LITERATE APE

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The Fear of Human Failing and the Culture That Breeds It

By Don Hall


SCENE: Jerusalem. In front of a great stone temple. A crowd has gathered, readying to stone to death an accused adulterer. A tall, pretty sexy cat (think a young Denzel Washington) in a robe and sandals approaches the crowd and intervenes.

DENZEL: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

The crowd mutters their disapproval but cannot deny the logic of the man who will play Malcom X 2,000 years later. They start to disperse.

KID WITH AN ANACHRONISTIC LAPTOP: Wait! I haveth a YouTube of this man's infidelity! Looketh thou and pick up thy stones and bash him to death!

OLD JEW: "You Tube...?"

PAPARAZZO: Heed my words! This man was seen by mine own eye — whilst I was spying on him from behindeth a withered fig tree — telling his children that self-esteem is earned, not given. And his daughter CRIED!! Stone him!

OLD JEW: And did you see the hottie he was committing adultery with? She was much better looking than my wives! Get that guilty fucker!!

OTHER JEW: And he's black skinned! That MUST mean he deserves to be stoned!

KID WITH LAPTOP: We're all black-skinned, dude.

OTHER JEW: Not according to the Catholic Church who by force and Crusades and the intentional prevention of its parishioners to read anything from the Bible for, like, 1,500 years established their right to be right! If he had been fair-skinned, we could forgive his sin more readily unless, of course, he tried to get his skin white and then he's just a freaky dude. STONE THE BLACK GUY!

And the crowd, reinvigorated, throws rocks at the man until he is battered to death. DENZEL (just like in Glory) allows a single tear to stream down his righteously indignant cheek.

END SCENE