Joan Wile - Old but Cool

Here's a little playlet I wrote right after Obama trounced Hillary in South Carolina. Enjoy!

BILL AND HILL PILLOW TALK POST SOUTH CAROLINA ELECTION

by Joan Wile, Founder-Director, Grandmothers Against the War, and author,
"Grandmothers Against the War: Getting off Our Fannies and Standing up
for Peace," to be published by Citadel Press, April 29, 2008

HILL: NOW look what you've done! I TOLD you to lay off Obama. I KNEW it would backfire.

BILL: He said Reagan was transformative and I wasn't! Do you think I'd let him get away with that? And he'd take away my image as the first Black President.

HILL: This campaign isn't about YOU, Bill, it's MY turn.

BILL: Don't give me that crap. There'd BE no you without me. Do you think you could possibly ever have dreamed of being a senator, let alone PRESIDENT, without my popularity? This campaign LOOKS like it's about you on the surface, but we all know it's really about ME. Suck it up!

HILL: Now, just hold on there, buster. If it hadn't been for ME, you'd never have BEEN President in the first place. If I'd gone ahead and left you when I found out about Jennifer Flowers and all the others, how far do you think you'd have gotten? Remember the deal you begged me to agree to? You said if I'd play along and deny, deny, you'd set it up for me to run for the Senate someday. Then when you got caught with that fat little whore, you promised me the Presidency if I'd stick around. There'd be no YOU without ME, and don't you forget it. So, you'd better shut up and let me call the shots from now on.

BILL: Let YOU call the shots along with that gang of sycophant idiots around you? Are you serious? Do you know how hard it was for me to figure out a strategy to get you out from under your vote for the Iraq war? Do you have any idea how I sweated to position you as a dove, not the hawk you've been since Bush started his garbage about WMDs in Iraq?

HILL: What was I supposed to do -- stand on principle and risk killing my good ratings? My polls showed that the American people were in FAVOR of bombing Iraq.

BILL: And, you didn't listen to me when I told you to forget about that ridiculous resolution to ban flag burning. What the hell were you thinking? You knew there hasn't been a public flag burning for years, and you're going to be ridiculed about it for a long time. Don't you think people were wondering why you came up with that in the middle of a war where our troops were dying every single day?

HILL: Well, I had to do SOMEthing to appeal to the neocons. I need their votes and I couldn't think of anything else.

BILL: That's right, you COULDN'T. You listen to ME from now on and you won't come up with limp ideas like that.

HILL: i don't care, you've got to stop going around half-cocked like that. I insist that you tone down the rhetoric. And, another thing. I think you're ambivalent about my winning the Presidency, and that's why you're screwing up so much. You WANT me to win so that you can get back in the White House, but you want me to LOSE because you can't stand the thought of me being President and stealing your spotlight.

BILL: That's a load of B.S. I want you to be President ...... as long as you let me pull the strings. You know you haven't a clue on your own. And, remember -- you'll push for a reversal of the two-term limit or I'll leak the truth about Whitewater.

HILL: If you think I'm going to have a co-presidency, forget it. I'm going to do it alone. You can just attend to the dinners and the decorating. I was stuck doing that stuff ever since you were Governor. Now, see how YOU like it.

BILL: Oh, yeah? We'll see how far you get on your own. Maybe I'll just walk out before the Inauguration.

HILL: DON'T YOU DARE! (throws pillow at him.)

BILL: SHREW! (throws pillow back.)

HILL: HAS-BEEN! (pushes him. They tussle, both winding up on the floor.)


END OF SCENE