Posted on 05/21/2002 8:26:28 AM PDT by Rockitz
Oil...
IMHO there are many musims who prefer death over allowing "open societies" to exist. We should oblige them.
If innocents must die, why allow them to be American (maybe even me or you?).
but to further deconstruct your lack of logic, take the opening sentence of the second paragraph.."the absolute necessity to appear objective to the Arabs.." There is so much wrong with every premise in this sentence I don't know where to begin
For all who have seen the film, no explanation is necessary.
For those who have not... well...
Here is a portion of the review of the movie.
Peter Sellers plays a mentally retarded gardener who has lived and worked all of his life inside the walls of an elegant Washington town house. The house and its garden are in a decaying inner-city neighborhood, but what goes on outside is of no concern to Sellers: He tends his garden, he watches television, he is fed on schedule by the domestic staff, he is content.
Then one day the master of the house dies. The household is disbanded. Sellers, impeccably dressed in his employer's privately tailored wardrobe, wanders out into the city. He takes along the one possession he'll probably need: His remote-control TV channel switcher. He uses it almost immediately; surrounded by hostile street kids, he imperturbably tries to switch channels to make them go away. He hasn't figured out that, outside his garden, life isn't television.
And that is the movie's basic premise, lifted intact from a Jerzy Kosinski novel. The Sellers character knows almost nothing about real life, but he has watched countless hours of television and he can be pleasant, smile, shake hands, and comport himself; he learned from watching all those guests on talk shows. He knows nothing about anything, indeed, except gardening. But when he stumbles into Washington's political and social upper crust, his simple truisms from the garden ("Spring is a time for planting") are taken as audaciously simple metaphors. This guy's a Thoreau! In no time at all, he's the closest confidant of a dying billionaire industrialist (Melvyn Douglas) - and the industrialist is the closest confidant of the president.
This is, you can see, a one-joke premise. It has to be if the Sellers performance is to work. The whole movie has to be tailored to the narrow range within which Sellers' gardener can think, behave, speak, and make choices. The ways in which this movie could have gone out of control, could have been relentlessly boring on the one hand, or manic with its own audacity on the other, are endless. But the tone holds. That's one of the most exhilarating aspects of the joy you can sense, as Ashby pulls this off: Every scene needs the confidence to play the idea completely straight.
There are wonderful comic moments, but they're never pushed so far that they strain the story's premise. Some of them involve: a battle between the CIA and the FBI as to which agency destroyed the gardener's files; Shirley MacLaine unsuccessfully attempts to introduce Sellers to the concept of romance; Sellers as a talk-show guest himself (at last!), and Sellers as the hit of a Washington cocktail party. The movie also has an audacious closing shot that moves the film's whole metaphor into a brand-new philosophical arena.
What is Being There about? I've read reviews calling it an indictment of television. But that doesn't fit; Sellers wasn't warped by television, he was retarded to begin with, and has TV to thank for what abilities he has to move in society. Is it an indictment of society, for being so dumb as to accept the Sellers character as a great philosophical sage? Maybe, but that's not so fascinating either. I'm not really inclined to plumb this movie for its message, although I'm sure that'll be a favorite audience sport. I just admire it for having the guts to take this weird conceit and push it to its ultimate comic conclusion.
My take is that Bush is a little bit of Chauncey Gardner.. with his simple ideas swayed and twisted by the State Dept. Also, the State Dept is a bit of Chauncey as well, having not figured out yet that life is NOT "make love not war" that they were brought up on in the 60's.
And so... the nation is busily engaged in trying to assign great depth to the simplemindedness of the WH with regards to the Middle East. Oh well, folly is never in short supply.
In other words be 'slick' as in Clintonesque. "Depends on what 'appear objective is', is". Past time to figure out what is best for America's future and come right out with it. If he thinks there should be a Palestine State, get rolling. If he think there should not be a Palestine State, then don't slick spin about it.
I stand by my statements.
the absolute necessity to appear objective to the Arab nations and Muslims, in general.
Why is this such an article of faith. Where is even a minimal amount of indication that we gain anything by it? Seems to lead right into FBI director Mueller's attitude that future terrorist strikes, perhaps conducted by persons already here in the US are inevitable. There may be blond muslims in the future, but for right now why can't we get a handle and identify every male to start with that fits the profile of terrorist attackers against the US for the past 25 years or so.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.