Thursday, March 03, 2005

Tired Hero Worship

I'm in a movie watching mood lately. I've been TIVOing anything that looks interesting and staying up waaaaaaaay too late. Two really cool ones: Laura (where Vincent Price plays an effete Kentucky dandy - too cool), and The Big Heat which taught me that Quentin didn't come up with bleak violence isn't in the 90's. These guys were doing it in the early 50's. Lee Marvin puts out cigarettes on woman's arms and throws scalding coffee in there faces. Man, that has to hurt.

Anyway, last night was 1981's Quest for Fire. I wasn't allowed to see this as a kid and had always wanted to see it. Finally did...mostly. I feel asleep after staying up too long and now I'm dragging my ass all day today and at 6:00 I have that Real Estate Roundtable I'm doing for the Challenger.

So today's post will be a little bit of hero worship. I love Mark Steyn. If you're not reading him you should. He writes wonderfully - beautifully even. I'd read him even if he was on the left. Is there a terrific writer on the other side? Oh, yeah, there is. Here's today's article about the anti-warriors. The last two paragraphs are right on.
The other day I found myself, for the umpteenth time, driving in Vermont behind a Kerry/Edwards supporter whose vehicle also bore the slogan ‘FREE TIBET’. It must be great to be the guy with the printing contract for the ‘FREE TIBET’ stickers. Not so good to be the guy back in Tibet wondering when the freeing thereof will actually get under way. For a while, my otherwise not terribly political wife got extremely irritated by these stickers, demanding to know at a pancake breakfast at the local church what precisely some harmless hippy-dippy old neighbour of ours meant by the slogan he’d been proudly displaying decade in, decade out: ‘But what exactly are you doing to free Tibet?’ she demanded. ‘You’re not doing anything, are you?’ ‘Give the guy a break,’ I said back home. ‘He’s advertising his moral virtue, not calling for action. If Rumsfeld were to say, “Free Tibet? Jiminy, what a swell idea! The Third Infantry Division go in on Thursday”, the bumper-sticker crowd would be aghast.’

But for those of us on the arrogant unilateralist side of things, that’s not how it works. ‘FREE AFGHANISTAN’. Done. ‘FREE IRAQ’. Done. Given the paintwork I pull off every time I have to change the sticker, it might be easier for the remainder of the Bush presidency just to go around with ‘FREE [INSERT YOUR FETID TOTALITARIAN BASKET-CASE HERE]’. Not in your name? Don’t worry, it’s not.

Thanks and hope that I make it through the day without drinking so much caffiene that my heart goes into full hummingbird mode and explodes all over my favorite tie.

Stay You.
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