This is why you shouldn't waste a good reference by overuse.
As Jeff Danziger suggests, Edward Snowden has exposed the stunning secret that the United States spies on world leaders.
What a great time to reference Louis Renaud's quote from Casablanca: "I am shocked, shocked to find that espionage is going on in here!"
But we've wasted its freshness on so many other moments that it is only slightly less apt than the revelation is stunning.
Yet, like Renault, we have to go through this dumbshow of being shocked, shocked, because, technically, well ...
Maybe it's like the Seinfeld episode where George gets caught looking down the front of a young girl's shirt, and Jerry explains that it's like a solar eclipse: You're not supposed to stare right at it.
Of course we're spying, and of course she's knows we're spying, and of course we know she knows we're spying etc etc etc, but, goddammitall, nobody is supposed to comment on the fact.
Now we have to act all shocked and offended and upset and stand in the tea chest and sing "Jerusalem."
And mostly we have to pretend that Germany has no espionage system, nor does France, nor does Italy. They were all dismantled after the war, like Japan's military.
East Germany had spies, of course, but the East Germans were commies. Now that the Wall has been torn down and nobody lives in the eastern half of the country anymore, there are no more spies in Germany.
And the Soviet Union has been disbanded, so there goes another whole system of surveillance into the dustbin of history.
It's down to us and Mossad. The only sneaky bastards left in the world.
To extend the Seinfeld sexual-etiquette metaphor, it's like the overused-and-never-rightly-applied-anyway moment from "Tootsie" in which Geena Davis throws a drink in Dustin Hoffman's face.
This has become such a commonplace shortcut for "strong woman" that you could compile a pretty lengthy YouTube mashup of women throwing drinks at men, but what you wouldn't find would be very many that apply it in the original context:
Davis's character had earlier in the day confessed to Hoffman's cross-dress-character "Dorothy" that she wished that, just once, a man would simply say what was on his mind, that he found her attractive and would like to have sex with her. So Hoffman, now in his "Michael" identity, does just that. And she responds with fury.
Yes, we all want transparency, until we get it.
And then we have to act shocked for the benefit of dignity and self-respect and whatever.
I don't know what specific age it is at which you should stop being so naive. I'll admit to a pretty significant whooosh! moment when I was 19.
I went out with a girl then who had grown up largely overseas, because her father was a cultural attache who had been assigned, among other places, to Belgium, Italy and Argentina.
And I thought it meant that he was a cultural attache. After all, she had met John Steinbeck at some embassy function when she was a little girl. Or maybe she met him at their permanent, stateside home in McLean.
Anyway, her dad apparently dealt with all sorts of writers and artists and musicians.
A few years later, I found out what a cultural attache really is: A person who deals with writers and artists and musicians and codebreakers and turncoats and moles.
Whoops! Did I say that out loud?
Quick, someone throw a drink in my face and stomp off.
Preferably someone who is shocked, shocked.
Something new, something old
Two reasons to get a DailyInk subscription: New adventures starting now, and the vintage strips only appear on the subscription site.
Big Ben Bolt has just won the championship and the offers are pouring in. This one should prove interesting. I started reading this strip out of curiosity and, while it's not the most complex plotting in the world, the art is good and the writing is pretty strong. This new chapter is from 1953.
Buz Sawyer was the first continuity strip I got involved with as a small fellow, and most of why I read it now is for nostalgia. But it's still a fun stop on the daily run. As you see, this 1950 storyline begins with him seeing a cultural attache on a train. (And check out the name of that commissar -- Did you think that whole thing was new?)
You're late, Mr. Summers
All right, all right, Dana. Give me your tardy slip, scroll down to yesterday's post and then take your place.
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