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Posted on 04/09/2003 3:25:41 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
The Little White House—1945 NWT (Nashville War Time): I am about to convene another high priority meeting of my War Council to review advances on the southern Iraq Front. Our Coalition Forces are making great progress. Saddam International Airport captured. The destruction of the Republican Guard in Baghdad now seems inevitable. A look at the Battle Situation Map shows that….
AAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
I could have been doing the kewl Commander-In-Chief thing instead of merely fantasizing about it had it not been for those lousy 537 votes in Florida. And do you know why I didn't get those 537 votes? One name explains it all: Elian Gonzalez.
That little Cuban kid cost me at least 537 votes on almost every 10 square block area in Little Havana in Dade County (I refuse to use that dopey hyphenated name of Miami-Dade County). Can you believe it? A Cubanito is shipwrecked, gets saved from sharks by dolphins, and manages to get rescued against all odds. And yet he still would have had exactly ZIPPO effect on my campaign had it not been for another series of improbable events.
The first of these was that Castro came to believe in a silly Santeria prophecy that a Cuban boy saved by dolphins in the sea would cause his downfall if he wasn't returned to Cuba. Even at that, Elian would have had NO EFFECT on my election at all had Hillary (via Janet Reno) not made a whole FEDERAL CASE about shipping Elian back to Cuba at Castro's request. Yeah, a raid on the Gonzalez home in the middle of Little Havana a few months before the general election did wonders for my campaign by sucking whole blocks of 537 votes away from me… HEY HILLARY! Couldn't you have waited until the day AFTER the election to launch your raid? If so, then today I would be the Commander-In- Chief of our victorious armed forces in Iraq instead of living in the Nashville Little White House Fantasyland.
Actually, that's not quite true. If I were president on 9-11, I would have sent a few cruise missiles at some Taliban tents in the Afghan desert and would now be involved in a moral argument over whether we have the right overthrow the Afghanistan government. However, I assure you that I would now be assiduously courting the French to obtain their approval for that measure even if I would have had to kiss Gallic ass for a couple of years.
As to invading Iraq—NO WAY! So while you watch the Coalition Forces overwhelm the Iraqis on TV, remember that this was made possible by one boy—Elian Gonzalez. And the more I think about it the more I believe there really is something about that Santeria thing. It sure kept me out of the White House. It's enough to make me give up being a fake Baptist and start hanging headless chickens upside down from my doorway while baying at the moon to a Santeria drumbeat tune.
That damn Santeria kept me out of the White House but the Shock & Awe campaign will at least get me the nomination in 2004. Not the Shock & Awe from the bombing in Iraq. I mean the Shock & Awe that is happening among the Democrats ever since the invasion of Iraq. Just look at what happened to the leading Democrat contender, John Kerry. He was Shocked & Awed into calling for a regime change, not just in Iraq but also in America which will probably cause his poll numbers to slip even further down the toilet. Bye-bye, Johnnie! You've made yourself as unpopular as Tom Daschle. As to Artillery Hillary, she has become quite The Quiet American recently. Have you noticed not a peep from her one way or another concerning the war in Iraq?
Well, now that I've broached the term "Quiet American"," it is time to not so subtly segue over to my current "Al Gore At The Movies" review of The Quiet American.
The French would love this movie since the theme of The Quiet American (based on the Graham Greene novel of the same name) is that Quiet Americans or, more specifically, ALL Americans suck. Set in the French Indo-China war in 1952, this movie portrays no Americans as having the slightest redeeming value. They are presented as being at the same time naïve and devious, moralists and immoral, and uptight and drunken. Even an American upset that his kid back in the States has been stricken with polio is made to look like a real jerk in this movie.
Almost all of these qualities are combined in the person of one Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), the Quiet American of the movie. At first he is seen as incredibly naïve because he believes his knowledge about eye disease and blind faith in a rogue Vietnamese military officer can help defeat communism in Indo-China. Then later it turns out that Pyle isn't naïve at all. He is an incredibly devious high level intelligence officer fluent in Vietnamese who helps plan the bombing of innocent women and children. It was as if Graham Greene wanted it both ways. Not satisfied with making Pyle just look like a wide-eyed innocent, Graham switches gears and also smears Pyle as a slick intelligence operator.
Meanwhile, the lazy Brit, Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine), is portrayed as the wise but jaded hero. Fowler is the Saigon correspondent for the London Times and if anybody can get me a job with that newspaper I sure would appreciate it. Why? Because after Fowler gets a recall notice to return to London, he checks his records and finds out that in the past year he has filed only THREE stories from Saigon. Meanwhile he has been living luxuriously on a generous expense account and banging a really hot Vietnamese chick named Phuong.
The sex scenes between the old lizard-like Fowler and the fresh young Phuong were really painful to watch. All one wanted to do was scream at the screen for Phuong to crawl away from the leathery body of that dirty old man, Fowler.
Soon The Quiet American, Alden Pyle arrives in Saigon and gets the hots for Phuong as well. This I don't get. Saigon is/was chock full of hot young Vietnamese gals and the one he falls for just happens to be Fowler's girlfriend. Well, I guess credibility had to be tossed out the window in order to keep the story line going.
At first Fowler is amused by the apparent innocent naiveté of Pyle. However, after he finds out that Pyle is horny for Phuong, Fowler becomes Pyle's jealous competitor. Even though Pyle is initially portrayed as quite naïve, it is really Fowler who was the dope. He pulls Pyle out of a nightclub full of women where he could have gotten his rocks off and takes him across the street to dance with Phuong. Dumb move. In no time Pyle is in love with Phuong and wants to bring her back to the States to marry him. Then, to make matters worse, Fowler makes a trip to the north of Vietnam to report on a military campaign while leaving Phuong and Pyle together in Saigon.
While in the North, Fowler finds an entire village of slaughtered people. He immediately concludes that the communists couldn't have done this deed because "communists never slaughter people." It later turns out to be the handiwork of an American-backed rogue Vietnamese officer. One of the mini-themes of the move (and novel) is not just that Americans are evil but also that communists are really good guys. Even Fowler's hard working Vietnamese assistant is a good guy because it turns out that he is secretly a commie. It is Fowler's assistant who tells Fowler that his fellow communists just want to have a little chat with Pyle after The Quiet American is discovered to be a high-level intelligence operator. Neither Fowler nor anyone in the audience really believes that is all the communists want to do to Pyle.
Fowler wrestles with his conscience for all of ten seconds over whether to betray Pyle. However, despite the fact that Pyle saved Fowler's life on one occasion, Fowler has no real trouble becoming a Judas Iscariot and arranging for Pyle to be bushwhacked by the Reds. After all, he has to get rid of Pyle in order to get his hot scaly hands back on Phuong again. By this time in the movie Phuong has left Fowler for Pyle after she finds out that Fowler has lied about receiving a letter from his wife agreeing to a divorce, freeing him to marry Phuong. Of course the letter said just the opposite but Fowler stupidly neglected to destroy the incriminating evidence which was later discovered by Phuong's sister. And Fowler thought that Pyle was naïve?
After Pyle is killed by the commie friends of Fowler's assistant, Fowler comes under suspicion as an accomplice in the murder by a French police inspector. However, Fowler talks his way out of it by pointing out to the French inspector that it was only some hated American who was the victim. Since the French dislike of Americans is so great, the French inspector decides to drop the matter.
The Quiet American should be very popular in France since almost all the Americans in the movie are portrayed as a bunch of hideous, loud, drunken, horny (although somehow it is okay for Fowler to be a horny old man) ignoramuses whose knowledge of foreign affairs is nothing when compared to the worldly wise French (who after making fatal mistakes in Vietnam went on to make the same errors again in Algeria). However, here in the USA in the post 9-11 era, The Quiet American, should go over like a lead balloon. On my Chad Rating Scale of one to ten chads with ten chads being best, I give The Quiet American only four chads. And the only reason it gets even as many as four chads is because the beautiful location shooting in Vietnam makes for a nice travelogue of that country. But as for the scaly old Fowler fowling the beautiful Phuong with his Demon Seed—I'm still shuddering at that thought.
This is the NEW Al Gore keepin' it real with this review and thinking of making a fact finding tour of Vietnam in the near future in order to get a little piece of Phuong for myself.
My boss, Al Gore, lives at the Little White House in Nashville. Haven't you been reading the news? Al Gore bought a house with white columns that resembles the real White House. Rumor has it that his alarm clock wakes him up every morning to the tune of "Hail To The Chief."
The book about John Paul Vann, "A Bright Shining Lie" was the best one I've read about Vietnam. The movie they made of it was pretty horrible. Anyway, "The Quiet American" was just a way for Graham Greene to vent his anti-Americanism.
And every morning, he addresses the nation...in front of his bathroom mirror. He used to sit down and pretend that the local Starbucks was the oval office, but he was thrown out by Chad and Bruce when he was mistaken for Mr. French (back when he grew the beard).
Not exactly. If you look carefuly you will see that this was the image in the film projected by the Americans themselves as a cover up. See the scene when Pyle is speaking fluent Vietnamese (when not aware of being observed by Fowler).
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