BROADSIDES

December 01, 2003

The People's Front of Hollywood
Does life imitate Monty Python? Matt Drudge's latest exclusive suggests so:

Top Hollywood activists and intellectuals are planning to gather this week in Beverly Hills for an event billed as 'Hate Bush,' the DRUDGE REPORT has learned!

Laurie David [wife of SEINFELD creator Larry David] has sent out invites to the planned Tuesday evening meeting at the Hilton with the bold heading: 'Hate Bush 12/2 - Event'

The list of invitees reads like a Who's Not in Hollywood with names like Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and Daniel Stern. [cricket, cricket, cricket].

Here's the best part. Drudge reports Laurie David's message verbatim:

"This is the most important meeting you can attend to prevent the advancement of the current extremist right wing agenda. Do not miss this meeting. This will be a high-level briefing to discuss the strategies... to affect what happens next November."

Extremist right wing agenda? Since when do extremist rightwingers create massive Medicare prescription entitlements?

A high-level briefing? The wife of the creator of Seinfeld is high-level?

Discuss strategies? Such as using the word "hate" in an effort to convince American voters not to support a particular candidate?

The over-the-top and off-the-mark remarks exhibited by these Hate Bush boobs bring to mind Monty Python's comedic masterpiece Life of Brian.

Set during the time of Christ, Brian viciously lampoons, among other things, the blowhard nature associated with most political activists and their maniacally exaggerated sense of efficacy. Enter the People's Front of Judea, a clandestine anti-Roman insurgent group which is in a perpetual state of meeting. Passing harsh resolutions against the Roman occupation, plotting attacks on Roman officials and always losing focus, the PFJ's tough words never result in action.

In one scene, PFJ leader Reg (John Cleese) and his followers, Francis (Michael Palin), Stan (Eric Idle) and Judith (Sue Jones), discuss their fight to free the Holy Land of Roman oppression:

JUDITH: I do feel, Reg, that any Anti-Imperialist group like ours must reflect such a divergence of interests within its power-base.
REG: Agreed. Francis?
FRANCIS: Yeah. I think Judith's point of view is very valid, Reg, provided the Movement never forgets that it is the inalienable right of every man--
STAN: Or woman.
FRANCIS: Or woman... to rid himself--
STAN: Or herself.
FRANCIS: Or herself.
REG: Agreed.
FRANCIS: Thank you, brother.
STAN: Or sister.
FRANCIS: Or sister. Where was I?
REG: I think you'd finished.
FRANCIS: Oh. Right.
REG: Furthermore, it is the birthright of every man--
STAN: Or woman.
REG: Why don't you shut up about women, Stan. You're putting us off.
STAN: Women have a perfect right to play a part in our movement, Reg.
FRANCIS: Why are you always on about women, Stan?
STAN: I want to be one.
REG: What?
STAN: I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me 'Loretta'.
REG: What?!
STAN/LORETTA: It's my right as a man.
JUDITH: Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?
STAN/LORETTA: I want to have babies.
REG: You want to have babies?!
STAN/LORETTA: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
REG: But... you can't have babies.
STAN/LORETTA: Don't you oppress me!
REG: I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!
STAN/LORETTA: [crying]
JUDITH: Here! I-- I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that he can have the right to have babies.
FRANCIS: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.
REG: What's the point?
FRANCIS: What?
REG: What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can't have babies?!
FRANCIS: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.
REG: Symbolic of his struggle against reality.

The inaugural meeting of Hate Bush will probably sound much like that -- except Loretta would be urged to abort "her" baby.

B. Sides @ 10:17 AM