“It’s terrible, dude!”
“What is?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“All I know, dude, is that I’m tryin’ to complete this Black Ops mission without gettin’ killed. And you ain’t helpin’.”
“Bad analogy, dude. Gabrielle Giffords damn near got herself killed, and she wasn’t playin’ no game.”
“Gabriel who? Look, if he volunteered to go to Afghanistan, then he knew what …”
“She wasn’t in Afghanistan, dude! She was in flippin’ Tuscon! Doin’ her job as her district’s congressional representative. An’ some asswipe who didn’t like her politics tried to blow her away. Along with a judge and half a dozen other people.”
“I’m sorry, dude. Will she make it?”
“With a bullet through the head? She might wish she hadn’t. Assumin’ o’ course that she’s capable of wishin’ anythin’.”
“Dude.”
“We gotta do somethin’ ’bout this, dude!”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Whaddaya mean ‘like what?’ Y’really wanna live in a country where people are takin’ potshots at each other all the time? If we don’t do somethin’ to stop it …”
“Dude?”
“Yeah?”
“I thought you liked hip-hop. Ain’t you listened to any of it? What the hell else is it about ‘cept people wipin’ each other out ’cause they didn’t like how they was thinkin’? Any one o’ them rappers could buy you outa petty cash. An’ you can’t turn on AM radio no more without hearin’ ever’body on it screamin’ threats an’ murder at ever’one else. An’ the screamers’re flyin’ private jets to get to their speakin’ engagements. Dude, this is what the people of this country are buyin’. They like it this way. An’ you ain’t but one dude what no one listens to nohow. You ain’t gonna be able to do a thing about it.”
“But …”
“Dude?”
“What?”
“I’m losin’ points here. Go bother some other dude, willya?”