This is an excerpt from my play Regrets Only. Hank, a successful designer, and Tibby, his socialite best friend, are discussing America. In the original production, they were played by the glorious George Grizzard and Christine Baranski, pictured above.
HANK:…and so I decided to actually read the Constitution.
TIBBY: You went to the library?
HANK: Please. I Googled it. And I looked at all of the twenty-seven amendments. And most of them are very big-hearted: they free the slaves, or give women the vote. And the one that tried to stop people from doing something, Prohibition, that didn’t work out so well.
TIBBY: Can you imagine? No liquor anywhere? Not even a cocktail?
HANK: What would we do?
TIBBY: We could drive.
HANK: And then I went even further back, to the Declaration of Independence. Remember that line? “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” – sorry, ladies -“that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…”
TIBBY: Their Creator?
HANK: Don’t start. And it says that among these inalienable rights, the ones we’re all endowed with, are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And when I read that, do you believe I wept, but then I had the most awful thought. And I was so ashamed of myself, because I am just so politically askew, but when I read that wonderful, perfect goal, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, do you know what I thought?
TIBBY: Of course. It’s so gay.
HANK: Exactly!
TIBBY: It’s like a party invitation.
HANK: We could’ve written it.
TIBBY: And do you know, maybe that’s the whole problem, with this country, and this world.
HANK: What?
TIBBY: That no one listens to us.
