Alls That

Sacha Baron Cohen's brilliant character Borat worked perfectly when translated to the big screen. I'm overjoyed to see this morning that it took first place at the box office for a second straight weekend. The satire is biting, hilarious, and completely relevant. If you haven't seen this movie yet, you must. Not only is it so funny you'll embarrass yourself by how loudly you're laughing, but is also at times haunting at how dangerously ignorant, bigoted, and gullible Americans can be. The film, in my view, points out not how backward Kazakhstan is (as the anti-defimation League & Kazakh government officials have claimed), rather it points out how backward the U.S. is.

Baron Cohen clearly has a political agenda in the film (a valid & well thought-out one, but still definitely there) in who he chooses to interview and how he treats them, but comparing scenes where he talks to young black men late at night deep in an inner-city ghetto to his scene riding along on an RV-road trip with a few white frat boys is truly telling.

After seeing the film, i'm amazed Baron Cohen is still alive and free. The number of times you think he must have been arrested or utterly torn apart by a mob is astounding. I suppose someone might make an argument that it demonstrates the exceptional civility of Americans, how they can take a verbal assault without resorting to violence, but i think it's more likely a product of the sheepish American tendency to bend over and take whatever is doled out to us.

I see a parallel with the stolen election of 2000. Pundits called it a credit to American democracy that we didn't take to the streets and shut down the world, but it was instead a credit to the American plutocracy. Borat's comic bullying is only possible, because of the incredible ignorance displayed by the Americans he finds that are willing to believe that the Borat character is a real, viable representative of a true Kazakhstani. The film is, at its core, a fairly accurate representation of how American's view people from other countries (or counties for that matter) as cardboard cutouts. They are statistics, news stories, and maybe causes, but surely not real flesh-and-blood humans. The film explores (and to an extent explains) how we can accept people dying of AIDS or hunger or poverty in other parts of the world... how we can care so much about 2000 some dead American soldiers and so little about tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

But seriously... it's really funny. Go see it.

An Intelligently Designed Argument

Just think of how different things might be today if William Shakespeare had won, when he ran for king in 1604. Just imagine that world. There would have been no Hitler, the French Revolution would have happened gradually, but sooner, and with less bloodshed. The world would today be a vastly different place had the powers that were not stolen that election.

It is a well documented and indisputable fact, that Adolf Hitler descended from the lineage of Will Shakespeare. William’s eldest son, Ronfrey, married late in life & he and his wife Jane had a daughter who was forced to leave the country in her middle-teens. The daughter, Lizzy, was thought to stay with family in France, but recently discovered evidence now shows, clearly, that Lizzy moved on to Vienna and lived there to the end of her days with a child she had out of wedlock. The child grew up to be a servant in a wealthy house and bore the master of the house two children, one of whom would go on to be an ancestor of Adolf Hitler, and the other an ancestor of Walter Benjamin.

It is a truly harsh historical irony that the great thinker Walter Benjamin was separated only by a few generations from the man who not only made his life so difficult but to whom he (Benjamin) dedicated his life’s work to combating.

This fact of Hitler’s heritage is not in dispute. The only interesting, and worthwhile question, is what would have been different had Shakespeare won that election? To be sure, the family would not have returned to Stratford on Avon, so Ronfrey would likely have married earlier and to a more stately woman, but this change is not the least of what would have been different. Although Shakespeare’s success in his writing career afforded his family some comfort in Stratford, the family was somewhat outcast by locals because of the social oddity that accompanied Shakespeare’s ‘artistic nature’ (not least of which the insistence on being called “Shakespeare” all the time). As a duly elected king, these ‘social oddities’ would have been taken as kingly discretion, the right to behave as one will, but with the disputed Tudor victory, Will was forced to stay in his lifely station and pretend that he hadn’t even run for king. The loss was hard on Shakespeare, particularly because it was so disputed and the outcome questioned.

Shakespeare’s concession speech, recorded only in personal journals and writings of the time (since newspapers would not be invented for another 73 years!) was succinct and not malicious (though it was surely full of irony): “Although I strongly disagree with the decision reached by the powers that be, concerning the election, I will not fight the decision and split this population and declare myself the (il)legitimate leader… rather, I concede to the decision and will move on, as we all must move on.” (No blank verse for this soliloquy).

Sadly we will never know how history might have turned out differently had Shakespeare won in his effort, but we too, must accept the decisions of history, and live with it’s consequences.

the man who Should be king...

Stephen Colbert is a comic genius... not only that, but he's got a a pair made of pure titanium. I saw a short piece on him last night on 60 Minutes & was musing today on just how funny he is. When i got back to Chicago tonight MSNBC was running a piece on his speech at the White House Correspondents' Dinner... The stuff coming out of his mouth, even though he was on the screen with 'Dubya,' i thought it had to be a 'fake news' story (my favorite line was 'He believes the same thing Wednesday, that he believed on Monday... no matter what happens on Tuesday.') but for some reason, he really was invited to speak at the annual presidential roast... The 'double "Dubya"' got a lot of press play (ha, ha, here's a guy pretending to be the president) probably because nobody knew what to do with Colbert's material... But it is biting. Mean and cruel and true.So good...