars.  More to the point?  Most “young people” have no idea what marriage really is.  But whatever, fine; maybe gay marriage is inevitable in the great scheme of things.  And truth be told, but for one thing, I don’t really care.

LIBRELLE:  (3/4 done with bunch of grapes) And that one thing is that you’re a bigot.

MITCH:  Er, no.  In fact, I guarantee I’ve put more on the line against genuine hatred of gays than you have or ever will.  But no, the one thing is that gay marriage is one more attack on the importance of gender – the idea that the sexes are different, and different for a reason, and that reason is that each gender has a vital role in raising the next generation of children.

LIBRELLE:  Gays can raise children just as well as breeders.  Sometimes better!

MITCH:  Right.  This isn’t a dig at gays’ motivations as adoptive parents; I think gay adoptive parents are a better idea than, say, single parents if that’s the choice, which it very rarely is.  And at the moment, I don’t doubt that gay parents are better parents than straight parents, as an average across all of society, if only because you have to be so superhuman-ly above average to qualify to adopt, whatever your affectional orientation.  In fact, that is one of the reasons I would like to see gay marriage – so that we can drop this absurd stereotype of the Magic Gay Couple, all superhuman in their loving wisdom.  I joke that Gays will have truly arrived as equals when you see a gay married couple on Cops, with a lady in a wife-beater T-shirt being dragged out to a squad car as her wife screams “I’ll be waitin’ for ya, Evangeline!  Ah love yewwww!”.

LIBRELLE:  That’s just weird (almost done with grapes)

MITCH:  Whatever – the point is, when society grows beyond the narrative it’s been fed this past few years, the idea that gay couples are actually better than straight couples, then maybe we can talk about equality.

LIBRELLE:  Oh, whatever.  Hey, didn’t you predict gay marriage would die in committee?

MITCH:  Yep.  I win some, I boot some.  I think gay marriage is worth more to the DFL as a wedge than as a few thousand married couples with nothing to be pissed off about other than…property taxes and business taxes and regulations that restrict entrepreneurship.

LIBRELLE:  Huh?  Well, you were wrong.

MITCH:  Really?  When did Governor Messinger Dayton sign the gay marriage bill into law?

LIBRELLE:  He hasn’t yet.

MITCH:  Huh.  OK.

LIBRELLE:  But they will pass it!  They have to!

MITCH: OK!  We’ll see!

LIBRELLE:  (finishes grapes, tosses stem into trash bucket)

MITCH:  Um – were you going to pay for those?

LIBRELLE:  Oh, it’s not shoplifting. It’s an undocumented meal.  The AP says so.

(And SCENE)

(SCENE:  At the Cabinet room in the west wing of the Capitol building.  President OBAMA is talking with Attorney General HOLDER, Homeland Security czar NAPOLITANO, Secretary of Defense HAGEL, Secretary of State KERRY, administrative assistant Shaquanda ELLIS, and Vice President BIDEN)

OBAMA:  So we’ve got to figure out who’s killing prosecutors in Texas.  Any ideas?

NAPOLITANO:  Gotta be white supremacists.

HOLDER:  Oh, my God, I hope you’re right.

NAPOLITANO:  Or possibly tax protesters, Tea Partiers, anti-abortion protesters, Second Amendment activists, land activists, Tenth Amendment activists, Ron Paul supporters, talk radio listeners, FOX news viewers, seat-belt protesters…

HOLDER:  Yes, yes, absolutely.  Some of them.

OBAMA:  Wait – that’s a very, very broad net you’re casting.

NAPOLITANO:  We think it’s a huge conspiracy.

HOLDER: YES!

KERRY:  Just like it was in Oklahoma City!  I remember scouting the remains of the Murragh Building in my Swift Boat.  It’s seared, seared in my memory.

BIDEN:  They should have fired a couple of shots through the door with a double barrel shotgun at McVeigh!

ELLIS:  Beg your pardon, sirs and maam, but if I may interject?

OBAMA: Go ahead?

ELLIS:  OK.  On the one hand, we have a movement – white supremacists – who have committed a few crimes over the decades, but have never really developed a pattern of killing law-enforcement.  Isolated incidents, yes, but no clear pattern.  On the other hand, we have the Mexican narcotraficantes, who do in fact have a pattern of killing prosecutors throughout Mexico, and who have been operating and committing violent crimes in the US for years, and whose pattern these murders fits to a “T”, and whom the Administration inadvertently armed in operation Fast and Furious…

HOLDER: (Plugs ears, runs from room) Nanananananana, can’t hear you!”

NAPOLITANO:  Clearly you are racist.

(And SCENE)

SCENE:  MITCH is out for drinks with his old friends Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, meme-buffer for the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, and Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, spokesbeing for Citizens4Luv, a left-leaning non-profit, and Avery LIBRELLE, progressive activist without opr.

CARROLL: (With three empty Mojito glasses and a full one in front of her) We need to do something about school massacres.

BIRKENSTOCK:  Yes (he says, fanning face with a folded piece of campaign literature), we have to dooooooooooooooo something.

LIBRELLE:  Doooooooooooooooooooooooooooo something!

MITCH: Well, yeah, but “we have to do something” has been the motivation for an endless cavalcade of stupidity leading to a boundless trove of misery over the years.  And let’s be honest; violent crime has been plummeting, and law-abiding gun owners are vastly less likely to commit any kind of crime than the general public.

LIBRELLE: Don’t bother us with details.  We have to ban large AR15 clip bullets and assault handguns!

BIRKENSTOCK: Yes!

MITCH:  Right, right, got that.  So – what do you think about teachers?

BIRKENSTOCK: They are the absolute salt of the earth.

MITCH: Elaborate please?

BIRKENSTOCK: They are not mere professionals.  They are like clergy, drawn to a higher calling, imparting knowledge and skills and good citizenship to our next generation.

CARROLL: That’s right. Teachers are a noble lot, a breed apart, drawn to an often thankless calling, working for 30 year careers at mere middle-class wages before retiring in their mid-fifties, doing one of the most put-upon jobs there is; trying to turn the illiterate children of Minnesota’s stupid and ignorant parents – who are the real problem with our education system – into good citizens.

LIBRELLE:  Hear hear.

MITCH: So all those stories about teachers who diddle their students…

CARROLL:  Oh, for crying out loud. That’s a teeeensy, tiny minority…

BIRKENSTOCK: …an almost insignificantly tiny one at that…

CARROLL: …of people in the profession.

MITCH: Right. So we shouldn’t tar and feather a larger, generally responsible group because of the misdeeds of a relatively small group of miscreants?

CARROLL: That would be the depth of stupidity.

LIBRELLE:  No kidding.  Bigot.

MITCH: Gotcha.  So – just to sum up; teachers are, statistically, good people, utterly trustworthy to be watching over your children?

CARROLL: Absolutely.

LIBRELLE: Unimpeachable.

BIRKENSTOCK: Beyond a doubt.

MITCH:   Good.  So – what do you think about South Dakota’s decision to allow teachers with carry permits, who’ve passed background checks and skills tests and are, thus, statistically 2-3 orders of magnitude safer than the general public, to carry their concealed firearms at school, in the interest of defending their charges from unforeseen violent crime?

CARROLL:  That’s just crazy!

BIRKENSTOCK: Teachers aren’t competent to do that.

LIBRELLE:  If you let teachers carry guns, someday a teacher will shoot a classroom full of their kids!

CARROLL: Teachers just can’t be trusted with that kind of power.

MITCH: I see.

(And SCENE)