"Seems to me I'm getting all balled up in high politics."
-- James Bond, You Only Live Twice
The Republican National Committee produced a little gag video criticizing Nancy Pelosi for being a James Bond villainess. (Or something. It's getting harder and harder to discern what they're on about.) The Daily Kos criticized the criticism, because there's three seconds in the video where Pelosi and Pussy Galore are on screen at the same time:
"Pussy Pelosi? The GOP Thinks So"
And Politico found some tame Republican congressman to object as well:
"We have to get away from the politics of personal destruction." -- Jason Chaffetz (R-Obscurity)
We Huffingtons are on board of course:
"GOP Rep Slams 'Reprehensible' RNC Video Comparing Nancy Pelosi To Pussy Galore"
And the Free Republic has the first right wing blog criticizing the criticism of the criticism:
"One sure way to know that you've hit a homerun is to watch how upset the liberal media reacts."
-- Stormin's Morning Java (My Conservative Blog on News, Politics, Current Events, Pop Culture, and Asian Woman)
So we're all off to the races, because this is the Internet, and if you're not shocked, sounding off, melting down, slamming, blasting or shooting back, you're not doing your job. Even if you're getting offended about something that was clearly designed just to offend. As Kronsteen once explained to Blofeld, the simple reason some people can't resist a trap is because it's so obviously a trap.
I don't know if Nancy Pelosi is a Pussy Galore or not; you'd have to ask Mr. Pelosi. The larger question is: How did the Republican Party get stuck in 1959?
Last year, the McCain campaign produced an ad that called Barack Obama "Dr. No," because Obama was against offshore drilling. It was just a lucky accident that Dr. No was also a biracial communist murderer who fed white women to land crabs. Now it's laughable, apparently, that Nancy Pelosi - a woman! - thinks she's entitled to an opinion about the CIA, and it's just a coincidence that there's a fictitious spy named Pussy Galore who's a lesbian with a name that means vagina and wimp.
(It's not a slur. It's just serendipitous semiotics. Like, say, if God made a guy who was a useless dumb dickhead and named him Boehner.)
You work with what you've got.
But if Michael Steele is giving the Republicans a "hip-hop makeover" why are they still getting their slams from the swinging sixties?
I like James Bond as much as the next guy at the James Bond convention, but I know, in my heart, it's not really that hip.
Here's the other problem with using James Bond to make the argument - again, I'm just guessing that this is the argument - that a ditzy broad has no business talking smack to spies: James Bond's boss, M, has been a woman since 1995. She's played by an actress named Judi Dench. It was in all the papers. Before that, another M and Bond worked for a woman prime minister named Margaret Thatcher for eleven years. And they've all answered to a female regent - I'll have to look this up - named Queen Elizabeth II. Bond's been serving her -- on her secret service, you might say -- for 56 years, since the coronation and the publication of the first Bond book, Casino Royale, three months apart, in 1953.
Apparently, sometime after the last time anyone in the Republican Party got out of the house.
And here's the problem with using Goldfinger, specifically, as an argument that we shouldn't let our politicians get in the way of our torturers: It contains the most famous exchange in the history of alternative interrogation.
Do you expect me to talk?No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.
It's not the good guy asking the questions. The torturer is the villain, Pussy Galore's boss.
And James Bond gives him misleading information.
You hit the nail on the head.....OUCH! Now you have broken it. Where is National Health when you want it?
Of course not. Were quibbling about whether or not Pelosi knew that the Bush thugs were about to commit torture.
Wake up people.
If it were to work it's way into the next Austin Power's spy comedy, it would fit naturally. But Mike Meyers wouldn't do that - or if he did he'd do it properly and turn right wing into the joke. Oh wait, they've already done that. ;-)
I don't know Mr. Kelly. They are stuck in a time wharp. Michael Steele is a relic of some 70s tv program and Sarah Palin was fresh from a McCarthy hearing with Michelle Bachmann co-chairing the House Un-American Activities committee 50 years after the fact. Limbaugh is some twist on Tokyo Rose and Cheney is the reincarnation of some despot we defeated and is supposed to fade into a history book but won't accept that he's a bad chapter and just go there with the other despots and leave us in peace.
Very odd.
I agree that all should be released and let the chips fall where they may.....perhaps that would silence the hypocricy of the Right, who is oh so wrong always!
I'd like to see the Beltway sewer cleaned up, no matter who it throw up. The torture done is a stench and a stain on this country and I'd really like to have those guilty experience it themselves. Somehow I suspect that, while there would be some from both parties, the majority would be Republicans andd other holy sa.dists.
We just suffered through Texas Bush and the Last Crusade.
All the Republican leaders are too old to make really good action heros, or femme fatales.
Sara Palin's hot, but her lecturing about abstinence, would put out the randiest double agent's fire.
Maybe this is why Obama kept the aged super hero Joe, "Jaws", Biden at his side.
"I think I hear the sound of a walker, a wheel chair and the unmistakable squeaking of an I. V. dispenser's wheels outside the White House, Joe. Republicans no doubt! Take care of it!"
Bet the pols guffaw, too, when they see the test screening and think they have a winner.
Arrested development is funny that way.
First of all, I am a bit puzzled by the reasons the Republicans would have thought comparing Miss Galore to Mrs Pelosi would have been a negative thing - on the contrary, which woman of advanced years would not want to be compared to the yummy, formidable femme fatale of Bond yore?
Secondly - and on this I agree with Mr Kelly - who exactly is supposed to be the target audience for this spot? If the RNC is now supposed to be "Hip-Hop", then perhaps Rihanna or Britney would have been better selections for comparison. But then that would have been absurd.
In the end, I think the Republican marketing people need to work just a little bit harder to get it right.