NOAM walks into the bar.
NOAM: Hello, everybody.
EVERYBODY: NOAM!
CLIFF: How’s it hangin’, Noamie?
NOAM: American Democracy is cheap facade whose only purpose is to conceal the corporate puppet masters pulling the strings of our so-called leaders.
WOODY: Hey Mr. Chomsky, how’s Vera doing these days?
NOAM: Interpersonal relationships, even romantic ones, have been rendered all but pointless by the commodification of human emotion. If something does not fit into a prefab Disney-approved mold, or can not be altered with Pfizer’s drugs…
CARLA: Yo, Einstein, I told you to knock it off with all that junk about all of us being ground slowly under the heel of Wall Street. People just wanna relax with a beer after work and you’re bumming them out. Even the weird chubby guy with glasses who has no name.
PAUL: My name is Paul.
CLIFF: Seriously? I thought it was Glenn.
PAUL: In an early episode, yeah, but then they expanded the role a bit to…
NOAM: Your role within the capitalist sphere will only be expanded to the extent that you can aid your corporate masters. Do their bidding and they will be happy to extend the walls of your prison cell by an inch or two.
CARLA: Sam, can we do something about this bozo?
SAM: Not now, Carla, I got my eye on a hot tomato at 3 o’clock.
NOAM: Agriculture has been perverted by the Franken-science purveyors of Monsanto and its ilk, who attempt to “patent” what took nature millions of years to…
CARLA: Sam’s talkin’ about a broad, Poindexter, not real tomatoes. You had something to do with this, didn’t you, Diane?
DIANE: I admit, I invited Professor Chomsky here because I attended one of his lectures at MIT and believed he might raise the level of discourse in this establishment a tad. But I must concur that his line of inquiry is not exactly appropriate for happy hour.
NOAM: Time itself is now granted you by your corporate taskmasters, who “allow” you to enjoy weekends off and expect you to be grateful for the gift of your own hours, happy or otherwise.
GLENN: Listen, pal, we just wanna come here and…hey, I just said my name is Paul. Why is my name Glenn again?
CLIFF: Whatta ya talkin’ about, Glenn? Your name was always Glenn. Ain’t that right, guys?
Entire bar nods in agreement.
GLENN: Something weird’s going on here…
NOAM: They have all fallen down the memory hole, Glenn. Your past has been rewritten in real time, and, knowingly or not, your so-called friends have all fallen in line. No doubt at the behest of the CIA, or NSA, or perhaps some other intelligence organization we’ve yet to discover, all of them mining our personal data to further quote-unquote American interests.
GLENN: I’m gettin’ kinda scared. Maybe this guy is right. Maybe we are all just cogs in a corporate machine of our own making.
CARLA: Enough! No more of this “through the looking glass” nonsense. Hit the bricks, buddy!
CARLA bum rushes NOAM out the front door.
CARLA: No more eggheads in my bar, you hear me?
DIANE: I will keep that in mind for the future. However, I did invite one other distinguished scholar to visit tonight.
Door flies open.
RICHARD DAWKINS: Good evening, all. Which of you would care to debate with me the childish fairy-tale belief in a higher power?
Bar clears out.