Garrison Keillor: A summer day in the suburbs of Chicago and the lawnmowers are out. (MOWER PASSING) Liberal families have hybrid solar-powered mowers (QUIET HUM) and Republicans have enormous rider mowers (BIG ENGINE STARTING) with air-conditioned cabs and sound systems (HIP HOP) and a gun rack on the back, even if you have a tiny lawn, you can mow it in 45 seconds (TWO FAST SWIPES WITH BIG MOWER).
People are holding yard sales. People are trying to sell off their VHS tape collection, for money. A sign of early onset dementia. (JUNK)
Kids graduating from school work hard on their hair (HAIRDRYER) to get that careless insouciant look, or if you come from liberal parents and you want to scare the pants off them, you shave your head (BUZZ).
The problem for suburban teenagers is boredom. Excruciating boredom. Back in the day, we spent the summer learning how to smoke and drink and how to have sex. But kids don't do those things anymore. Girls today need to feel loved to have sex and boys need to have sex to feel loved, so mostly they work out their sexual longings playing violent video games. (VIDEO SFX, GUNFIRE EXPLOSIONS) Except the children of liberals who go to camp where they talk about sex. (FN TEEN: So I am going like, Yes of course I respect you, of course I do, my god yes, and so she is like crying, and I am like.....)
And the big evangelical megachurches just get bigger and bigger (FN EVANGELIST W REVERB: And in the book of Revelations.....chapter four.....verse seven.......we read......), they're meeting on football fields, congregations of fifty-thousand and a hundred thousand, and the Unitarians are about one-tenth of one-percent of the population, and they're standing out on the corner, evangelizing. (TRAFFIC PASSING)
FN: We believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every human being! CARS PASSING FAST.
FN: Cooperation not conflict! (CARS PASSING)
Squirrels are eating the birdseed (SQUIRRELS). People pay big bucks for squirrelproof birdfeeder gizmos (BOINNGGGG, RATCHET, GIZMO SFX) and none of them work. The Republican homeowner is not afraid to use force (SHOTGUN BLASTS) while the liberal homeowner captures squirrels in a live trap (GENTLE SNAP OF DOOR) and drives them to a small animal rescue center up north (SQUIRRELS), which, unbeknownst to him, is run by Republicans. (SHOTGUN BLASTS)