The administration does not question this document. Yet Scotty McSpokesman refuses to budge from the previously-determined spin:
McClellan noted previous U.N. resolutions had warned Saddam Hussein of serious consequences if he did not comply with U.N. mandates over weapons of mass destruction and its compliance with the inspection regime.But Saddam did comply. Inspectors had free run of Iraq. And the memo, along with plenty of other evidence, proves that compliance was never the issue; Bush was determined to invade no matter what Saddam Hussein did.
Saddam had been given numerous opportunities to do so but chose not to, McClellan stressed.
In a bad (really bad) '60s sex comedy called A Guide For the Married Man, you can find one good joke: A philanderer caught by his wife in flagrante dilecto manages to talk his way out the situation by denying everything. Even as the man and the mistress get out of bed, dress, and give each other a quick farewell smooch, he tells the wife: "Don't be silly, dear. I would never do such a thing. There's no other woman. You're just imagining things."
Are people really stupid enough to fall for a denial that flies in the face of concrete evidence? Scott McCellan thinks so.
Joe, Joe, Joe! If you're going to quote a movie (not so bad a movie as you let on in my opinion) do it justice and quote it correctly.
ReplyDeleteHere's my transcription of the scene you refer to.
"Deny, deny, deny," says Robert Morse to Walter Mathau as we break to a bedroom where two people are cuddling in a pure white bed.
"Aieee!" The wife says as she enters her bedroom where her husband (Joey Bishop) is in bed with his arms wrapped around a young lovely.
"Charlie!" the wife says.
"What?" says the husband disentangling himself from the gorgeous woman rolling out of bed to reach for his clothes hanging on the door.
"What are you doing?" the wife says incredulously.
"Where?" says the husband putting his arm in his shirt. The young lovely with bare back to camera begins putting on her bra as the wide eyed wife looks at her wide-eyed in disbelief.
"There with her!" says the wife waving a white gloved hand toward the bare breasted blond.
"Who?" says the husband calmly pulling the t-shirt over his head.
"Her!" says the wife waving her hand again in the direction of the woman, her back to the camera, getting dressed. "How could you?"
"What?" says the husband pulling his shirt down to his white boxer shorts.
"That!" the wife says waving her hand toward the unkempt bed.
"When?" says the husband starting to pull on his pants as the shapely blond lovely in the foreground pulls on her skirt.
"When I came in," says the wife with consternation in her voice, "you and she w...w..."
"Who?" says the husband pulling his gray trousers up and over his white tidy whities.
"You know very well who," says the wife as the husband buttons his trousers closed, "that, that woman there," she said pointing a gloved white finger at the blond putting on her black blouse and looking in a mirror to tidy herself before departure.
"Where?" says the husband nonchalantly.
"Charlie!" says the wife in total exasperation as the cute blond slips out the bedroom door behind her.
"What?" says the husband softly as he begins to make the bed.
"You and that woman!" says the wife practically shouting in his ear.
"What woman?" asks the husband.
The wife turns and looks around the room seeing no one.
"Th...th...the one that just left!" she says to her husband's expressionless face as he puts on his jacket.
"When?" says the husband, straightening out his coat and walking out the bed room door.
The wife's head pivots on her neck looking around the room seeing, again, no one. She follows her husband to the den where he sits in a large leather straight back chair and picks up the newspaper as he sits.
"But, Charlie!?" she queries in a lower voice.
"What?" he replies as if nothing is amiss.
"Aren't you even ashamed of yourself?" she inquires as he picks up his pipe and reaches for a match.
"Why? he says softly to her.
"Because of..." she says as she pivots and returns to the bedroom scene. All she sees is an empty bedroom and a perfectly made bed. Framed, in her white suit with gloves, matching handbag hanging from her left wrist and a white halo of hat framing her brown hair she contemplates the scene. Breaking the fourth wall, she looks directly at the camera, blinks a long blink, shakes her head in disbelief and turns to go back to Charlie sitting serenely in the den with his pipe and newspaper.
"Charlie," she says with a question in her voice as she raises her defeated eyes to the camera, "what would you like for dinner?"
J i O
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteJ, I must bow to your knowledge of '60s sex comedies.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I should give that film another chance. Last time I saw it, Ford was in office.
One problem was with the casting. Robert Morse played the experienced cad giving advice to the more naive Walter Matthau, who is being tempted into the path of sin. Obviously, those two guys should have changed roles. Also, Matthau's wife was the lovely Inger Stevens, and you can't help but think that a mug like him should be pretty damn grateful to have a lady like that.
Inger died just a few years later. Suicide, they say. One of these days, I may try to work up a conspiracy theory about that...