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DIANA CHISTENSEN: Christ, you brought half the West-Coast office of the William Morris Agency with you. I'm Diana Christensen, racist lackey of the imperial ruling class.I was thinking about this relationship from Chayefsky's '76 magnum opus, between the profit-mad network Valkyrie Diana and the profit-mad Communist Laureen, and how Laureen must have been partly modeled on Angela Davis, and how Angela Davis was Who Is IOZ?-endorsed dead communist Gus Hall for President, and how we are all connected in the great parallelogram of life.
LAUREEN HOBBS: And I'm Laureen Hobbs, badass commie nigger.
-from Network
When I was living in France as a student, I used to chat with an old gentlemen at a café I'd frequent near the ancienne Douane. He'd been a member of Action Française, a gang of Orléaniste monarchist restorationists who eventually spawned Jean-Marie le Pen and that whole gang of French far-righters. In other words, the dude had been a fascist, but he was serious about monarchism, and he liked to point out that democratic elections were no more or less likely to produce good, capable government than hereditary rule; as many bad presidents as bad Bourbons, I believe, was how he put it. What, anyway, was the difference between the two in the 5th Republic? What power did the monarchy claim that couldn't be arrogated to the President at his whim? If that's overreach, it's minor. Personally, I take the point.
HOBBS: Don't fuck with my distribution costs! I'm getting a lousy two-fifteen per segment, and I 'm already deficiting twenty-five grand a week with Metro. I'm paying William Morris ten percent off the top! (indicates the GREAT KHAN)--And I'm giving this turkey ten thou a segment and another five for this fruitcake--(meaning MARY ANN GIFFORD) And, Helen, don't start no shit with me about a piece again! I'm paying Metro twenty percent of all foreign and Canadian distribution, and that's after recoupment! The Communist Party's not going to see a nickel out of this goddam show until we go into syndication!
10 comments:
the machinations of those in the line of succession, betrayals, incest, poisonings etc. would be way more entertaining than elections. that shit could be a reality show. fuckin Shakespeare on crystal meth.
I'm a fan of constitutional monarchy, but by just about any metric choosing leaders through elections has proven better than absolute monarchy. Post-universal suffrage, governments actually tax the wealthy (the French monarchy never taxed the wealthy at all), have a much more extensive welfare state, countries are much wealthier than in the 18th century and wealth is more evenly distributed etc.
Unlike bad presidents, bad monarchs are there for life, and there is also the noted tendency for dynasties to decline in quality with each successive generation living the soft life, look at the Bush dynasty.
The problem with the American presidency is that the system becamse corrupted and more like an 18th century court, not that it was insufficiently republican.
Also, separating the head of state from the head of government has proven to work better than combining them, one reason why the defanged constitutional style of monarchy actually works fairly well.
as many bad presidents as bad Bourbons
And the key element missing here is: bad presidents with respect to other presidents, and bad Bourbons with respect to other Bourbons. I'm no fan of elected tyrants, but I prefer them to an inherited dictatorship.
(The predictable response will be: "but there's no difference!" And the just-as-predictable counter is, of course there is. For a start, in the former, George Bush leaves office in January of next year; in the latter, he leaves at the age of ninety-seven when his colon ruptures.)
..good, capable government...
Whatever that means.
If only someone had written some sort of book comparing they two...
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?action=openPageViewer&docId=85190753
"When I was living in France as a student..."
That's the kind of paragraph-opening sentence I've come to expect from these them here parts.
And I think you'll find Chayefsky's best material in the script for The Hospital. Your sort probably call it L'hopital, or whatever.
Gus was rather pedestrian*, but Kim Il Sung....now there was firebreathing inspired idolatry!
Enver Hoxa, 13th Int. Congress of the Workers' Paradise Institute, Tirana, August, 1964.
Since you bought up Le Pen, I am surprised you haven't commented on Austria's version of Le Pen - Joerg Haider.
That is ripe for some vintage IOZ deconstruction.
I heard Angela ranting once on the quad back in 19something (78?) at UCDavis outside Sacramento where she was entertaining a handful of perplexed undergrads.
She might as well have been teaching under a nice, comfortable portal, 'cause there weren't a dozen listeners.
But the set-up was all podium and loudspeakers and room for 100,000 angry incitees to surge to the park's rhomboid shores before spilling over to drown the campus and the city in a red-tide fury.
Right.
So, anyway, I thought, what the hell is this chick doing walking around free? And I thought that because I had my 'information' about Angie from the old man via the White Oral History in which ANGIE was the one on trial for cop-killing. ANGIE had smuggled a gun into the courtroom in her ultra-pick'd Afro! ANGIE had assassinated the magistrate in a stunning F-U! before the paralyzed functionaries of justice, and fled the scene, triumphant! (That wasn't quite right).
The folks had even left the Methodist church over it's supposed legal aid to the murderous commie bitch, to boot. Who could blame 'em?! That's how big a deal Angie was in our f'd-upped household.
So, Ms. Cognitive Dissonance, step right up to the microphone!
I think she had an actual audience of one that day...
Oh. As a sort of party favour, I once brought a copy of Network to an informal dinner. My friends at the time were refugees from 'the city' (as they liked to self importantly misidentify New York). They rolled they beady eyes in chorus line unison at this faux pas. But they laughed they azzes ovv when we got round to checkin it out...
"Orléaniste monarchist restorationists" That's hilarious!---makes my bonerpart.
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