Of Cabbages and Kings: We were hostages to the idiot veto

Published 5:00 pm Tuesday, September 14, 2010

When public life imitates farce, we are in trouble.

Years ago, I stumbled across the movie Americathon.

Made in 1979, it stars John Ritter as President Chet Roosevelt. The movie is incorrectly labeled a “bomb” in movie guides such as Leonard Maltin’s.

Americathon’s premise is that America has run out of oil and is broke. Chief Dan George, who has loaned the nation $1 billion, is calling in his loan. The president’s advisers suggest the country hold a telethon, which becomes Americathon, with Harvey Korman as its host. The movie opens with shots of people bicycling and running on the Los Angeles Freeway, to the music of a Beach Boys song (It’s a beautiful day), which is only performed in this movie. Other notable cameos are Elvis Costello singing and Jay Leno in a bit that presages today’s reality television shows. The telethon ends when Arab terrorists storm the television studio and shoot Harvey Korman.

Every time America lurches further into debt held by the Chinese and the politics of oil intrude on our lives, I think of Americathon.

Now we have last week’s farce out of Florida, in which a small-time pastor seemingly held the world hostage with his threat to burn Qurans. If Hollywood had come up with that premise, who would take it seriously?

Leonard Pitts Jr., captured the nuttiness of our new instant communications. “As this case makes oppressively clear, the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle have evolved an analog to the terrorist veto. Call it the idiot veto – the ability of a single obscure malcontent, powerless but for his willingness to do some outrageous thing, to make himself heard at the highest level of geopolitics and force his way upon the international stage.”

The Internet has given power and inordinate riches to some people who sometimes seem to have no ethical bearings. The New York Times reported Sunday (“Using Microsoft, Kremlin Suppresses Dissent”) that Microsoft has effectively cooperated with the Russian government to shut down a significant Russian environmentalist organization. Reported the Times: “In numerous politically tinged inquiries across Russia, lawyers retained by Microsoft have staunchly backed the police.”

During an interview I recorded for KMUN-FM last week with Norma Hernandez of the Lower Columbia Hispanic Council, listeners learned what happened when her group had a booth at the Clatsop County Fair. It seems that a number of fairgoers were quite derogatory about the Hispanic Council being there. Hernandez was curious whether the same thing would occur when a white member of the council manned the booth. It did.

Though that experience is dispiriting, I expect it was fairly predictable. The best response to that prejudice is for the Hispanic Council to remain visible and do the fair next summer. As Fernando Rodriguez said on the same broadcast, the Latino immigrants in Clatsop and Pacific counties are doing jobs no one else wants. Hernandez pointed out these legal immigrants are contributing significantly to Oregon’s economy.

Except for Native Americans, the rest of us stem from immigrant roots. The Hispanic Council’s mission is to assist Latinos in their assimilation.

If you dropped by the parking lot of the Columbia River Maritime Museum around noon Sunday, your head turned at the sight of about 20 vintage Rolls Royce and Bently automobiles. The sweeping lines on the autos from the 1930s and 1940s are almost musical.

I believe it was the legendary advertising man David Ogilvy who wrote the classic Rolls Royce advertisement that ran in The New Yorker. Ogilvy’s great line was:?”At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise comes from the electric clock.”

– S.A.F.