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Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Allen West's Manchurian Candidate Moment

Just as each and every one of us may get our "15 Minutes of Fame", so also may all politicians have their moments in the limelight: the Democratic politicians usually try for an FDR type of ambience, whereas the Republicans of the present day seek a Joe McCarthy, Eugene Talmadge, or Senator Johnny Iselin aura.


Mr. West claimed that 80 Democratic members of the House of Representatives were members of the Communist Party (and - so it appears - did not get the Tweet that the USSR had closed up shop!). Mr. West, in a display of true gallantry rare for these days, has declined to name any one of the 80, showing he is a gentleman with a good grasp of the laws covering libel and slanders.


All from the script of Senator Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate: 

The setting is a meeting chamber where the Secretary of Defense is holding a meeting, Frank Sinatra's character is his military aide, and Senator Iselin gets the floor for a question:
I am United States Senator Yerkes Iselin, and I have here a list of the names of 207 persons who are known by the Secretary of Defense as being members of the Communist Party!

(uproar breaks out in chamber, people shouting back and forth. The Secretary of Defense demands to know who the idiot is yelling these questions.)

When the Senator leaves the chamber and goes to the cloak room, the reporters follow him and ask him to "verify that number... how many Communists did you say?"

Oh, I said there were exactly... I've absolutely proof there are, uh... 104 card-carrying Communists in the Defense Department at this time...

We can be sure Mr. West will not fudge the number as did Senator Iselin. Nor, I'm sure, does Mr. West have a hidden and baneful agenda behind his bombast, as did Senator Iselin...

I appreciate very much watching life imitate art like this. What is a Lie but an artifice well done?
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