“The award winning History of Liberty City documentary series is now the essential DVD box set that makes you feel instantly smart. Learning is easy when the TV teaches you things. Who doesn't love Public Television's long-winded documentaries that take two weeks to watch and consists of a bunch of slow boring camera pans across old pictures?”
The documentary explains the history of Liberty City from the Colonial era through the Revolutionary War. Liberty City's history nearly parallel's New York City's history. The show is sponsored by the Bank of Liberty and Public Broadcasting Corporation.
Several of the pictures shown in the documentary are real-life, 16th- and 17th-century items from New Amsterdam, such as when Prof. Peterson tells about how terrible the maps were back then, this map of New Amsterdam is shown.
Liberty City used to be a remote Dutch trading post called New Rotterdam. On September 4, 1609, Horatio Humboldt, an English explorer hired by the Dutch to find a new place to sell weed, steered his ship into the mouth of a river coincidentally named the Humboldt by the local natives (based on Humboldt's writings). According to journals by the ship's crew, the river had already been polluted by natives expelling waste into the river. Unknowingly, Humboldt had stumbled onto what would become "the great sociological experiment the world had ever seen", to determine if all the people in the world could live together in a single place.
The first European colony in the region was founded by the Dutch, who preached about liberal values but really cared about pimping women and getting high and were probably "the first rappers". The Dutch wanted to find a place where they could party and kill people. Unlike other cities in the New World that were founded to promote religious intolerance, New Rotterdam was founded so Europeans can get rich off of other people's work. The natives were savages, wearing little clothes, but they were dealt with.
New Rotterdam quickly expanded its ego and learned to hate everyone else. It proclaimed itself the capital of the world. Advertisements were sent to Europe promising settlers a new life in a new city that has 24-hour convenience stores, roller coasters, and entertaining nightly hangings.
Europe wanted to come to see what freedom is really like. When they arrived, they were aghast in America's new pastime of "Watching animals fuck and betting on it". The city spread and chose an island in the bay which they called Algonquin, after the old Indian word "Al-gon-coo-win," thought by some to mean "place for condo skyscrapers" and by others as "island to catch an STD."
In 1625, the first ships of slaves arrived to give the Americans, from the tyranny of Europe, to focus on the important things in life. The economy boomed. The slave craze was huge; people would wait in line for days to own their very own person and then put them online for a higher price. Some dissenters wondered about the moral consequences of the nation founded on genocide, slavery, and theft, but they were quickly imprisoned as unpatriotic.
That year, all the local indigenous tribes were brought together and paid for the greatest real estate deal in the history of the world: 14,000 acres of real estate for some spare change, a porno magazine, and front-row tickets for a game of cricket.
The Dutch had plentiful resources. They traded beaver skins, a 17th-century version of wife swapping.
The gateway to the New World was also a den of inequity. The campaign to clean up the city began almost as soon as the city was founded. In the spring of 1647, the Dutch East India Trading Company hired a cross-dressing director general for New Rotterdam named Gloria Hole (based on Peter Stuyvesant) to return civility and productivity to the colony.
Within weeks, Hole banned many activities, including drinking alcohol, smoking, fornicating with Native Americans, Texas Holdem, missing church, anal beads and laughter. He also imposed strict fines for male camel toe and whistling in public. This wasn't well received and the city was burned to the ground.
Within a few years, New Rotterdam had become so diverse that the Dutch had become a minority in their own colony. Diversity was troubling to them, and with diversity came peril.
Taxes were reduced so everyone could afford their own firearm and a pattern for the country is now set in stone. Armed, ignorant, and scared xenophobes tried to protect their borders.
The Birth of a New Nation[]
Soon, the people of Liberty City began to fight with the British over taxes. Americans saw that they shouldn't have to pay any taxes. So began the American Revolution. This war was agitated by a number of musket companies who knew they would win whatever the outcome. The revolution was bloody. Soon, the Frenchjoined the war to help the struggling American insurgency.
The revolution quickly ended. Residents pulled down the statue of King George and melted it into gold items, including chains, teeth, and toilet seats. The Union Jack was taken down, replaced with the Stars and Stripes, and the newly liberated Americans celebrated. Although though they were free, they lived in squalor. Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson came to change to agrarian-based slave economy to a service one. With slaves being outlawed in the Northern states, women were forced to service men.
To keep the country moving forward, the capital of the nation was moved from Liberty City to a malaria swamp on the banks of the Potomac. The stage was set for organized crime and mobs to make a difference. The city soon became the microcosm of all the contrasting elements of modern life.
The 19th Century[]
Despite the fact that Liberty City had high prices, corrupt police, and strippers with annoying Russian accents, immigrants came in masses, especially the Irish, who were told that America was a place with gold coins, gay unicorns, and that American women were easy to get into bed with when they heard a foreign accent. Soon, small numbers of Irish immigration exploded. The Irish, who were too busy drinking, chasing rainbows, and having sex with midgets, forgot to grow potatoes. One-eighth of the Irish population came to Liberty City in 15 minutes. Local merchants liked the sudden influx of Irish immigration because they could pay them less money than African Americans.
A series of riots then broke out every evening afterwards due to the fact that television had not been invented yet. These included working-class riots against the upper class, anti-Irish riots, anti-black riots, anti-English riots, soccer riots, pacifist riots, and "girl-on-girl hot riots". At the same time, another massive influx of immigrants, this time from the South, occurred after Southerners heard that Liberty City was a more racist place than the South, and that they could hate people from all over the world there.
The city's first newspaper, The Liberty Tree, was first published in 1835. When the Liberty Tree criticized politicians for robbing the public, the public criticized the media for institutional bias. Residents then demanded less political coverage, and more coverage of moral degeneracy, sex, and rapes, which were always on page three.
Bankers wanted to show that they could destabilize society as well as anyone, and when The Exchangecollapsed in 1857, the bankers made off extremely rich, and the poor got poorer, with no Social Security or Medicare to help them.
A massive public works project was then completed to help the city feel better about itself, Middle Park; however, the park had a long series of rules, banning people other than whites (like African American), working class vehicles (such as lowriders and hybrid carriages), picnics, blowjobs, walking on the grass, "fruity exercises," and sports. It permitted wanking from 5PM to 7AM.
Construction then began on the Broker Bridge after Broker residents complained of how rowing across the Humboldt River was abysmal, and manic-depressives complained that there was nothing tall enough to jump off of to commit suicide. Construction caused organized crime to boom, and residents were given a new place to dump bodies.
The Civil War[]
The South believed that the Northern customs, such as education, arts, and interacting with people of other races, was a threat to them, so Southern states began to secede from the Union.
In 1863, the first draft was announced. Drunk and angry, wielding iron bars, ninja swords, knives, shurikens, and other weapons, citizens protested the draft. The telegraph lines were cut off. As a result, Liberty City was in anarchy. To show the South that people from Liberty City weren't "two-faced bigots," they burned down an orphanage full of black children.
After hard fighting, a lot of cheap novels, and terrible speeches, the war ended. The reason the war took a long time was the length it took to pack a rifle, and because of the South's slow lifestyle.
The Turn of the Century[]
When the war ended, the art of leisure began on Firefly Island, where there were hot dog eating contests, condoms in the water, de-railing roller coasters, and freak shows.
Construction of the Liberty City Subway then began, with the first station opening in 1874; however, the first train was not constructed until 1879, so people were kept waiting at the station for another five years. With the subway and the Broker Bridge, the advent of the suburbs began, where people could commute to work and live among their own kind. This allowed Algonquin to become the center of Liberty City, where they built skyscrapers and looked down on other boroughs.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the city's overcrowding, impressiveness, and grandiose, along with the invention of the automobile, allowed it to take its modern form.
Quiz[]
There is a quiz on Rockstar's site testing the reader's knowledge in the history of Liberty City. Here are the questions and answers.
Q: Why did Europeans move to Liberty City?
A: The Dutch wanted a place to sell weed and women.
Q: What was the price of the first prostitute?
A: A swift blow to the back of the head.
Q: Why was Middle Park built?
A: To provide junkies with a scenic background for drug use.
Q: What is Alderney best known for?
A: Being a swamp with soccer moms.
A: Being named after a shitty island off France where old people go to die.
A: Being the home of the 80's power ballad.
A: Juiced-up guys in cheap jewelry and tight t-shirts and fake-baked, chain smoking girls with big hair.
A: Being a place where people from Algonquin go to dump dead bodies.
Q: The first theater show in Star Junction was...
A: Heavily censored by right-wing government.
Q: The Statue of Happiness...
A: ...was presented to the USA by France in 1886 to mark 100 years free from British food and spelling.
Q: What is the famous Screamer in Firefly Island?
A: A wooden roller coaster built by drunk Europeans.
Q: What is the weapon of choice among Liberty City residents?
A: Talking about sports while grabbing their anatomy.
Q: What is the average time lapse between consumption of a Liberty City hot dog and the onset of chronic diarrhea?
A: They are simultaneous.
Q: What is the Monoglobe in Meadow Park, Dukes?
A: A relic from the Liberty City World Fair that they could not be bothered to take down.
The minimum score is 1 out of 10. There is no reward given for 10/10.
Video[]
Transcript[]
Part 1[]
Transcript
Narrator:
Tonight, a major TV event. Part one of the story of a remote Dutch trading post that would become the armpit of the world. It captured our imagination, and held our dreams close to its breasts, gently drowning us in a milky discharge. It is the sight of some of mankind's most grandiose achievements, and also, our society's most squalid and depraved debaucheries. A History of Liberty.
(Violin starts playing)
Narrator:
Major support for this documentary is brought to you by the Bank of Liberty, and the Public Broadcasting Corporation...
(A man can be heard snoring)
Narrator:
...where our budget is cut every year and paid for more bombs.
Narrator:
If you take a look at the microcosm that is Liberty City, millions of people, a collective consciousness but utterly alone in a crowd, a million souls crying out to be heard, piled on top of each other, like kittens in a bag – all wanting to kill each other, or suck from society's teat. It is a city with so much history. It is the history of the modern world, particularly for people who can't use a map... and like sweeping generalizations. A history of decadence. A history of corruption. A history of Liberty.
Narrator:
On September 4th, 1609, Horatio Humboldt, an English explorer hired by the Dutch to find a new place to sell weed, steered his trusty ship into the mouth of a great river... The Humboldt, which he wrote in his log...
Narrator (as Horatio Humboldt):
"It is a strange and fortuitous coincidence that lush future sight of commerce coincidentally shares the same name as me, for the locals call it, the Hum...boldt! Honestly!"
That being said, looking through contemporary journals, even then, the Humboldt River was, was, was, was a polluted mess! The Cheekasacka Indians would SHIT and-and-and PISS right in the river! It wasn't safe to swim in! With that knowledge, it makes it much easier to ignore the awful genocide and epic larceny our forefathers committed, and talk about big ideas in grandiose terms and hope we get book deals!
(Cha-ching!)
Narrator:
Horatio Humboldt had stumbled into the natural harbor that would become the greatest sociological experiment the world had ever seen to determine if all the people in the world could live together in a single place.
The answer is, of course, no. Liberty City was founded by the Dutch, and all the Dutch cared about was appearing to be purveyors of liberal values, but all they really cared about was pimping women and getting high!
(Match lit, followed by a bubbling noise, a man coughing, and people cheering)
Gertrude Leneau:
They were in effect, well, I guess...the first rappers. They wanted to find a place where they could party and kill people! Knowing this, it does make the act of highway robbery that our forefathers committed with regards to the Dutch a lot easier to forget and...and we simply mask it in patriotic foundation myths.
Narrator:
Unlike other cities in the new world founded to facilitate new forms of religious persecution by lunatics who'd been run out of Europe by liberals, Liberty City was founded not to promote religious intolerance, but instead the other central tenant of Western European society: getting rich off of other people's work.
(Cha-ching!)
(Tribal chanting)
Gertrude Leneau:
You have to understand that when the Europeans arrived, the people that met them were savages! Can you imagine landing in a foreign land and being surrounded by men in loincloths? It's sort of hard to concentrate on fending off bubonic plague, or, or sleeping with your pretty little 14 year old wife when there are savages with no clothes running around. Luckily, we had a few tricks up our sleeve for dealing with them.
(Screaming and manslaughter)
(Peaceful piano begins)
Narrator:
When Liberty City was founded at the beginning of the modern age it quickly expanded its ego and learned to hate everyone else. Cities that were 3,000 years old couldn't hold a candle to the undisputed, self-appointed capital of the world.
Professor Peterson:
Oh, the maps were really really shitty back then, I mean, I don't know if it was the drink or the scurvy or the raging syphilis passed about by the town bike, but look at this map! It's like a Spaniard with polio painted it! It's one of the reasons people took so long to get anywhere, I mean, I mean, the shitty maps!
Gertrude Leneau:
The other reason was the savages!
Narrator:
(Ahem!) Advertisements were sent back to Europe promising settlers a new life in a new city that had 24-hour convenience stores, roller coasters, and the entertainment of a nightly hanging at the gallows.
(Rope creaking while children cheer)
Narrator:
All the things civilization had brought to bear on this land.
(Upbeat violin music begins)
Narrator:
All of Europe wanted to come see what freedom was really like.
(Horse neighing)
Narrator:
When they arrived, they were aghast at America's new pastime...
(People booing, accompanied by a dog barking)
Narrator:
Watching animals fuck, and betting on it.
Gordon Peterson:
Uh, yes, well, this truly was the city of the future!
Narrator:
Word spread, so did the settlement. They chose the slender island in the bay, which they called Algonquin, after the old Indian word "al-gon-coo-win", thought by some to mean "place for condo skyscraper", and by others as "island to catch an STD".
SFX:
(Woman moaning and clown horn honks as a man gropes her boob)
Narrator:
In 1625, right after the colony was founded, the first ship of slaves arrived to give the hard working, morally upstanding, non-hypocritical Americans, newly free from the tyranny of Europe, time to focus on important things in life, like yelling at their women for buying too much shit in the strip mall.
Gordon Peterson:
The new economy was a boom! It was very different from failed Jamestown--
(People yelling in a crowd)
Gordon Peterson (cont'd):
--where a bunch of incest-loving cannibals consumed each other in an orgiastic fury of self-important nonsense, although the exact nature of the differences escapes me just at this moment, but regardless, Liberty City gave the white settlers plenty of time to focus on the important things, like um, getting laid!
Gertrude Leneau:
The slave craze was huge! It was like uhh... waiting for a new iFruit phone to come out... People would line up at the docks and wait in line for days to own their very own person, and then put them online for a higher price. Some dissenters wondered about the moral consequences of a nation founded on genocide, slavery, and theft, but they were quickly imprisoned as being unpatriotic by proto-chicken hawks. Of course, we have very different values now.
Narrator:
That year, all the local indigenous tribes were brought together and paid for what would be the greatest real estate deal in the history of the world. 14,000 acres of prime downtown real estate for some spare change, a porno magazine, and front row tickets for a game of cricket.
Gertrude Leneau:
Cricket is the most boring game ever. What do the British know about sports? They're all gay!
Narrator:
The Dutch had a land of plenty.
(People cheering and yelling)
Narrator:
They traded beaver skins, a 17th century version of wife swapping, and partied late into the night.
(People screaming, alongside cannon shots)
Narrator:
But founding a country on getting shit-faced and working slaves was trouble from the start. It hadn't worked for the Greeks, and it wouldn't work for the Dutch. 4,000 miles from home and no internet connection to read up on soccer scores, the populace became disenchanted. Colonies deep seeded racism and love of 24 hour shopping would begin to prove to be its undoing.
After a commercial break, the documentary resumes
Narrator:
Liberty City, a town on the edge, a town at the daybreak of dawn, a city at the gate of the universe, a city at the limit of metaphor, deep into the point where hyperbole becomes gibberish.
(Foghorn blowing, seagulls squawking in the distance)
Narrator:
The gateway to the new world was also a terrifying den of inequity, and the campaign to clean up Liberty City and shut down the cumatoriums began almost as soon as the city was founded.
Gordon Peterson:
What most people don't know, but what I discovered through extensive reenactments, uh purely for research of course, was that in the cumatormiums, they used pig fat as lubrication, which in many ways is far superior to modern day petroleum jelly. Another thing worth bearing in mind is that in the spring of 1647 the East India Trading Company hired a cross-dressing director general for New Rotterdam named Gloria Hole. He had lost his right leg in an unfortunate industrial accident while preaching the good word to some savages by...uh, you know, blowing them up with a cannon, which backfired. Puritanical and self-righteous, he had orders to return civility and productivity to the colony.
Narrator:
Within weeks, he had banned drinking, smoking, fornicating with Indians, Texas Holdem, missing church, anal beads, laughter, and imposed strict fines for male camel toe and whistling in public. It wasn't well received; the city was burned to the ground.
(Heavy metal plays over an image of the burning city)
Gertrude Leneau:
Within a few years, New Rotterdam had become so diverse that the Dutch had become a minority in their own colony! Then, just like today, nobody paid attention to the Dutch and only passed through to get stoned or screw a hooker, while pretending that they were going there to look at the depressing paintings and smelly stagnant waterways and wooden shoes. Diversity was troubling, and with diversity comes chaos, as we know to our peril today. Nietzsche said that, and he was so clever he ended up in a lunatic asylum.
Narrator:
Then, leaders began to fear the worst.
Gertrude Leneau:
They were totally petrified of the Jews showing up.
Narrator:
Taxes were reduced so everyone could afford their own firearm!
And um, a pattern for the country was now set in stone: ignorant scared xenophobes armed to the teeth trying to protect their borders.
Gertrude Leneau:
Sigh* It's always been a great nation. What? I'm not racist!
Narrator:
On August 27th, 1664, heavily armed British warships entered the harbor. The colonists signed a petition requesting to be ruled by the British, so they wouldn't have to brush their teeth any longer, and could be certain they were better than everyone else. The English quickly renamed New Rotterdam 'Liberty City' after a generous donation by The Bank of Liberty for sponsorship rights.
(Tribal chanting over violin music)
Gertrude Leneau:
Every single place the British population went, the invisible hand of God prepared a space for them by, well, you know, conveniently destroying and eradicating the native population.
Narrator:
Soon the colony expanded and areas were named after heavily inbred members of their Germanic royal family. Broker was named after Sir William Broker III, the King's bastard son who was conceived by a milkmaid. The region to it's north was called Dukes - after the word dookie, as the people in the area smelled like shit. The peninsula to the north of that was named Bohan - after Bohan, a Dutch word meaning 'Dutch word', and the area across the river was dubbed Alderney - after Phillip d'Alderney, who was the only person who could tolerate living in an oily, mosquito-filled swamp full of industrial wastelands and soccer moms. But things wouldn't be quiet for long...
Gordon Peterson:
Pretty soon, the residents of Liberty City began to fight with the British over taxes.
Gertrude Leneau:
Americans felt, and, well, rightly so, that they shouldn't have to pay any taxes. Let the market sort it out! Poor people will die, rich people will win, welcome to progress!
Narrator:
And so began the American Revolution, a bloody battle by men and women who wanted to leave the tyranny of England's tax structure that paid for burdensome health care and unnecessary public education.
Gordon Peterson:
This was a war agitated by a number of musket companies, who knew they would win, whatever the outcome.
Gertrude Leneau:
And of course you can still see that rich tradition today - Americans don't want health care or education. No, no, we want guns, and fireworks shows, and wars, so politicians can invest in armament companies and clean up! And of course we want drugs.
(Someone inhaling, marijuana burning, followed by a man coughing)
Gordon Peterson:
Oh, yes lots of those, strong ones you take with young coeds when discussing their thesis, and then begin to rub their thighs while they say "Didn't I hear you on that documentary?' and you whisper to them until they pass out!
(Record scratch)
Gordon Peterson:
Uh, ah, but I digress...
Narrator:
The American Revolution was bloody. Soon the French joined in the war to help the struggling American insurgency.
Gertrude Leneau:
(scoffs) No, they did not!
Narrator:
Yes, they did. They joined in by sending a big statue,
which won us the war when the British all died laughing at a giant Martian transvestite eating an ice cream cone.
Whatever... we saved their asses in WW2, get me some freedom fries!
Narrator:
The Revolutionary war quickly ended. Residents pulled down the statue of King George and melted it into gold chains, gold teeth, and golden toilet seats. The Union Jack was taken down in Liberty City, replaced with the stars and stripes, and the newly liberated Americans celebrated.
(Yeeee-HAW!)
Narrator:
Soon this entrepreneurial spirit took hold, and Liberty City was unstoppable.
Gordon Peterson:
Yes, although they were free, the people lived in squalor. You could buy a young boy on the streets for um, you know, a few pence. It was a great time to be in the top 5% of the population.
Gertrude Leneau:
Ahhh, It was a great time to be white. Yes, but soon meddlers like Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson came in to change the successful agrarian-based slave economy to one of excessive service fees for concert tickets and huge turnpike tolls!
Narrator:
With slavery soon outlawed in Liberty City and the other northern colonies, righteous women were forced to spend time under the train tracks, servicing men for three pence.
(Woman moaning)
Gordon Peterson:
You could get your knob slobbed for less than the price of a donut! It was a nation on the up! The politicians were having a field day; you couldn't get them to vote because they were all out having their knobs slobbed!
Narrator:
To keep the country moving forward, the capital of the nation was moved from Liberty City to a malaria swamp on the banks of the Potomac miles to the south. Thankfully, the politicians moved out of Liberty City, and the stage was set for organized crime and mobs to really make a difference.
Gertrude Leneau:
The city soon became, well, a microcosm of all the contrasting elements of modern life. Palaces, self-extravagance, squalor, tenements, trannies, men, women, and children crowded together like a nest of cockroaches, just like the Liberty City of today, only with less rich hedge fund dorks trying to be homeboys.
Narrator:
With tensions rising...
(Horse neigh)
Narrator (cont'd):
...and civil war on the horizon, Frederico Fitzpatrick planned to head off and teach the south a lesson, but before doing so, continued his great project to bring calm and civilization to all. A central repository for the most hopeless specimens of degraded humanity to get high in...a park, in the middle of Liberty City, that would become the great democratic meeting ground, where no matter how rich or how poor, you could get dragged into the bushes...and raped.
(Bushes rustling, followed by a man screaming)
Narrator:
Yet beyond its tranquil borders, tension was breaking out. A lot of people were tired of living in black and white; they wanted color, and there were riots
Gordon Peterson:
There were kids, KIDS sleeping in the streets, begging, willing to do anything for a nickel! And there were no taboos or TV shows to catch you doing what is natural between a man and a boy.
Narrator:
The nation was sliding inexorably into Civil War, which we'll leave until next time, unless you have the foresight to preorder the box set of DVDs, join us next time for A History of Liberty Part 2 - The Civil War and Beyond.
Part 2[]
Transcript
Narrator:
Tonight, in a time of unimaginable wealth and poverty, incredible drunkenness, and immigrants gone wild, the city of the future takes a look in the mirror of the past, and says, "What the fuck are you looking at?", and then exposes itself in public.
(Unzipping, followed by a boinging noise and a crowd gasping)
Narrator:
Yes, the remarkable story of Liberty City continues in...A History of Liberty, Part II: "Building big, ripping people off."
(Violin begins)
Narrator:
Major support for this series is brought to you by the Bank of Liberty, who say, "Thanks for the bail-out America! We needed to make yacht payments, and to keep our offshore accounts topped up."
Narrator:
If you look at the faces that make up the pallet of Liberty City today, literally millions of faces of different hue and tone and hairiness from all corners of the earth, seething with hate, raging with fear, boiling with anger at the high prices, corrupt police, and strippers with annoying Russian accents, then it can seem like not much has changed in Liberty City in 150 years. Still, they came in hordes to a palce that hates you as soon as you arrive, and that attitude is what makes Liberty City the remarkably putrid, yet insanely overpriced metropolis it is today. We continue our epic story of...A History of Liberty.
My, uh, great-great-grandfather, Seamus, uh, left Ireland in 1825, and arrived by boat in Liberty City. He was stunned...uh...I mean he'd heard about this magical place with like gold coins and gay unicorns...
(Horse neigh)
Lennox Kincade:
...a lot of rainbows, and like, policemen didn't wear any trousers, but, all he actually found was this, this sweatshop construction job.
(Descending whistle, followed by a man getting hit on the back of the head by a heavy object and dying)
Lennox Kincade:
In those days, things were very different, you know. Construction workers actually WORKED, instead of drinking during lunch and setting up inflatable rafts and sexually assaulting strangers.
Construction worker:
Nice tits!
Woman:
You're disgusting!
Narrator:
By 1830, Liberty City was being flooded with Irish immigrants who were told that American girls were easy to get into bed when they heard a foreign accent.
Lennox Kincade:
Yeah, it's true! The birds are easy! My family's lived in America for generations, and it's because of my pride and heritage and...desperation for some kind of identity that I...fake this accent all the time.
Narrator:
Soon the trickle of Irish immigration became a flood. The Irish, who were so busy drinking and chasing rainbows and sleeping with midgets, forgot how to grow potatoes. A famine spread across the land.
Historian Milton Savanah:
How do ya mess up growin' potatuhs for cryin' out loud? It's a TUBER, for goodness sake! One eighth of Ireland's population came in about, oh...15 minutes. Local businessmen LOVED it! Finally, they had found them a group of people they could pay less than they pay the blacks!
(Descending whistle and cymbal crash as an Irishman is dropped from a scale)
Milton Savanah:
It's about competition! A free market!
Narrator:
Just like today, some people look down on the Irish. Streets at night were full of ruffians. Riots broke out every evening. There were working-class riots against the upper-class, anti-Irish riots, anti-black riots, anti-English riots, soccer riots, pacifist riots, girl-on-girl hot riots. Before the invention of television, most people have nothing more interesting to do of an evening than setting fire to their neighbors.
(Banjo starts playing)
Milton Savanah:
At the same time, you begin to see this incredible migration from the South. Migratin' just like birds, shittin' on everything--
(Yeeee-HAW!)
Milton Savanah:
--and makin' too much noise. People from the South headed up to Liberty City cuz they'd heard now, "Hey, there's this place that's even more racist than where we live! And you can go there and hate people from all over the world! Freely and openly, like a true American."
Narrator:
The energy of the city would break over you like a fat woman climaxing.
(Fat woman climaxing)
Narrator:
A sweaty, heaving mass that cannot be stopped. A disgusting, sticky, and smelly underbelly screaming in your ear, drowning your soul. And afterwards you feel terrible about yourself, and promise never to drink again, hoping no one saw the disgusting trollop you left the bar with.
Hooker:
You goin' out, baby?
Narrator:
To satisfy the carnal desires of the population, the city's first newspapers appeared in the late 1830's. Residents instantly demanded less political coverage...
The Liberty Tree published its first edition in 1835, and every time they would expose how dishonest politicians were robbing people blind, the public would criticize the media for institutional bias.
Milton Savanah:
Anyone who bad-mouths politicians of big business has an AGENDA. Idiot liberals...usually drug users and...open homosexuals. Always unduuuuly concerned about the truth.
Narrator:
Scared of being left out of all the fun, early bankers showed they could destabilize society as well as anyone. In 1857, the markets of the exchange collapsed.
Jerome Pilchard:
You had huge panic in the financial district as everyone realized a bunch of assholes in suits had duped America with a giant pyramid scheme, in which they made out like bandits, and everybody else got shit on! The poor got poorer, and there was no Social Security or Medicare to help people.
Milton Savanah:
Yes, sir, those were truly grand times, when we left the weak die in the streets rather than prop them up. It's what America's all about! Every man for himself and steal whatcha can when no one's lookin'.
Narrator:
To help the city feel better about itself, one of the largest public works projects in history came to completion: Middle Park.
Jerome Pilchard:
Oh, yeah. It was really remarkable. They took a patch of open land and put a wall around it, and spent a lot of public money calling it a park!
Narrator:
The park was another example of unparalleled American ingenuity: copy something from Europe and pretend you invented it.
Jerome Pilchard:
The builders of Middle Park hoped that the classes could now mingle and buy drugs from each other. However, African-Americans were excluded from the park entirely.
Milton Savanah:
Oh, wow...uh...
Jerome Pilchard:
What?!
Milton Savanah:
I didn't say anything.
Jerome Pilchard:
Noooo, not much! You know, only elegant carriages were allowed.
(Funky music starts)
(Carriage bobbing up and down)
Jerome Pilchard:
Working-class vehicles, like lowriders and hybrids, were barred entirely.
Narrator:
The park had a list of rules a mile long. No picnics, blowjobs, walking on the grass, camp exercise, no baseball by schoolboys, and creepy old men were given an entire section where they could roll their balls around. But broker residents had a problem: rowing to work across the Humboldt River was abysmal, and rowing home drunk resulted in many naval accidents.
(A steamboat charges through a canoe, accompanied by a crowd gasping)
Narrator:
Plus, local manic depressives complained there was nothing tall enough to jump off and kill yourself.
(Man sighing)
Narrator:
So construction began on the Broker Bridge. It was a boom for organized crime, who ensured that non-union workers were taken care of...
(Man screaming)
Narrator:
...and gave entrepreneurial residents of Liberty City a new place to dump bodies. At the same time, a dark cloud was growing over the fledgling nation.
Milton Savanah:
The rise of Liberty City was a menace to the Southern way'a life, focusin' on education, arts, interactin' with people of other races was such a THREAT to the incredible civilization of the south that some states began to consider secedin' from the Union. These were true patriots. They loved America so much, they wanted to leave it.
(Men coughing and smoking weed)
Narrator:
Some residents of Liberty City were Southern sympathizers during the Civil War. They liked the idea of drinking a 12-pack of crap beer each night, eating at breakfast buffets...
(Yeee...HAW!)
Narrator:
...and listening to rock bands that played two-hour guitar solos.
Jerome Pilchard:
In 1863, the first draft was announced to bolster Northern troops. The citizens were enraged, drunk, and angry, armed with iron bars, ninja swords, survival knives, and Chinese stars...
(Two Chinese stars zip past the screen)
Jerome Pilchard:
...the draft riots began. An emergency message was sent out by a telegram.
(SOS iPhone ringtone)
Telegram:
OMFG. CRAZY PPL FUBAR. LMFAO TTYL.
Jerome Pilchard:
Then, the telegraph lines were cut.
(BOOM.)
Jerome Pilchard:
The wealthiest nation in the world was in anarchy, and not the good kind of anarchy where you cop a feel in the mosh pit at a punk rock concert. Mobs formed, and to show the South that they had nothing on being two-faced bigots, rioters in Liberty City went and burned down an orphanage full of black children.
Milton Savanah:
People...misunderstand, but it's a culture of heritage, not hate. You can see that in our Civil War reenactments in the park. We reach out to the black community, but nobody is interested in learning about history by gettin' the tar whooped out of them and then set on fire and shot. Strange, really...(when you think of it.)
Jerome Pilchard:
They're strange, all right, huh? Nobody wants to spend a Saturday in the park gettin' lynched by dorks wearin' tunics!
Narrator:
Soon, horrible liberal musicians...
(A crowd boos at a man poorly playing a flute)
Narrator:
...made protest songs asking America, "Civil War, what is it good for?", and America said "We don't have TV yet, so it keeps things interesting." The Civil War was the crossroads of our nation, and at that crossroads was a truck stop, a firework, and a place to buy rebel flag souvenirs, a-and lighters with naked ladies on them, and one of those machines where you put in a quarter and that...claw comes down and tries to pick up a stuffed pig, but he never really does, so you go out to your truck, and a lot lizard is out there and she says, "I'll blow you for $20", and you let her. Then you kill her and burn the body. That's the American experience in a nutshell.
Milton Savanah:
The reason this war lasted for years was...it took so damn long to pack a rifle.
(Man blows off his fucking head)
(Banjo music plays)
Milton Savanah:
We Southerners move slowly, methodically. We chat a bit...tell a racist joke...go fishin'...pack a rifle...take a nap, and sometime in the afternoon, y'know, when you get around to it, you try to find you a Yankee or a colored person to shoot...ya never had a chance, really, but we'll rise again, I promise ya that.
(Yankee Doodle Dandy plays)
Narrator:
After quite a few years of hard fighting and cheap novels and terrible speeches, the war was over. Everyone could go back to the peacetime--
(A man's fart is lit on fire)
Narrator:
--pursuit of mutual self-loathing, and throwing bags full of turds at freaks.
(Kids laugh as turds splatter on a tall, skinny woman and a shorter, fatter woman)
(Dog barking)
Milton Savanah:
It was a time of leisure and rebuildin' in the North as carpetbaggers had destroyed the great civilization of the South. A civilization they misunderstood terribly.
Jerome Pilchard:
Ha! The reason they're called red states is because of the bloodshed tryna get a buncha hillbillies to act like decent human beings!
Narrator:
Ehuh...okayyy...residents wanted to relax--
(Woman unzips a man's pants)
Narrator:
--after having won the war and celebrating with massive tailgate parties, so the new art of leisure began in Firefly Island, a quiet seaside district that featured hot dog eating competitions, condoms floating in the surf, and roller coasters that derailed and maimed people. Uh--plus, freak shows where you could point and laugh and make dwarves and hairy women cry.
Jerome Pilchard:
Oh, that one's my favorite! ...ah. With the war over, residents of Liberty City return--
(Man throws up)
Jerome Pilchard:
--to amusing themselves by binge-drinking, swimming with their clothes on, and watching magic shows where people would search for a tiny man hidden in a woman's nether regions.
(Crowd going "Oooh...")
Milton Savanah:
Liberty City has always been full of massive cunts, after all.
Jerome Pilchard:
Heh. For once, I agree.
Narrator:
And the city began work on a new project for its leisure class...a place of orgies and depravity...
(Women moaning)
Narrator:
...drug addiction and perversity, anxiety and sweat: the Liberty City Subway.
Jerome Pilchard:
Nothing unified residents of a city more than being squashed into one another on a subway train...
(Woman gasps)
Jerome Pilchard:
...as they rushed from one important appointment at the hat makers to another...at the witch burnings.
(Woman screaming as she's burned alive)
Milton Savanah:
It's DISGUSTIN'! People mixing together like some great cosmopolitan clusterfuck! Preserve differences...MY LEG IS GOIN' NUMB JUST THINKIN' ABOUT IT!
Narrator:
Liberty City went crazy for underground trains. The first station opened in 1874, and was inaugurated by throwing buckets of urine on the platforms. People loved it, although there was nowhere to go, as the first train did not get built for another five years, so they had to wait in the station for a very long time.
(Crickets chirping)
Jerome Pilchard:
So with this, and the Broker Bridge, people were free to live in the suburbs, and realize the joys of commuting: apathy, alienation, shitty radio morning shows, and car key parties.
Milton Savanah:
And they were allowed to live amongst their own kind in the suburbs and feel safe! Even then, bridgin' tunnel was a dirty word, just like...flange.--"ohhhh"...
(A colorful error screen appears before being replaced with an image of an Irishman pissing on a machine that says "On Air")
Milton Savanah:
And somebody, anybody seen my medication for my angina? I mean, you! Boy! What's your name?
Jerome Pilchard:
Excuse me?!
Milton Savanah:
Oh, be quiet, I didn't mean nothin' by it! Come on! Get over yourself! I can laugh at myself...what's wrong with you people?! Seriously, I have ANGINA! I could die of a heart attack any second! Where's my medication?! I bet you stole it just to get high.
Jerome Pilchard:
Say WHAT?! Are you hillbilly?
Narrator:
Ehh...with that, the island of Algonquin was free to grow into the capital of a massive metropolis, to expand beyond its borders. So what did they do? They built massive skyscrapers and look down on the other (boundaries, of course.)
Milton Savanah:
Ohhh...is there a doctor in here? Boy! Get me a doctor! Please! Aaaaaahh...(collapses)
Jerome:
Haaaa...ignorant cracker!
Narrator:
Uhh...
(Baby crying)
Narrator:
Just like today, it is a city of birth and death. Of decay and renew. Of doubleheaders and doubleenders. Finally, Liberty City was beginning to take its modern form: overcrowded, smelly, but impressive and grandiose. Full of rich, unhappy people, and poor, greedy people, all living cheek by jowl like swine in a pen, but the city wasn't out of the woods yet. Soon, something would be invented that would rechange cities forever, which we'll leave for next time on A History of Liberty.
