SCENE: Mitch BERG is having a glass of wine at the bar in Whole Foods in Saint Paujl, after a day of vigorous shopping. Lost in the reverie, he doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE has walked in.
LIBRELLE: Merg!
BERG: Oh, shhhhhuuuure enough, it’s Avery. Long time no see. What’s u..
LIBRELLE: Marsha Blackburn asked Ketanji Brown Jackson a stupid, badgering question at her confirmation hearing to be the best Supreme Court justice ever.
BERG: Best?
LIBRELLE: She is the most qualified jurist in history! The Washington Post showed it! Pictures, being science, never lie!
BERG: Well, not so much.
LIBRELLE: I never read National Review.
BERG: Clearly. So why do you think it was a “stupid, badgering question”?
LIBRELLE: It’s purely politicized, and she’ll never have to rule on that. “What’s a woman?” Mitch, please.
BERG: First: SCOTUS hearings, politicized? Bring that up when Robert Bork, Janice Rogers Brown, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett are up for confirmation.
LIBRELLE: Those people were all in the past…
BERG: Exactly. As to never having to rule on that? Perhaps. But answering “what is a woman?”
LIBRELLE: It was an unfair question for which she had no time to prepare.
BERG: (looking at watch). A woman is an adult human with two “X” chromosomes. Three seconds. No prep time. And I didn’t even go to Harvard Law School.
LIBRELLE: She will never have to rule on what a woman is.
BERG: Perhaps. But she’ll be asked to rule on questions where much of the population does know what the answer is; the fact she’s willing to equivocate on something this comical, to keep the “progressive” wing of her party happy, is a very bad sign.
LIBRELLE: There are no such quesitons in the law! Its science!
BERG: When does human life being?
LIBRELLE: I don’t know. I’m not a doctor.
BERG: When do community standards violate free association?
LIBRELLE: I don’t know. I’m not the community.
BERG: Huh. When does the right to free speech interfere with private property rights?
LIBRELLE: I don’t know. I’m not a professor of rhetoric.
BERG: Huh. What does the phrase “Right of the People” mean?
LIBRELLE: I don’t know. I’m not a law professor.
BERG: A SCOTUS justice will be ruling on any or all of those things, including in the next term.
LIBRELLE: I don’t care. It was still a stupid question.
BERG: Nah. It fixed the front lines in the culture war – the issue beneath all the other issues in the upcoming mid-terms. And it showed which side are the metaphorical Russians, and which are the figurative Ukrainians.
LIBRELLE: Bla bla bla. So where are the avocados?
BERG: I don’t know. I’m not a grocer.
(And SCENE)