Imagine it's 4 years ago. July 2005. Katrina hasn't happened yet, and our Mission in Iraq was "Accomplished" a couple years ago. You've barely had time to get used to being stuck with Dubya for four more years.
Your aspiring-writer friend asks you to read his newest short story. You groan inwardly; his writing is not known for its subtlety. But you agree. Fortunately, your friend isn't around when you start reading, because this time he's really outdone himself on the heavy-handedness. It's a story about racial tension, and it pounds the reader over the head like a sledgehammer.
There are two main characters: A 58-year-old African-American professor, who also happens to be THE pre-eminent scholar in the field of African-American culture in the whole country -- he even teaches at Harvard. /rolls eyes/ And second - wait for it -- a white cop, who has spent the past several years teaching about racial profiling at the police academy. Two guys who just coincidentally happen to really understand racial conflict, right?
And from there, it starts getting REALLY silly.
See, in this story the President of the United States is African-American. Yep, that's right, the nation that gave us GW Bush and Dick Cheney for 8 years elected a black guy as Bush's successor. [I guess he beat out Hillary Clinton for the Dem nomination - ROFLMAO!]
And not only is the President black, but he and the professor are friends. Seems the black president went to Harvard. [Duh -- of course he did. How would an African-American guy get elected President if he hadn't at LEAST graduated from Harvard Law School? I'm surprised the author didn't make him the Editor of the Harvard Law Review while he was at it.]
And this same President, during the campaign season, had written and delivered a speech that was widely hailed as the best political speech in at least a generation. The topic of the speech? You guessed it -- racial relations in America.
In the speech, he said that all of us - black, white, green - need to start listening to each other to try to understand each other's point of view about racial issues. In other words, that we should have a series of national "Conversations About Race," because that is the only way to heal the ugly cancer of racial conflict that divides us.
So the white cop, through a misunderstanding, ends up mistakenly thinking the professor might be a burglar. But they're in the professor's own home, so the professor gets pissed and somewhat defiant. The cop gets his panties in a wad cuz this guy's mouthing off to him, and he arrests the professor.
The incident makes the national news, and a few days later someone asks the president for his opinion. He mouths off a little, too, saying the arrest was bogus. Actually, he says the police acted "stupidly." Then the cop mouths off about how the president should just MYOB, and people all over the country start mouthing off about how the President should apologize not just to that cop, but to all cops.
Lots of mouthing off going on everywhere, and it's starting to interfere with the president handling the stuff he needs to handle. [Oh yeah -- in addition to being the first African-American president, he also is trying to deal with two wars, the worst economy since the Great Depression, the collapse of the American manufacturing base and general infrastructure, a climate change crisis, an energy crisis, a Republican party that has stopped even pretending to be reasonable -- Rush Limbaugh is its most prominent spokesperson -- and a few other mionor little issues.]
So what does the president do? He invites both guys to the White House for a beer so they can show the rest of the country how to have one of those "Conversations About Race." After the kegger, the cop does a press conference that is wildly unrealistic -- the cop does a better job at his presser than most career politicians do. He says he & the professor are going to meet further to see what they can learn from each other. Then the professor releases this totally eloquent written statement where he says essentially the same thing.
And they all live happily ever after.
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I don't know about you, but I don't think I would have the heart to tell my author friend how ludicrous I really think his story is, although I might suggest that he back off just a little on the coincidence rate in the plot structure.