A short play

Banksy, “The Banality of the Banality of Evil” (2013)

EXEC: what do we do about jeff lord

HR: we can say his schtick of calling black people racists is tiresome and inconsistent with our editorial direction

EXEC: that’s all he’s ever done, though

HR: yeah

EXEC: like it’s basically the reason we hired him

HR: yeah

EXEC: calling black people racists is super popular

HR: I know

EXEC: he could object and he’d kind of have a point

HR: maybe we could say we’ve changed our editorial direction

EXEC: no then I look dumb

HR: ok

EXEC: he is pretty racist now that I think about it

HR: yeah we’ve had complaints

EXEC: I guess hiring him as a commentator in the first place was kind of racist

HR: lol who are you, my anonymous complaints inbox

EXEC: lol

EXEC: we didn’t do anything about the complaints though did we

HR: god no

EXEC: lol

HR: lol

EXEC: so what else can we do

HR: we can say he said nono words and completely divorce them from context and then if people complain we can say hm very telling that you are the one who is defending the racist, never wondered about you before, very hm indeed

EXEC: why would we do that

HR: well then we can fire anyone whenever we want because people say dumb shit all the time

EXEC: what did he even say?

HR: he said “seig heil” to some guy at media matters

EXEC: that’s awesome

HR: well he was obviously trying to call the other guy a nazi. like it was in the column they were talking about. he calls liberals nazis all the time

EXEC: he’s sort of a nazi himself though. like everybody says

HR: sure whatever

EXEC: who cares lol okay let’s do that one

HR: lol okay

EXEC: lol

HR: lol

Author: samthielman

Sam Thielman is a reporter and critic based in Brooklyn, New York. His blog is samthielman.com, his twitter handle is @samthielman, and if you can't find him you should check The Strand.

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