(SCENE:\u00a0 Mitch BERG walks into a coffee shop in Linden Hills, a tony neighborhood in South Minneapolis.\u00a0 He orders a large light roast when, from out of frame to the left, a finger taps him on the shoulder.\u00a0 BERG turns around to see Avery LIBRELLE standing behind him).<\/p>\n
LIBRELLE:\u00a0 Hey, Merg!\u00a0 You know how you are always saying you want a dialog, an informed debate, with people across the aisle?<\/p>\n
BERG:\u00a0 Er, sure – I was kinda on my way to work, but…<\/p>\n
LIBRELLE:\u00a0 There you go with that “Work” thing, again.\u00a0 You’re not even employed <\/em>by a non-profit!\u00a0 Anyway – I brought a friend.\u00a0 It’s time for dialog and debate!<\/p>\n BERG:\u00a0 Well..OK, but I don’t have much time…<\/p>\n LIBRELLE:\u00a0 You can always make time for debate.\u00a0 Come on!<\/p>\n (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.\u00a0\u00a0 BERG and LIBRELLE take seats, forming a triangle of people separated as widely as geometrically possible around the circular table).\u00a0<\/p>\n LIBRELLE:\u00a0 Mitch, this is Ed DuChey, proprietor of the blog Minnesota Liberal Alliance Dot Blogspot Dot Com<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n BERG:\u00a0 A pleasure.\u00a0 (DUCHEY glares)<\/p>\n LIBRELLE:\u00a0 Mitch is my…neighbor, and he writes Shot in the Dark<\/em>.<\/p>\n DUCHEY:\u00a0 (in a nasal, adenoidal voice) Shit in the Park!\u00a0 (Snorts, sips his latte.\u00a0\u00a0 LIBRELLE giggles as BERG rolls his eyes)<\/p>\n LIBRELLE:\u00a0 Anyway, Mitch says he’s always open for dialog and debate with the “other side”.\u00a0<\/p>\n BERG:\u00a0 Yeah, I guess I do.\u00a0<\/p>\n DUCHEY:\u00a0 I called your blog “Shit in the Park!”\u00a0 (Giggles to self as BERG stares, jaw barely\u00a0under controlled tension and\u00a0with an air of ill-concealed pity)<\/p>\n LIBRELLE:\u00a0 So let’s talk about the state of the Republican Party.<\/p>\n BERG:\u00a0 The Tea Party was a much-needed populist expression of the party’s real conservative roots.\u00a0 The Tea Party class of 2010 was actually the one bright spot for the GOP in the Minnesota legislature this past two years.\u00a0<\/p>\n DUCHEY:\u00a0 You’re stupid.\u00a0<\/p>\n BERG:\u00a0 Huh.\u00a0 Care to elaborate?<\/p>\n DUCHEY:\u00a0 You’re really <\/em>stupid.\u00a0 The Teabaggers were full of hate and racism and they were stupider than you.<\/p>\n LIBRELLE:\u00a0 Interesting.\u00a0 OK.\u00a0 How about the shutdown.<\/p>\n BERG:\u00a0 My jury’s still out.<\/p>\n DUCHEY:\u00a0 Your jury is stupid and so are you.<\/p>\n BERG:\u00a0 Huh.\u00a0 (Looks around the room, as hipsters stagger, focused on their mobile devices, toward counter)<\/p>\n LIBRELLE:\u00a0 Good point, Ed.\u00a0 OK.\u00a0 How about the Affordable Care Act?<\/p>\n BERG:\u00a0 Jeez, read the headlines.\u00a0 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 <\/em>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”.\u00a0<\/p>\n DUCHEY:\u00a0 You’re…wait, I got a text message.\u00a0 (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.\u00a0<\/p>\n LIBRELLE:\u00a0 You’re right, Mitch.\u00a0 Dialog and debate is fun!\u00a0 (Looks at BERG)<\/p>\n (BERG has, however, left the table and the building).<\/p>\n (Horde of thick-rimmed-glasses-clad hipsters shamble forward in line, hissing and hacking and making prehensile noises).<\/p>\n (And SCENE).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (SCENE:\u00a0 Mitch BERG walks into a coffee shop in Linden Hills, a tony neighborhood in South Minneapolis.\u00a0 He orders a large light roast when, from out of frame to the left, a finger taps him on the shoulder.\u00a0 BERG turns around to see Avery LIBRELLE standing behind him). LIBRELLE:\u00a0 Hey, Merg!\u00a0 You know how you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[236],"class_list":["post-39239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lefty-alt-media","tag-dramatization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39239"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39255,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39239\/revisions\/39255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}