[Newspoetry] liberal olympics

[William Gillespie]

[JF: If this seems unfinished, you should probably finish it. If I were more
ambitious, I'd push to record it.]

Liberal Olympics

William: Welcome to the Liberal Olympics. In tonight's heated, nonviolent match,
three upstanding Urbana citizens are competing to see who has the clearest
conscience paired with the most thorough analysis of social problems -- local
and global -- and how they themselves might be implicated.

Joe: Right you are, William. This is the final round and only one winner will
walk away from this match. Our first finalist is Steven Tercel, a local
businessman who owns a locally-owned grocery store.

Steven: That's a natural food collective, Joe, uh, and also, I think the term
"businessman" is misleading, I'd rather you called me a "organizer."

Joe and William: A "organizer"?

Steven: That's right.

William: Thanks, Steven. Our second finalist is Lucy Biotic. Lucy works part
time bagging groceries for a much larger  "natural food collective."

Lucy: It's just a grocery store. It's just a job. It's not part of who I am.

Joe: Right!

Lucy: Why did you introduce the male first?

Steven: Hey, I'm not-

Joe: Oh my! Hear that sound? That gong means Lucy has just won a years supply of
Ben and Jerrys ice cream!

William: Okay, let's meet our third and final contestant: Vanessa Gonzalez-Kim.
Vanessa is still in school, am I right Vanessa?

Vanessa: Thanks, no, well, I'm a professional student. I'm a Marxist Feminist.

(fanatical cheering from the studio audience)

William: A-ha!

Joe: That's a big word! Well, in an hour, we'll know exactly which of these
contestansts is farther to the left. And how far. Our first competition tonight
is recycling. And we're going to take our contestants down to the bins and the
compost arena. While we do that, the results of the personality test conducted
earlier by our judges are coming in. During the personlity test we asked the
contestants which periodicals they subscribe to, what they eat and drink, their
favorite films, what kind of music they listen to, what kinds of clothes they
wear, what products they've bought, what turns them on, and how they voted in
the past five elections.

William: We're going to be back with some slow-motion instant replay of critical
interview moments, right after this word from Rainforest Beer.