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 "For
me, satire is a powerful tool and it's not sufficiently used; it's
not just for late-night jokes but really to promote fundamental change.
And it's inevitable that when you attempt to change the status quo,
you're going to make some people upset. That's the price of change."
 Ray
knows well enough that the monolith called film -- and by extension,
Hollywood -- was built upon what the French termed "trompe l'oiel",
a trick of the eye. And he tricks everyone, including his own viewers,
with this layered onion of a film until they're all left confused
and crying.
Dubya may not be a rocket scientist, but his handlers learned the
lesson from his father: the crisis must stay or you won't. We're at
war with Eurasia. We've always been at war with Eurasia.
 Talk
about advance planning: Even as the people of Iraq are girding themselves
for the thousands of bombs expected to rain down on them during the
first 24 hours of the attack, the administration is already picking
and choosing who will be given the lucrative job of cleaning up the
rubble. Postwar rebuilding is a solitary bright spot in our own carpet-bombed
economy. |
by Ross Levine When people ask what I think of the gunfight with Saddam Hussein, I have only one answer for them: It's the election, Stupid. The one that put our Bush-league Sheriff in power. Gore won by over half a million votes, but Florida -- the only state shaped like a pistol -- shot democracy in the foot. Then, with an assist from the Supremes, the loser became the winner and the country became the loser. Instead of a cosmopolitan leader, America got a cowboy, and not a make-believe buckaroo like we had in the '80s, but a genuine Texas goat-roper. No offense to our fellow intelligentsia in Dallas and Houston, but the ex-governor of the Lone Star State is running the country as if it were a dude ranch -- a resort where he and his cronies can pretend to be world leaders when what they really are is a gang of small-time gunslingers. Just consider it all a Hollywood Western, and lemme pitch it to ya. Think Unforgiven meets The Waterboy. The latter features a cerebrally challenged lackey who winds up a star. The former's about a man who comes out of retirement for one last kill; his intended victims certainly deserve justice, and in the Wild West, there's only one kind, at the end of a gun barrel. Now when we first meet Sheriff Bush, he's not retired, of course, but ensconced in the White Fort, a man with no mission whatsoever except to stay sober. That's cause fifteen years earlier, the Sheriff gave up his hard drinkin' ways and put his faith in Jesus. Amen. Then comes the September 11th raid, when a band of Indians attacks a U.S. settlement and massacres thousands. The cavalry is dispatched to bring back those responsible, dead or alive, but can't locate the head desperado. Sheriff Bush, however, vows not to rest until he tames the West for good. His attention turns to another tribe of Injuns, led by the warlike Chief Saddam. He sends his men out to surround the Chief and his troublesome clan.
But there are grumblings in the so-called civ'lized world, from foreign folks with funny accents like those darn Euro-peons -- what do they know? They had their chance to run the world and now it's the Sheriff's turn. Besides, they're a bunch o' wimps. Worried the weather's gonna get too warm and their canals may spill into their living rooms. That if we Yankees don't dismantle our atomic cannons, we might trigger another Uranium Rush. Or that if we attack Chief Saddam, other savages may be roused to seek vengeance on the non-heathen world. Well -- the roots of their decaying civilizations certainly don't reach as far as the Sheriff's hometown of Crawford, Texas. In Crawford, folks carry a Bible in one hand, bullets in the other. They know that when it comes to foreigners, they're either with us or against us, and "with us" means they'd better just shaddup and eat their frog paws. Besides, we don't need help from no one but Jesus. But then a second tribe goes on the warpath, whoopin' and hollerin' and threatenin' to make radioactive tomahawks. What's the Sheriff gonna do now? Sure, they're a tribe o' meanies, but there's a whole lot of 'em and we could get us a good scalpin' if we try to take those hot hammers away. So the Sheriff says he'll keep his eye on 'em, but that Chief Saddam's the one he's after. See, you can't have a good Western without a single-minded hero. And our hero is nothing if he ain't possessed. He lives and breathes Chief Saddam. He can't get to bed at night without thinking of the Chief's imminent demise. He relishes the thought of Saddam's head over the mantelpiece. But the Sheriff's own father, who was once Sheriff himself and had to square off with the Chief, ain't so sure. "Son," he says, "when me and Saddam came to blows back in '91, I had good reason to go after him. He and his braves had invaded a neighboring tribe, close friends of ours, with lots of the 'black water,' if you catch my drift. Nobody complained I was bein' too tough. Everybody pitched in and helped me send Saddam back to Irack with his tail between his knees. I was ridin' high for a year after that -- that is, until I acted like I knew what a supermarket was." "Pop," replies the Sheriff, "I ain't as practical as you. Maybe I was before the massacre, but not no more. It happened on my watch, Pop, and if it happens again, well, I'll be eatin' my last bag o' pretzels. What I'm sayin' is, I told Saddam to get out o' Baghdad, and he won't listen. Now how's it gonna look if I don't ride out there and show him I mean business?" With that, the Sheriff bows his head respectfully toward the old man and heads back to the Fort. Alone, the Sheriff prays. And curses. Never mind the Euro-peons, he's got his own townspeople talkin' peace. Protestin'. Heading to Chief Saddam's reservation to be human shields. Don't they know their Sheriff is doin' this for their sake? A good lawman wears a badge, not a begonia.
But that's OK. He knows he's been chosen. Not just by five fogies on the bench, but by Christ Himself. As they say in Hollywood, good villains make good heroes. You gotta put a face on evil, then blast it between the eyes. So as we leap forth into this war, give a yell -- "Saddaronimo!" -- and should you not find the Sheriff waitin' below to break your fall, rest assured it's not 'cause he lacks courage, but because you lack faith. The right faith. So help you, Jesus. And if you can't accept that, well, remember, it's a Western, Stupid. Once the Sheriff guns down Chief Saddam, once he flushes the world clean of evil, it may come to pass that there's no longer room in Washington or even Crawford for a man like him. People have short memories. They may forget he saved their behinds, and, in the name o' civilization, run him out o' town. So you see, this war may be a darn good idea after all. 3/10/03 19 March 03 Ross M. Levine is an author, Marcel Proust marathoner and manatee-hugger who feels safer on the edge; i.e., in New York or California. He agrees with the King of Brobdingnag that we're "the most pernicious race of odious vermin to crawl the surface of the Earth." He thinks Americans have too much freedom -- fries, that is.
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