5 minute version: Democracy in America, the sitcom

Episode: Virgina Colony, 1772

Characters:

Alexis Tokerville (Defender of Humankind)

Abigail Tokerville – wife of Alexis

Sally Tokerville – 19 year old daughter of Alexis and Abigail

Squanto – Native American, next door neighbor to Alexis, speaks perfect English

(Abigail and daughter Sally enter from stage left. Wild cheering track play. They sit on the bench in the only room of the family’s home. Alexis walks in. Wild cheering track plays. Note that laugh track plays whenever there is a joke.)

Alexis: (Smiling smugly.) Big things are happening!

Sally: Oh Daddy, I need a new horse!

Alexis: Well I am busy. I have to go to Williamsburg. I have been elected to the House of Burgesses. And besides, Sally, I bought you a brand new Mustang... in 1771. Now all you want to do is ride around, Sally – don’t want to let nobody ride! Although, I probably will have to ride that Mustang to get to Williamsburg. And actually, I suspect you let just about everybody ride!

Abigail: Oh Al, what do you mean you’ve been elected to the House of Burgesses? You are nothing more than an Overseer’s assistant, the clean-up boy!

Alexis: Well, Ab, I was having a drink in the Lonesome Overseers Tavern. One of the overseers there was trying to think of a way to tell one of his slaves that he wasn’t performing up to standards, so I ear-wormed him…

Abigail: You picked wax out your ear and smeared it on him?

Alexis: No – I used the term “you’re no good” a couple of times and next thing I knew he was putting coins in the little jar in front of the French bar singer – her name is Toucher-Air Juqueboîte – sometimes she gets stuck and you have to go over and bang her with your hip to get her to go on -- and so she sang the song. And then this fancy-dressed guy – said his name was Richard Henry Lee or something -- came over to me and told me it was amazing how I got that guy to request that song. Said that I seemed like the kind of person others would follow.

Sally: If you take my Mustang to Williamsburg how am I going to get to my very important meetings with the plantation owners’ sons? And a couple of their kitchen boys? And at least four of their field hands?

Alexis: I guess you better slow your Mustang down! But anyway, this Lee guy said right on the spot that he was electing me to the House of Burgesses.

Abigail: Richard Henry Lee! That’s the wealthy, powerful guy who owns the plantation down the road. The big one!

Sally: I know a Bruce Lee! And a Sarah Lee!

Alexis: Okay, but this Lee guy was very drunk and said that someday he’d have a grandson named Robert E. Lee – nothing about Bruce Lee -- and he would take over the country and then the whole American continent would be nothing but tobacco plantations. And he said that smoking tobacco was the most healthy thing in the world, and when anybody cares that much about the people’s well-being, well, I am on his side.

Sally: Daddy, why do all the plantations around here only grow tobacco? Why don’t they grow potatoes? Or pineapples? Or pretty flowers? Or maybe something that you can make cloth from, to make midriff tops from?

Alexis: Well, some of them do grow sugar, which is also one of healthiest things human being can consume!

Abigail: I understand that Lee’s first wife had a bunch of children but only one or two survived infancy. And then she died. So he got a new wife and… same thing: and she died too.

Sally: Does that mean he’s looking for a new wife? Although I’m not too crazy about having a bunch of children who don’t make it past two and then dying myself.

Abigail: Now Sally, you just lie, and tell your husband you don’t want to let him ride, that you only have one child inside you that can come out – that’s how you came about – and then just spend all your time shopping instead.

Alexis: Well, when Mister Lee elected me -- right then and there -- there were big cheers all throughout the tavern! He explained he needs someone to go to the House of Burgesses and vote for a new tariff on imported slaves – a really big tariff! He explained all about tariffs and imposts and duties.

Sally: Oh sure. Tariffs, imposts, duties: Men always tell me they love my tariffs! They want to fondle my imposts. And that it’s my duty to let them.

Abigail: Al, why in the world would the big plantation owners – with hundreds of slaves -- who are the Burgesses -- want to put tariffs on the importation of slaves?

Alexis: Well, Ab, just as the Burgesses want to provide tobacco for the good health of the public, they want to do away with slavery -- completely – and the tariffs will do just that! And then there will be more jobs for the common man.

(A knock on the door. Squanto walks in. Play wild cheering track.)

Squanto: Al, you are definitely sui generis!!!

Alexis: Sorry but I don’t swing that way.

Sally: I’d sui generis if I could.

Squanto: No, no! You are one of a kind. I mean that I just heard that you had been elected to the House of Burgesses and I am wondering how you will mix with all those wealthy, powerful, educated men. You know, they all are sophisticated elites! And you… well, you are someone who basically just cleans up crap on the ground.

Alexis: Cleaning up after people is important.

Squanto: Of course, I wish you’d clean up after yourself a bit more, but… how’s your Latin? Your Greek? Can you relate the writings of Ovid to what is going on?

Alexis: I’ll have you know, I am part of a movement!

Abigail: Oh Al, are your bowels moving… finally?

Alexis: No! I am part of the anti-slavery movement!

Squanto: But Al, don’t you know that tariffs can be a tool for transferring wealth from those who work for a living to the filthy rich? Maybe the purpose is not… doing good!

Abigail: My god, doesn’t everybody know that? Although, Al has no wealth that could transferred to anybody!

Sally: I wish somebody would transfer wealth to me!

Squanto: Now Al, since 1730, the Virginia slave population has been increasing naturally. That one guy, Thomas Jefferson, notes that a female slave who produces a new baby slave every two years is more profitable than the best male slave in the field any day. The commercial plantations don’t need to buy more slaves!

Alexis: What is this? Are you getting into statistics? What the hell are statistics anyway?

Sally: Well, statistically, I am a girl!

Abigail: Yes, in terms of statistical probability, I’d go with that.

Squanto: Virginia plantation owners can sell slaves themselves! Maybe to the farmers in the Carolinas where they’ll maybe raise cotton. And that way, you won’t have new people starting tobacco plantations here in Virginia buying slaves from the English slave traders, contributing to the over-supply! What with the price dropping for tobacco because of over-supply, they don’t want that to happen!

Abigail: Al, do you even know what a Burgess is?

Alexis: Ab, if you don’t know that a Burgess is a guy with cute Buttocks, what do you know about life?

Squanto: And the colonial economy?

Sally: I though Butt-ocks was something you gave people for headaches?