...and asks me to help him with some liner notes for the playbill of a show he's producing at the Rogue Community College (I know, the jokes write themselves sometimes) in Medford OR. The Show is The Madwoman of Chaillot by Jean Giraudoux, a powerful, timeless send-up of Corporatism, oil-lust and market-madness-driven violence, written during the Nazi occupation of France, circa 1943 by a French operative who was assassinated soon after he finished the script. My brother's shows always sell out and the scuttlebutt is that this one is a doozy.
What my brother is asking me, the wonk in the family, to do is to provide some contemporary historical links that mesh with some of the zingers in the play. He wants to give the audience some newsy context for a selection of quotes from the play that he will insert into the playbill.
Anybody want to give me some help? Quotes from the play to play with, below the fold:
Btw, here is a video link to a trailer for the show.
I know, this is a small-impact deal relative to much of what goes on here, but sometimes you gotta do the little things to make the big things move along and I thought it might be fun to make this a dkos community project. And sychronicity-wise, this play is coming on the heels of France's lurch to the right (sort of), just yesterday.
So pick a quote, any quote, copy it to your post and paste a link to a news item from the last decade or so that fits the quote (no opinion, just news from a standard source). I know that mostly Republican stuff jumps out at you, but bipartisan slams are welcome since this isn't about a party but about a social pathology run amok (Global Crossings/McAuliffe, DLC, etc etc).
My brother didn't give me the characters who are speaking, but I think the quotes speak for themselves. Uncanny, really, how this guy Giraudoux nails it for today from 64 years ago:
"a stock certificate is not a commodity like a pound of cheese, what we sell a customer is a view of the Elysian Fields!"
"I am the law, and when I speak, that is the law!"
"If I have tan shoes, I buy black ones; if I have a bicycle, I buy a motor car!"
"What's a mountain got that a slag pile hasn't?"
"What would you rather see in your back yard, an almond tree, or an oil well?"
"How can they decieve me? I own them all, body and soul!"
"Is a park any better than a coal mine?"
"A financier is a creative artist! We are poets!"
"A stock is not a commodity like a pound of cheese- what we sell is a view of the Elysian Fields"
"the only social unit of which our age is capable - The Corporation!"
"the only safeguard to order and discipline is a standardized worker with interchangeable parts!"
"just show us where you want to start digging, and we'll do the rest, I don't care if it's in the middle of the Louvre!"
"and when I speak, it is etiquette to smile, and apply the lips respectfully (bearing his ass), it is more than etiquette! -...it is a national priveledge guarantee'd by the constitution"
"I am never quiet"
from the Press:
"If it's there, all well and good, if it's not- by the time we get through with it, it will be!"
and
"You underestimate the creative aspect of our profession, Madam"
prosecutor?:
"You never catch these birds napping, I remember when I was in the detectives--you catch a president, pfft-- He turns into a trustee. You catch him as a trustee, and pfft! He's not a trustee, he's an honorary vice-chairman. You catch a Senator dead to rights: wham! He becomes a Minister of Justice. You get after a minister of Justice, bango--he becomes the chief of police, and there you are, no longer in the detectives."
Thanks for whatever anybody can offer this effort. Like I said, it is small potatoes, but good potatoes. I gotta go to bed but will get up in the am (HI time) and jump into whatever back-n-forth has developed.
My little brother and I and a small town troupe on the banks of the Rogue River thank you.