The Pythons are Twits
Monty Python comedian Terry Jones is shooting his mouth off about the captured Englishmen. I noticed he is apparently suffering from bowel cancer, so let me wish him a full and prompt recovery even though I find him odious and his views rebarbative.
He's not the only one; Python gasbag Terry Gilliam renounced his American citizenship last year, claiming that Bushitler's Amerikkka is stealing his ideas:
"I'm thinking of suing George Bush and Dick Cheney for making the remake of 'Brazil' without my approval," he told a New York screening audience this week. "Their version isn’t as funny, though."In Brazil, plucky anarchists set off bombs in public places to Fight The Power of the soul-crushing state. I used to like the film until, oh, April 19, 1995, after which I found it rather difficult to root for those puckish freewheeling anarchists anymore. And after the 7-7 Tube bombings, Britain might wish to reconsider the message as well. For Gilliam, apparently, that's all pretext, and he's just so dreadfully clever he can see it all:
In the film, government agents arrest suspects in hordes, going so far as to charge them for their interrogation, including the electricity applied to their bodies. Detainees who couldn’t afford the costs of their torture could apply for loans (at favorable interest rates). The machinery of government-sanctioned torture and data collection became a self-sustaining apparatus.Did you get that? DHS is shocking people, and sending bills to their family. I believe it; DHS shocks me all the time with their unwillingness to enforce the borders."It is absolutely frightening," he said of the current political scene. "Homeland Security is just like [the film's] Ministry of Information, because if your job is counter-terrorism, what do you need to keep in business? You need terrorists, and even if they aren’t there, we may have to create new ones. It works very well."
Gilliam, good riddance. I hadn't missed you, and I won't. Your cliched anti-Americanism has become a "self-sustaining apparatus", so please invite your fellow Hollywood apparatchiks to join you in your self-imposed exile.
I will give him this, though---in Brazil, Gilliam eerily predicted one powerful, horrific image of the Bush era, besides innocent people being incinerated by terrorists: Click at your own risk.