Op Ed
by
Floyd Stephen Alexander
1032 Olive Mill Lane Las VegasNV89134
702.533.1583
Op Ed
The Players
Carver Ross Editorial Cartoonist for Wake Up News
Denice MontroseFilmmaker and Ross’ s Ex-girlfriend
Long DongGangsta Rap Artist
Ammer LongfellowExecutive Secretary of Olso Sein
Bettis60’s throwback radio disc jockey and Ross’s friend
Sid MonitureEditor-In-Chief of Wake Up News
Eloise MandisFilipina film professor at The New Movement
Media Institute
Op Ed
Play Composition
Act One
Scene 1: Ross Meets with Long Dong on the roof top of Wake Up News.
Scene 2: Broadcast studio of KCQD-FM.
Scene 3: Montrose’s apartment.
Scene 4: Moniture’s Office, pressroom of Wake Up News.
Scene 5: Inside the OsloSeinBuilding.
Scene 6: Editing room, The New Movement Media Institute.
Scene 7: Broadcast studio, KCQD-FM. Bettis in on the air with his new radio show, Den of Thieves.
Scene 8: Darken broadcast studio, KCQD-FM.
Scene 9: After party for Long Dong’s CD release.
Scene 10: Moniture’s Office, pressroom of Wake Up News.
Scene 11: On a city street downtown.
Scene 12: In a private hospital room.
“We wear the mask that grins and lies
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes
-
We sing, but oh, the clay is vile
Beneath our feet and long the mile
But let the world dream otherwise
We wear the mask.”
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Op Ed1
Act 1
Scene 1: Ross meets with Long Dong on the roof top of Wake Up News. The building is a converted three story flop house in the city section called Little Bohemia
ROSS: Was it necessary to threaten to break my editor’s legs if I didn’t meet with you?
DONG: I had to obtain your interest in addressin’ your fucked up stories about me an’ my crew. I’m givin’ you a chance to explain your’self. I am an artist. I create from what I live. The songs I write come from oppression, recession an’ my own damn confession. Now, what was that shit you said ‘bout my music?!
ROSS: I believe I conveyed in the cartoon, that it showed a lack of taste and that your song rides on the backs of women for a quick buck. I mean, what can you say about a song called PIMP DAT BITCH! Maybe I’m missin’ all the nuances of its origin. Tell me, Dong, what were you tryin’ to say?
DONG: A limp-wrist, no balls, book worm punk can’t handle a mack talkin’ big ‘bout his ho’s. Turn in your black card, Carver. What is it, homeboy? Too much real for you to deal on the level that I exceal?
ROSS: Too much shit you need to quit ‘cause I’m damn feed up with it! And the word is “excel”, brother. Can’t you relate to any semblance of that?
DONG: First Amendment, Carver. You ever heard of it? Expression of any opinion relating to social discourse. Surprise I know shit like that. You conflictin’ with mine with your crazy-ass drawings. You drew me lookin’ like a clown in your paper. You don’t think you have to answer for that? The fact that you black don’t mean I have to overlook your disrespect to me. You’d know that if you was from the streets.
ROSS: Poverty and ignorance ain’t nothin’ to brag so you can rise up in the food chain, Seymour.
DONG: The name is Dong, Ross. Long Dong. Your momma know my name.
ROSS: Not if you ain’t got nine inches, she don’t. What I hear, you only got about two. Long Dong. Can’t you get props with a name like Seymour Hodges?
(Long Dong pulls out a handgun and points it at Ross.)
DONG: Two inches and four more added on. Now what you got to say?
Op Ed2
ROSS: You got the gun.
DONG: That I do. All you tight ass brothers talkin’ when the cameras is on and no one around to call you on your shit. You draw your little cartoons and put it out there for people to see. But when a man steps up and sets your ass straight, you don’t say much.
ROSS: I ain’t got to say nothing. You telling me all I need to know. What I said about you is right. Shootin’ me just confirms it. Shoot away, brother.
DONG: You hard, Ross. A straight up from ‘round the way. We’ll see who they call a sellout when it all shakes out. Just back off me.
ROSS: I say what I see, Dong. First Amendment works both ways.
(Long Dong puts his handgun away and exits through the entrance on the roof top. Ross takes a deep breath to regain himself as he remains on the roof top alone. Lights fade, end of Scene 1.)
Act 1
Scene 2: In the broadcast studio of KCQD-FM. Bettis is an old fashion spin the records, take request and pitch the commercial radio jock. A throwback to the 60’s peace and love movement. He’s the best classic rock connoisseur on KCQD-FM. The station is located in the basement of the building that houses Wake Up News. Ross stops by the station, at Bettis’ request, to hear an idea Bettis wants to pitch at Ross.
ROSS: Nice show today, Bee. Made me want to break out my lava lamp and bellbottoms.
BETTIS: You’d be better off if you did, man. These times are too confusing for someone who ain’t high. Not that I condone that sort of thing. Only the natural green that grows in God’s good earth.
ROSS: Which you grow in flower pots hidden in the alley out back.
BETTIS: Can I help it if I have a green thumb? Fingers? Toes?
ROSS: Bettis, what you ask me down here for?
BETTIS: Skip came to me yesterday and offered me a new slot. The choicest time any jock would want short of offin’ somebody to get it.
Op Ed3
ROSS: Congrats, Bee! Now you can play Hendrix twice as long.
BETTIS: It’s not music I’ll be playin’, Cee. I’ll be talkin’ to the people, man. The voice of reason comin’ into your living room, high and alive.
ROSS: You want to lose your show before the damn thing gets launched? They still don’t allow people to be high on the air, Bee.
BETTIS: Just a figure of speech. If I don’t slur my words or get hungry every five minutes, I’m good. I’m talkin’ to you alright, ain’t I?
(Ross looks closely at Bettis)
ROSS: You lit?
BETTIS: Like a Christmas tree. Now, I need to come up with an idea for my show. We ain’t talkin’ Imus or Savage. That ain’t my thing. It’s got to shake things up around here. Open people’s minds to the truth an’ get them off their lifeless asses. I need you to help me spitball some premises around. Skip wants to put the show on in one week. Rafe’s Rapper’s DeliteShow is goin’ national and they need to plug me in when he leaves.
ROSS: Rafe’s going big time. His show launched Dong’s career. No demand for talent, is it? Sorry, Bettis, but I can’t think of anything that would have you talking for 30 minutes except how to smoke weed.
BETTIS: Whoa, Carver, that ain’t cool, man! Fat good you know about me. We been friends since ever, now. You still don’t know the real me. Ok, I’ll come up with something. You just keep your radio dialed to what it is.
(Ross prepares to leave the broadcast booth.)
ROSS: I’ll be listenin’. Only don’t let it be the FCC kickin’ your ass off the air. Bye, bye. (Ross exits.)
BETTIS: They have to catch me to kick me, brother. (Lights fade, end of Scene 2)
Act 1
Scene 3: In Montrose’s apartment. There’s a knock on Montrose’s apartment door. Montrose answers it. Ross is standing at the door.
Op Ed4
ROSS: Thank you for letting me come by. I figured if I brought a peace offering, you couldn’t refuse.
MONTROSE: I’m all about peace. Come on in. (Ross walks in Montrose’s apartment) I like we can still see each other and be friends. It makes us more objectionable in looking at the things. In an un-amorous affair like you and I have, it is down right refreshing. We can talk seriously on the things we both do. You doodle for a fish wrap newspaper that’s goin’ nowhere, while I compose documentaries to bring sisters’ minds up from the garbage they’ve been thrown in. In support of this, you give the most debased image fêted from the mind of a true---dog. Thank you, Carver. Thank you, very, very much.
ROSS: Denice, I’m sorry. I deserve your being pissed off at me. I was stuck and I needed a subject. I went with what worked.
MONTROSE: Me! You chose me for your subject. I was the hooker down on all fours in front of Alderman Catchfield in your corruption piece, Carver. And you made it perfectly clear what I was doing down there on my hands and knees in your picture. And what made you tell that skank T.V. reporter you got the image from your girlfriend?!
ROSS: Come on, Denice, look at it from my side. Your image helped expose a leech like Catchfield. You took him down.
MONTROSE: No, I can’t see it from your side. I’m not that big a person. You used me and you didn’t care how you did it. I took Catchfield down. Negro, please! Who the hell didn’t know he was buying cochie with the city’s money! Your cartoon just let people know what he liked to pay for.
ROSS: Which makes it stick in the people’s minds so the hammer will fall that much harder on him. Persuasion to force a resolution into action. The mind remembers what the eyes forget. Is what I did any different than what you do? Hell, it’s almost mandatory that any women in your films have to be destitute, debauched and deranged. Why is it when you stick a camera in someone’s face, you have to make sure they got tears running down it? But I understand. You want to get the point across to make it stick. Let’s stop the pot from always calling the kettle black, Denice. I do mine in a fish wrap. You do yours on a continuous picture post card titled “Life Ain’t Shit”.
Op Ed5
MONTROSE: One thing about that, Carver, is I never made it a point to make you cry. Just wished you had though the same about me. Please take your peace offering and go.
ROSS: Another time.
MONTROSE: If there’s any left.
(Ross takes back the item he brought and exits Montrose’s apartment without a word. Montrose looks remorseful at what just took place. Black out, end of Scene 3.)
Act 1
Scene 4: In the pressroom of Wake Up News. Sid’s office, next morning. Ross enters.
ROSS: Morning, Sid. You see my piece on Dong and his passing for something called music.
MONITURE: I’m no critic on music in this day in age. My taste runs anywhere between Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw. A good lyric never hurt anybody understanding what the hell you’re singing about. Dong’s stuff makes me blush. And I was in the Navy. You nailed him good with your cartoon. You catch any heat from it?
ROSS: Naw. Everything’s fine. What’s the rush you needing me before I go down to city hall for Catchfield’s indictment? I got the perfect drawing for what he’s going to look like.
MONITURE: Take a seat. (Ross sits down. Moniture picks up an engraved envelop from his desk.) You know I been in this rag trade a long time. I started in the morgue; moved up to vice; landed the city beat and then got the editor’s desk. Tramped through a lot of years to get here. Had a near miss with the Grim Reaper with a made guy back in Philly. Even took on a big-time politician who thought he’d gag the press and I wouldn’t say nothin’.
ROSS: He put you on The Red List, Sid. They called you a subversive. Today, you’d be called a terrorist. I’d have to turn you in for a big reward.
MONITURE: Some did just that. Only the reward wasn’t money. It was survival. Turnin’ a buddy in so you wouldn’t be tarred with the same brush got you off the
Op Ed6
list. You either gave in or you caved in, brother. I sat in a darken room in my house for over three months watchin’ shadows comin’ after me on the wall. Who in the hell wants to show their face when they’ve been branded an enemy to their own country? So I sat in the dark and bit down on my tongue so the neighbors couldn’t hear me screaming. Make no mistake, fear can make you scared enough to sweat your own blood. So, do me a favor, kid, don’t make jokes
about something you never been through. Just tip your hat to those who made it through. It’s for them that I got this paper and you can draw your cartoons.
ROSS: We’re doing some good here, Sid. I don’t joke about that. Sorry I didn’t understand. Is that why you called me in here? (Moniture shows Ross the engraved envelop picked up from Moniture’s desk.)
MONITURE: This was delivered to you by courier today. Read who it’s from. (Gives Ross the envelope.)
ROSS: (Reading the envelope.) You shittin’ me?
MONITURE: You ain’t worth the trouble. It’s the real deal. Oslo Sein. You stung a made guy.
ROSS: Not me. Everybody knows you don’t op-ed anything about them. That’s the wrath of God.
MONITURE: Well, you’ve been invited to the palace to see the king. And his name is Ammer Longfellow, Executive Secretary for Oslo Sein. What are you going to do?
ROSS: (Visually agitated.) I don’t know. (Moniture is looking at him.) What?! You need an answer right this minute?! I’m sorry, Sid. That wasn’t cool. That was not cool. Look, you’re the head of the newspaper and I’m just an employee. You can order me not to go. I don’t go, the paper stays safe.
MONITURE: You’re going, Carver. They know what they’re getting when they invite the press to come in and look around. I’d like to know if they breathe the same air we do.
ROSS: Alright, I’ll go. But I’m going down to archives and bone up on everything we got on Oslo Sein. If this guy Longfellow looks anything like his name, he’s going to have a few fans from the Blue Fairy Commune after I’m done with him.
Op Ed7
MONITURE: Hold your horses, pal. Remember we live here in Little Bohemia. I don’t need residents in this neighborhood storming the building and running a rainbow flag over top of it. You can bite, but not too hard with this guy.
ROSS: O.K., I’ll color between the lines. This is big, man. Real big.
MONITURE: So far, you’ve faced a gun and a politician. Odds are in your favor. Go charm this Longfellow guy like you bullshit me.
(Ross rises from his chair and walks to the door.)
ROSS: No chance there being two people that easy.
MONITURE: Up yours.
( Ross exits. Lights out, end of Scene 4.)
Act 1
Scene 5: Inside the OsloSeinBuilding. Ross is greeted by Longfellow at the entrance. Longfellow is young and smooth looking with the resemblance of dress and manner to that of Oscar Wilde. They exchange pleasantries for a few moments before Longfellow enters into an extensive conversation.
LONGFELLOW: You’re quite a man, Mr. Ross. I follow your editorials regularly. You can speak volumes with a single image. Our grasp on the written word is declining rapidly in this country. A picture is truly becoming the wealth of a thousand words. It is my sincere pleasure to welcome you to Oslo Sein.
ROSS: I have to say that I was very---- taken aback by the invitation. Your organization don’t campaign for membership and you don’t cotton to people of my pigmentation. You’re ‘bout as known to the public as where Jimmy Hoffa’s buried. Why the invite to me?
LONGFELLOW: Right on all counts. Clarity, Mr. Ross. Clarity of purpose. What the public will accept as fact. The overworked, underpaid, dumbfound and cuckolded public. We can either wake them up or let them sleep, But they are ready when needed. Shocked at my opinions, Mr. Ross?
Op Ed8
ROSS: Is that what you guys sit around here and shoot the shit about? You examine what goes on outside these walls like you were looking at germs through a microscope. Have you figured out how to get rid of us yet? You know I can’t comment on anything you guys do. You can buy my paper ten times over. So what is it, Mr. Longfellow? You need another soap box to pitch your bullshit from?
LONGFELLOW: Mr. Ross, please don’t disappoint me in lowering your I.Q. with profanity. You don’t know the struggle it took for your kind to ever be thought to have the ability to put two words together. You shame the very eloquence of a Fredrick Douglas or an E. B. DuBois when you use such language. Great men of your history. Something you had better hold on to longer then token remembrance. The splendor of a voice like Marian Anderson can not overcome the now droning chorus of “pimp that bitch” these days. You have a lot to be embarrassed for. Don’t embarrass yourself further with cheap theatrics.
ROSS: Do you have a clinical interest in Black History or is the view from up here high enough to pass judgment?