CALL IT CONSPIRACY!

OPEN: "Simpson's" intro. BART at blackboard writing "WE DO NEED THOUGHT CONTROL. WE DO NEED THOUGHT CONTROL." Intro continues, standard bits of biz ending with SIMPSONS converging on couch as, at their feet, identical SIMPSONS burst out of pods and move towards them as we cut to:     


EXTERIOR: Some kind of rustic, log-cabin retreat in a redwood forrest somewhere in California. Title effect: 1980. Place is unidentified, but probably Bohemian Grove--that famous retreat for the rich and famous
originally created for writers and artists. An owl flies by. We hear a gunshot. Go to...


FLAG: Stylized pyramid with floating eye in capstone. Caption: THE ILLUMINATI GROUP...we've got our eye on YOU! Go to...


INTERIOR: a rustic cabin. Everything polished, oiled. A globe, chairs, a long wooden table. Rustic...but much too clean, much too upscale. Arcane symbols on the wall. Antlers, bleached skulls and various severed, stuffed 'n mounted animal heads in assorted ricti on various plaques on the wooden walls. Subliminal flash of human head. MR. BURNS, SMITHERS, BILL GATES, KISSINGER and others are seated at the table. BURNS rings a bell...

BURNS: Meeting called to order, and, to dispense with formalities we shall procede posthaste to item number one: keep the black man under our iron heel. As I recall we were pursuing a pharmacological angle. Any progress on that?

NORIEGA: Oh, yes sir.

BURNS: You really should do something about that horrible acne, you know.

NORIEGA: I am sorry, sir. But as to the--our labs have come up with a promising development. We shall be making a new kind of cocaine...(laughing)...we shall make it the "people's drug." A drug for black people...

BURNS: Cocaine. That's quite pricey, isn't it?

NORIEGA: But we have a new process.

BURNS: "Freebasing," of course. I read the penny dreadfuls you know.

NORIEGA: No sir. That did not prove...

BURNS: That's what happened to that black fellow, you know, the comedian -- he's got quite a mouth on him, hasn't he? Quite blue. What's his name, Smithers?

SMITHERS: Richard Pryor, sir.

NORIEGA: But that is not the process, sir--that was "freebasing." We call this "crack." A crystallized form which is inhaled--in these much more potent. Cheaper. (holding out a crack pipe)  They will smoke it with this.

BURNS: (taking pipe) And we can sell them these...alembics, or whatever the term is.

NORIEGA: Crack pipes.

BURNS: Yes, yes.

NORIEGA: The result will be social disruption in the black community...

BURNS: A tranquilizer dart for those horrible "Black Panthers" as it were.

SMITHERS: ...and we'll confirm the perception in the white community that young black men are dangerous criminals.

BURNS: Yes--which will keep everyone apart, afraid--a boost to the police while the lower orders shant be passing crib notes--quite standard. But what of the white backlash? Norman Lear's made that quite unpopular, hasn't he? Racism's the sin that dare not speak its name these days--something wrong Smithers?

SMITHERS: (blushing) No sir.

BURNS: (on a roll) You're stirring the pot, as it were, but how to we bring this pot to market and get all and sundry to eat from it--why is everyone looking at me like that?

(Nobody gets what he's saying. They all look at him blankly, like a bunch of dull students)

BURNS: You haven't a clue amonst you, do you? My rhetorical tropes leave you quite behind -- that's what happens when you don't teach Latin.

NORIEGA: My teacher was most cruel. The gerunds...

BURNS: Damn it, to speak plainly, we're stirring up certain racist impulses! How do we make the public expression of these impulses acceptable?

SMITHERS: We've found a way.

BURNS: How?

SMITHERS: (picking up a large bible) With this sir.

BURNS: Some sort of tent show sort of thing...tub-thumping...

PAT ROBERTSON: We'll be calling it "family values"

BURNS: Ah! Inherit the Wind" meets "Ozzie and Harriet." Squeaky-clean, but demagogic. I like it!