CSI: American Carnage (Saturday, June 27, 2020)
WASHINGTON – Coup d’état. Let’s play hardball. Chris sits at the kitchen table staring at the microwave. Kath looks on. She says, Chris, Chris. Hardball is over. Those days are gone. It’s time to move on, honey. Joy is going to fill the time slot. She’s smart, capable, hardworking. Let it go. Chris looks down at the bowl of cornflakes set before him. He says, In a stunning turn of events, one that echoes a time deep in the past of this great nation, a man has been taken from us. That would be me. But in a sign of the profound change sweeping the nation, a woman has stepped up to take on the mantle of history. Kath says, Chris, you stepped down in an embarrassing hail of harassment stories nearly four months ago. Joy works very hard. She deserves a shot, honey. Chris says, It reminds me of a night over half a century ago when the nation lost one of it’s greatest. A real leader who took the stage that tragic night in Indianapolis and looked out over a crowd of expectant faces, Black faces, although they weren’t Black back then, they were Afro-American, it was a different time, but they were human and full of hope and looked up at the white leader on the stage with hope, those faces were filled with hope, and the real leader had to tell them the awful, tragic news, Dr. King had been taken from us. The police told the real leader not to go into the Black neighborhood, but Bobby Kennedy went anyway, and his tousled hair and boyish good looks went with him. He went because he cared. Who cares now? Who will go into the Black neighborhood and deliver the people the horrific news? Who will comfort the sharecropper living in poverty, framed photographs of JFK and the Pope on the unpainted walls of his shack in the delta? Kath says, Honey, Dr. King was a real leader. One of the greatest. Chris says, Yes. But who will provide solace to the poor mom grieving for her lost son, shot by police on the streets of Philadelphia, my home town? Who will put his arm around the shoulder of the autoworker out of a job in Flint? Who will work with the coal miner brought down by booze in the hollers of West Virginia? Who will look out over this great country and embrace everyone? Kath says, Chris, let it go. Kath, says Chris, They need me. The killing of George Floyd has roused 1968 again, all the disorder, all the tragedy, all the heartbreak and, yes, all the hope. Kath, here’s the thing, there is hope out there. Real hope. People would not take to the streets if there was no hope. These demonstrations are a sign of life. They are the first awakening in years. People still believe in change. They still believe in the possibility of change. They still believe that if you fight you can win, and as long as you keep fighting, the possibility of change will live. Chris falls silent. He says, But where is the real leader? The guy who can take to the podium and deliver the tragic news and say, yes, I am with you, yes, together we will take back the country and return it to the people. Where are the leaders, where are the white men who will take the podium and deliver the horrible news? – Saturday, June 27, 2020