ThoughtGallery.org > Kevin Bleyer with Ben Smith: On Rewriting the Constitution

Kevin Bleyer with Ben Smith: On Rewriting the Constitution

As citizens of the United States of America, we have made a terrible mistake.

We have put our faith in a two-centuries old document written by drunk farmers, scrawled on animal skin, composed in the language of the country it was intended to spurn and not for nothing, scribbled in handwriting with the quill of a goose.

We think of our Constitution as the painstakingly designed blueprint drawn up by an “assembly of demigods” who laid the foundation for the sturdiest republic ever created. The truth is, it was no blueprint at all but an Etch A Sketch, a haphazard series of blunders, shaken clean and redrawn countless times during a summer of petty debates, drunken ramblings and desperate compromise. No wonder Thomas Jefferson insisted it be rewritten every nineteen years. He knew that even an assembly of demigods can be a confederacy of dunces. Even a constitution can be made more perfect.

Thankfully, Kevin Bleyer, the Emmy Award-winning writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and contributor to President Obama’s speeches (the funny ones), has turned his formidable wit and questionable insight to the most significant literary event of the twenty-first, twentieth, nineteenth and latter part of the eighteenth centuries: a complete rewrite of the United States Constitution.

Join Kevin, author of Me the People: One Man’s Selfless Quest to Rewrite the Constitution and BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith for a wide-ranging, eye-opening, and quill-shaking conversation on our Constitution – where it goes wrong, where it goes right and how we might drag it into the twenty-first century.











When: Mon., Jul. 9, 2012 at 7:00 pm
Where: 92nd Street Y - Tribeca
200 Hudson St.

Price: From $15
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As citizens of the United States of America, we have made a terrible mistake.

We have put our faith in a two-centuries old document written by drunk farmers, scrawled on animal skin, composed in the language of the country it was intended to spurn and not for nothing, scribbled in handwriting with the quill of a goose.

We think of our Constitution as the painstakingly designed blueprint drawn up by an “assembly of demigods” who laid the foundation for the sturdiest republic ever created. The truth is, it was no blueprint at all but an Etch A Sketch, a haphazard series of blunders, shaken clean and redrawn countless times during a summer of petty debates, drunken ramblings and desperate compromise. No wonder Thomas Jefferson insisted it be rewritten every nineteen years. He knew that even an assembly of demigods can be a confederacy of dunces. Even a constitution can be made more perfect.

Thankfully, Kevin Bleyer, the Emmy Award-winning writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and contributor to President Obama’s speeches (the funny ones), has turned his formidable wit and questionable insight to the most significant literary event of the twenty-first, twentieth, nineteenth and latter part of the eighteenth centuries: a complete rewrite of the United States Constitution.

Join Kevin, author of Me the People: One Man’s Selfless Quest to Rewrite the Constitution and BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith for a wide-ranging, eye-opening, and quill-shaking conversation on our Constitution – where it goes wrong, where it goes right and how we might drag it into the twenty-first century.

Buy tickets/get more info now