Thursday, March 29, 2007

Video on America, 1948

Alina S links a very fine video, made at Harding College in 1948, to show Americans why they didn't want to be commies.

Some lessons one notices:

1. Young man are idiots who hang out at malt shops when teenagers, but turn into bad golfers with anger management issues in middle age.

2. Young women move their hips in very suggestive ways to get young men to dance with them at the malt shop, but in middle age become obsessed with getting their children and husband to go to church.

3. Public schools were fully and peacefully integrated...in 1948.

4. Juries were all male, and easily distracted from the trial by women in short skirts.

5. Given the way the film describes the Congress, and politics, it appears that Dennis Hastert was Speaker of the House in 1948. Politics never changes, only the names.

6. Capitalism is based not on financial intermediation, but on people who store money in their garters, or under their mattresses, or buried in their back yards.

7. The state chains up laborers, tyrannizes over farmers, and thumps capitalists in their plump bums.

8. The state is an enormous blue hand, with an iron bracelet, like Grouchy Smurf gone very wrong after a nuclear accident.

Since these observations are by and large correct (#3 is a bit of stretch, but #7 and #8 are completely accurate), I recommend the video most heartily.

2 comments:

Steven Taylor said...

It's a little known fact, but the jury scene which you cite was the inspiration for Sharon Stone's famous scene in Basic Instincts.

Mungowitz said...

Now, see? I bet the rest of you didn't know that.

All part of the service, here at the End.