A Gross Miscarriage: a Farce.

A GROSS MISCARRIAGE:

The DEFENDANTS:

Mr. JUICE.

Mr. DAD.

The DEFENSE:

Mr. COCKROACH.

Mr. DEFENDER.

The PROSECUTOR. 

ANNOUNCER.

JUDGE.

The PLAINTIFFS:

Mr. VICTIM.

Ms. FEMINIST.

The JURY:

HECKLER ONE.

HECKLER TWO.

Et al.

JUICE: It looks like there’s no way out, counselor. They have us dead to rights.

ROACH: It’s never over until it’s over.

JUICE: What could you possibly do to clear my name NOW?

ROACH: Oh, you’ll see… [Rubs hands together menacingly.]

JUDGE: So far we have overwhelming empirical evidence to point to the fact that your client did in fact murder his wife and her friend in cold blood. How do you plead?

ROACH: It would APPEAR that the prosecution has won, however I am going to play… the Race Card!!

[Sudden, totalizing shock.]

PROSECUTOR: You can’t do that!! It’s not even relevant!!

ROACH: Oh, but it IS.

[Stridently:]

ROACH: My dear jurors and honourable judge: over a hundred years ago, well before any of us were born, a group of pale-skinned immigrants to this continent bought a group of dark-skinned slaves from a distant tribe in the other hemisphere.

JUDGE: By “other”, do you mean “South” or “Eastern”?

ROACH: Both!!

[A collective gasp of shock.]

ROACH: Yes!! And for about a hundred years the descendants of these slaves toiled ceaselessly in exactly the sort of conditions that they would have done back in the Old World, only in this case their employers looked different from them!!

HECKLER ONE: THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!!

ROACH: It gets better. Eventually, the pale-skinned people freed the slaves on a whim, but not before six hundred thousand pale-skinned citizens of this very country died towards this end!!

HECKLER TWO: But surely there was more to it than THAT!!

[Judge gavels emphatically.]

JUDGE: ORDER IN THE COURT.

ROACH: My dear jurors: for reasons unknown, the descendants of those slaves struggled to become integrated into the mainstream society established by their pale-skinned captors and liberators. Even to this day, pale-skinned people live in fear of the descendants of these slaves!!

PROSECUTOR: Objection: is it not true that many of these pale-skinned people never even had ancestors who inhabited this hemisphere?

ROACH: On the contrary, the pale-skins ALL CAME FROM the Northern Hemisphere!!

JUDGE: Sustained. Continue your moving tale.

ROACH: The fact remains that anyone who looks like the original captors of these dark-skinned slaves is in perpetual debt to their descendants, for such is the only manner of fighting prejudice and injustice!!

JUDGE: Verily so.

[The crowd stirs in agreement.]

ROACH: Furthermore, were you to interview the thirteen per cent of this country’s population that is dark-skinned, you will swiftly find them unified in agreement that all, or at least most, if we are to be generous, pale-skinned people are prejudiced!!

HECKLER ONE: They all agree!! It’s SCIENCE!!

[Judge nods quietly, with approval.]

ROACH: Above all, we should take great care to remember the most recent global atrocity, one propagated by an Adolf Hitler. It is because we know that Hitler was wrong to such an extent that we could never be, so long as we are dark-skinned people, it is the obligation of this Court to suspend all of the conventions of due process in order to turn this into a partisan platform for dark-skinned people.

PROSECUTOR: Objection!!

JUDGE: Overruled.

ROACH: Because we wouldn’t want another RIOT, now would we? [Grins and winks at the camera.]

PROSECUTOR: Objection!!

JUDGE: OVERRULED.

PROSECUTOR: But Your Honour…

ROACH: The prosecution wants you to believe that this is a matter regarding personal accountability, universal appeals to justice in the wake of tragedy, and individual rights before the Law. But as we ALL know, the Individual has no rights; only GROUPS have rights.

PROSECUTOR: But the Constitution!!

JUDGE: OVERRULED!! [with the gavel.]

ROACH: I am certain that all of you agree that Adolf Hitler is the TRUE enemy here, notwithstanding the fact that he has been dead for fifty years.

HECKLER TWO: AND BLOODY WELL GOOD RIDDANCE TO JERRY, AYE!!

ROACH: As a partisan representative of a racial group that systematically blames and scapegoats a ruling class based on colour and collective opinion alone, and above ALL as a man with no consideration for the immediate facts of this case nor for individual rights, I am your best candidate in stopping Hitler.

PROSECUTOR: [With timid disbelief and mounting irony:] Objection…?

A JURY of ONE’S PEERS: [The entire auditorium, except for the speaker, though he mouths along ironically as he rolls his eyes:] OVERRULED!!!

ROACH: It is for THESE reasons that my client is innocent of all charges in the murder of a woman and a Jew.

HECKLER ONE: I must be in Heaven.

PROSECUTOR: Objection!! Murdering a woman and a Jew is exactly what Hitler would have done!!

JUDGE: Was the woman Jewish?

ROACH: She was GERMAN.

HECKLER TWO: THEY WANTS JERRY TO WALK!!

JUDGE: The jury may confer at this time. Meanwhile, does the family of the deceased have anything they wish to add??

VICTIM: Only that the defense attorney is an animal.

JUDGE: But this is simply scientific fact!!

ROACH: And it proves everything I said about pale-skinned people to be true!!

[Heckler Two delivers to Judge a paper.]

JUDGE: The jury has decided on a verdict of not guilty.

HECKLER ONE: Praise Jesus!!

JUDGE: Sustained. The Court will now welcome the next case.

ANNOUNCER:

[In a voice fit for television, radiating pomp and enthusiasm as though advertising a prize or a contestant on a game show:]

Our NEXT defendant is an African-American male, aged eighty years, who has spent the last fifty years educating the dark-skinned population of this country through his stand-up comedy, over twenty television programs and over a dozen movies, many of which he himself created and produced, fifteen musical albums, and…

JUDGE: We get the picture. Now, where were those charges again?

PROSECUTOR: I apologize; they were misplaced over ten years ago.

JUDGE: DAMN it. AGAIN?

PROSECUTOR: Your Honour, won’t this present a problem in securing evidence, given the statute of limitations?

JUDGE: Don’t worry about that, now. Oh, here we go: the charges!! Yes, I see. THAT many women, huh?

DEFENDER: Your Honour, out of the fifty-plus women who have made these accusations virally, not even ONE of them has been able to produce concrete evidence with which to convict my client, even before the Court of Public Opinion.

JUDGE: I see. And how does the Prosecution plead?

PROSECUTOR: Your Honour: ten years ago, when the defendant was already going blind and probably senile, he told a deposition lawyer that he touched a girl’s ass, that he could read social cues, and that he was carrying a POPULAR RECREATIONAL DRUG.

JUDGE: In the BLACK COMMUNITY?!?!

ROACH: UNHEARD of!!

PROSECUTOR: Why are you still here?

JUDGE: I see. And there still is not a SINGLE shred of evidence outside of that which has been produced in the forty years since this fateful tragedy befell?

PROSECUTOR: Nope. Only a lot of women – that’s right: WOMEN!! – who use a hashtag on social networking.

DEFENDER: And there is absolutely no chance that these women conspired to receive a payoff from a controversial and eccentric billionaire?

PROSECUTOR: Would you even RISK accusing an innocent victim of this??

JUDGE: Verily, it is easier to hang one man than fifty women.

DEFENDER: And there is absolutely no chance that at least SOME of these women were following the same sort of social mimicry that we see in chain suicides and copycat terrorism?

ROACH: What is this?? Nazi GERMANY??

[Whole room laughs.]

JUDGE: This Court has heard enough. It is apparent that if enough people believe something, it must be true, though it IS mildly disconcerting that not even ONE of these believers was able to produce evidence in forty years even before the Court of Public Opinion. But what do I know? I’m not one to Judge.

DAD: You are LITERALLY a—

JUDGE: OVERRULED.

DEFENDER: Your Honour. We have a witness who claims that the Plaintiff actually made a confession of her own that she was doing this whole thing for the money.

JUDGE: Was it a deposition?

DEFENDER: [Awkward pause.] No?

JUDGE: OVERRULED. [Judge gavels. Crowd cheers.]

DEFENDER: But your Honour…

JUDGE: Counselor. You are advised to remember that we do not live in a meritocracy where a man’s lifetime of achievement can outweigh something he did in the nineteen-seventies, so therefore this one interview where he admits to touching the Plaintiff’s ass is CLEARLY due cause to forget ALL of those achievements.

DAD: I was just being honest.

JUDGE: ORDER IN THE COURT.

DEFENDER: And if this is the state of affairs in our society, does it not suggest the POSSIBILITY that people might get money just by suing, or sue just for money?

ROACH: Does that upset you, as a lawyer?

DEFENDER: [Pause.] I see your point.

JUDGE: Then it is settled. America’s Dad will spend the remainder of his waning life segregated – yes, SEGREGATED – from all of his associates, family and friends, watching his legacy disintegrate before his legally blind eyes…

DAD: I’m not the only one who’s blind legally around here…

JUDGE: … in a high-security prison that is still open to the occasional vigilante’s drone strike. Case dismissed.

FEMINIST: HURRAY FOR VAGINAS EVERYWHERE!!

DAD: Hey, now wait a minute. My lawyer’s a joke. I want the guy who just got that murderer off the hook just for being black.

ROACH: You should have said THAT instead of telling kids not to steal pound cake.

DAD: AWW, come ON. Help me out, Ni…

[With an emphatic, final gavel:]

JUDGE: OVERRULED.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]