Plot Study #6 Job Interview

by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Nov 20, 2017 | Featured

KGB-TV Job Interview, Another Plot Study (The Monologue)

To answer your question, yes we are a subsidiary of FOXNews. “We be Putin it where the sun don’t shine.” We have a target market reserved for Viewers that believe in tax cuts for the rich, healthcare as unconstitutional, and a God that loves the NRA because we need weapons to protect churches from people with weapons.

Yes, you’ll be asked only to read tweets on the air. The rest is advertising because our viewers are so stupid they’ve proven that they’ll buy anything….like our propaganda/ news from the last election. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Have you provided us with the signed affidavit that you have never been sexually harassed by anybody, ever? No, don’t date it. We will date it if we need it.

Now please look into the camera and read the following tweets: “News flash! Hillary did not disclose Girl Scout cookie Income!” Don’t forget the smile and long knowing stare after you finish, thank you. All right now do this one: “Bill also does sheep !” Smile – that’s it!. Now the next one: “ Obama Birth certificate proves he’s Putin’s grandmother! “ OK, that’s good. Now before we go to the advertising .” News Flash! Surprise -you don’t have to take the Pampers off of your head after Halloween. You can give them to a Democrat with a dirty mind, for Christmas, and get a 501(c)3 religious organization pass-through tax deduction.”

No wait give it to me like we are in Moscow baby: “News Flash! Democrats seek to tax prenatal care for the born-again!” Keep that stare. Keep that knowing stare. Keep smiling. Good! Watch Pat Robertson prey’n on the Christian Broadcast Network. Listen and learn.”

OK, now sell this:

“Because yer such a good American — Free Trump miniature combover piggy banks! Holds two pennies (“your two cents”). Remember when Republicans shut down the government because they wouldn’t vote for any deficit increase? You don’t? Good, you qualify for “The New Contract with America” and new 1.5 Trillion deficit increase that your great-great-grandchildren are going to be paying off… even if they are Russian citizens of West Virginia. And Just remember this: Your free gift from all of us at KGB-TV and the Citizens United Foundation’s offer: 50% off of on our IQ increasing suppositories. Now installable with your thumb.”

Congrats, you‘ve got the job! We pay in Rubles because after the upcoming recession and increasing deficit the dollar won’t be worth shit. Welcome to KGB-TV! We be Putin it where the sun don’t shine.”

Plot Study #4 – America’s Pastime

by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Sep 14, 2017 | Featured

Act One
A young student of American history goes to a job interview. The employer who interviews him tells him: “Your job, like this country, requires that you tell the truth because all of us are relying on each other. You can debate the facts but you cannot make up false facts” and then she asks him one question: “What is the difference between a football player who fakes an injury to stop the clock and a baseball catcher who moves his mitt to try to convince the umpire the pitch was a strike?” The young student knows the answer instantly: “The football player is breaking the rules by creating ‘false facts’ with his false injury, but the baseball player is not changing the fact of the pitch because the umpire can see it from beginning to the end. The baseball player is only an advocate but not dealing in false facts.”

Act Two
Convinced that he has a clear understanding of “America’s pastime” and that he will get the job, he goes to a baseball game that afternoon and sits in the bleachers with the fans of both teams. Surrounded by his fellow Americans he happily joins in and argues each ball and strike and catch and call made by the umpires at the game. He sees the same game as the fans of the different teams but all afternoon they enjoy the discussion and their debate and he concludes not only the baseball game but also the debate and discussion are “the American past time.”

Act Three
On his way home he turns on the radio and he hears the home team’s broadcast and then switches to the radio station for the visiting team’s broadcast and he hears an entirely different story. He notices it is not at all what he saw at the game because both radio stations are making up a story of the game for the fans that are listening to them. As he switches back and forth between the stations he realizes that the broadcasts are coming up with an entirely different score and in the wrap-up of the game entirely different league standings.

He is angry when he gets home but he finds both of his parents weeping. He tells them about the conflict between the broadcasts and he asks them: “What are they doing to America’s pastime ?”

Both parents look at him and ask him: “What are they doing to America?”

This is another entry in my series of plot studies. Here’s the previous one. And the next.

The News v. The Arts

by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Aug 16, 2017 | Featured

The news often tells us who we are, but the arts tell us who we want to be.

This year my play “Onaje” received staged readings in San Francisco and New York. It is about the head-on collision of two conflicting ideas that happened exactly 50 years ago on June 15, 1967. The relevance of this collision was confirmed by the events in Charlottesville last week. This morning the Baltimore newspapers reported that four Confederate monuments were taken down in the middle of the night last night.

One of the monuments that was taken down was of Roger Brooke Taney, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who wrote the Dred Scott decision in 1857, which was instrumental in bringing about the Civil War. The Dred Scott decision held that African-Americans had no rights under the Constitution because they were not recognized as having any rights when it was drafted. Many of the drafters of the Constitution, such as Washington and Jefferson owned slaves. In fact, Jefferson produced children from his slave Sally Hennings. He chose not to recognize their children and never freed her, even after his death.

From our founding, we have been a racist nation. Because this remains unresolved, it boils within our national consciousness and erupts repeatedly and endlessly in the news. But I don’t think that’s who we want to be. The Arts, the books and movies which have been embraced by our general culture from “To Kill a Mockingbird” to “Hamilton,” are far more enlightened and humane. We don’t define ourselves as a nation with blockbuster movies with heroes that are white supremacists or Nazis.

My play is about the civil rights riots in Cambridge Maryland in 1967. It searches for the humanity in all of us as we live in these volatile times, whether they be last week or 50 years ago or from our start.

The Arts offer guidance and hope that the news and perhaps even our history never can.

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