|
|
|
Normal Brains
 After
a lapse of several years, I have cable
television again. I got it just in time to watch the Detroit Tigers play like a
bunch of Republicans in the World Series, their pitchers firing fastballs at
more than 100 miles an hour at hitters but hopelessly inept at tossing balls to
first  and
third base.
The Series, in
turn, ended just in time for Halloween, when the cable channels showed every
hokie horror movie ever made, most of them starring Vincent Price or Boris
Karloff. I watched the first film version of Frankenstein again,
including the unforgettable scene where Igor, Dr. Frankenstein’s
assistant, sneaks into the lab and steals the wrong brain to put into the
monster’s cranium, with unfortunate results.
Man, that
always creeps me out. I mean, how hard can it be? Each brain is kept in a jar
with a sign identifying it, in clear scientific language, as a “normal
brain” or, alternatively, “abnormal brain.” Igor takes the
“normal” brain but drops it, and then, unaccountably, takes the
“abnormal” brain instead. Anyone can see trouble ahead.
You’d
think a brilliant doctor performing an experiment of historic importance
would be sure to hire a competent assistant, a trained professional, rather
than a minimum-wage bumbler like Igor. But important experiments in these
films have a way of going seriously wrong, as in the Vincent Price classic
The Fly, another one that still creeps me out. As you may
recall, Price plays a scientist who carelessly gets his body parts mixed up
with those of an ordinary housefly, and it doesn’t do the fly much
good either.
By now
I’m sure you know where this is headed: the Iraq war. The mad
scientists and their blundering assistants remind me of the Bush
administration’s experiments in spreading democracy. I don’t
want to press the analogies too far, but I look at Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld and I’m thinking “Igor.” Someone forgot to
specify “normal brain.”
![[Breaker quote for Normal Brains: Lessons of the classic horror movies]](2006breakers/061102.gif) If
there is one thing this
administration could use, it’s a normal brain. Here is where the movie
analogies break down. You can see the neoconservatives who agitated for
this war as the brilliant but deranged scientists and President Bush as the
Igor who, only dimly grasping his instructions, botched his assignment. Or you
may see Bush as the monster who gets the abnormal brain by mistake and
staggers around the countryside grunting inarticulately and wreaking havoc.
There is no single “right” way to apply the parallel.
This brings us
to Senator John Kerry, who even without makeup vaguely reminds one of
Boris Karloff. This being an election season, tempers are raw. Candidates
(“I’m Joe Blow, and I approved this message”) are
accusing each other of ax murders, pedophilia, and even, when they really get
rough, Holocaust denial. Their opponents reply in kind, and everyone demands
apologies, which only a fool would give.
Well, Kerry
told a joke about Bush being so dumb he got stuck in Iraq, and Bush was so
dumb he didn’t get it and construed it as an insult to our brave
fighting men (and women). He demanded an apology, and all the Republicans
demanded an apology, and then even the Democrats demanded an apology, so
Kerry, like a fool, apologized. “Cut and run,” eh, John?
Neither Bush
nor Kerry has what is scientifically known as a “normal brain,”
but Kerry’s seems to be even more defective than Bush’s.
Republicans accused Kerry of snobbery, pointing out that our armed forces
are in fact highly educated, and that if you walk into any barracks you are
sure to hear them discussing Plato — whose most famous dialogue is
called, significantly, The Apology.
Kerry, it must
be remembered, once recalled that his dying mother gave him three words of
advice: “Integrity, integrity, integrity.” This may help explain his
odd behavior. At any rate, the Republicans took his apology as a vindication
of their cause. He had enraged and activated their base, and suddenly they
had high hopes of holding both houses of Congress next week.
The voters
face a clear choice between the two parties. The Democrats are placing their
hopes in Barack Obama. But the Bush administration has made it absolutely
clear that it will not allow him to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Joseph Sobran |
||
| Copyright © 2006 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
|
||
|
||
|
Archive Table of Contents
Current Column Return to the SOBRAN’S home page. |
||
|
|
| FGF E-Package columns by Joe Sobran, Sam Francis, Paul Gottfried, and others are available in a special e-mail subscription provided by the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation. Click here for more information. |