What's she hissy-fitting about this time? You are likely asking yourself.
Allow me to elaborate.
Here's looking at you, kid
My daughters Audrey and Erica cooked up an entertaining outing for themselves several weeks back. Sisters! Single and living la dolce vita.
Erica, who lives in the Atlanta area, noticed that Turner Classic Movies was hosting TCM at the Symphony, an evening consisting of an open-air screening of the 1942 classic Casablanca.
Some people believe Casablanca is the greatest movie ever made. I myself would have to go with Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.
Second-place honors would be shared by a close tie of Singin' in the Rain and the expletives-deleted versions of Ferris Bueller's Day Off and My Cousin Vinny.
Make 'em laugh!
But to each his own.
As time goes by
Anyway, the event took place last Friday night at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Alpharetta, Georgia. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra was on hand to play the movie's score while the film in all its black-and-white glory flickered on three huge screens.
Audrey left work in Knoxville at lunchtime and drove down to Erica's place in time for dinner and the one-hour trip to Alpharetta.
The girls had opted for "inside" pavilion tickets rather than rusticating on the lawn. The place was packed out.
Ben Mankiewicz was in the house to introduce the movie, which in my opinion needs no introduction, but that's just me. TCM has a human intro for most of their movies.
You're lucky the bar's open to you
Although I think the manky-monkey qualifies only as sub-human. On a good day. But then I doubt he has many good days.
The way of transgressors is hard (Proverbs 13:15). That's my proof text. Let God be true but every man a liar (Romans 3:4) would be another.
A perfunctory perusal of the Twitter stream of @BenMank77 will sum up for you nicely what a brain trust he is. Not.
This, folks, is his Twitter bio: Turner Classic Movies host. I like gambling, long walks on the beach at sunset, Bruce Springsteen and gambling. I don't like mean people and gambling.
All crass, no class. I would imagine putting his flippers on the floor every morning and getting out of the rack is a gamble. But I digress.
By way of introduction, the mankster-prankster explained how the Casablanca project began casting at Warner Brothers early in 1942, shortly after the events at Pearl Harbor that got America into World War II.
Or aren't you the kind that tells?
He said an early contender for the role of Rick was Ronald Reagan.
Now, Manky could've left it at that and gone on to point out the obvious: Humphrey Bogart was eventually chosen for the lead, alongside Ingrid Bergman.
Themselves poster children for the godless immoral adulterous commie pinko liberal ideologic agenda. And Bogie was a drunkard into the bargain. Once again I digress; apologies.
But Mankless either did not possess or could not locate the inner strength to resist. He had a live audience heavy on libs (read: light on grey matter) for whom he was itching to show off. The rest -- like, for example, my girls and I'm sure at least ten or twelve more people -- he was eager to rankle, Mankle style.
So he went on to opine in his trademark homely-boy whine that it would've been better if Ronald Reagan had stayed in Hollywood and kept on being an actor.
Because then Ronnie never would've become Governor of California, and he wouldn't have been elected the 40th President of the United States, and then George H.W. Bush never would have become the 41st President of the United States, and then of course George W. Bush wouldn't have been the 43rd President of the United States ... and then of course -- of course! -- there never would have been a war in Iraq or anywhere else.
Just like any other liberal, only more so
*sigh*
Talk about your amoeba-shaped reasoning.
First let me get this out of my system: Ben Mankiewicz taking a pot-shot at Ronald Reagan is like an anemic gerbil hurling its six-ounce carcass against the blade of a six-ton Komatsu super-dozer.
Utterly ridiculous on its face and ultimately devastating in its result.
Tempting as it must have been to stand and deliver his petulant mini-jeremiad a la The Dixie Chicks (look what happened to their career) and throw his itty-bitty stones at arguably the greatest president in modern American history, in this case restraint would definitely have been the better part of valor.
When's the last time skanky Manky (a/k/a American Zero) put his precious Hollywood hiney on the line for his country like American heroes Reagan (who survived an assassination attempt), Bush 41, and Bush 43 did, both in the military and as lifelong public servants?
And what makes this pea-brain believe there is a single living breathing human being of any consequence who gives a flying flip what he thinks about Ronald Reagan, the Bush family, or the war in Iraq?
We don't even care what he thinks about the movies he introduces.
You are becoming your own best customer
Is it lost on anyone that when showbiz libs living in the land of fruits and nuts aren't lecturing the rest of us about how we're destroying our delicate ecosystem, they're holding forth on the evils of our imperialistic warmongering society?
As if capitalism has not been very, very good to all of them.
Don't forget that Hollyweird celebrities (of which the mankmobile, I admit, is a decidedly marginal variety), with their immoral and decadent lifestyles, are among the most conspicuous consumers of goods and services on the planet.
The energy and resources required to fulfill their every whim for a single week is more than I'll use at my house in an entire year.
In other words, liberal America-haters indulge in profligate waste of the majority of that for which much finer Americans laid down their lives.
So quit preaching -- or should I say reaching -- you idiot lib, about Ronald Reagan, whose memory you are not fit to even remember.
Keep amongst yourself and your peurile, mouth-breathing, bottom-feeding co-conspirators your asinine belief that if Ronald Reagan had stayed in Hollywood with the rest of your nitwit ilk, America wouldn't have eventually had a lethal showdown with those who despise all we stand for.
We said no questions
What, you think the mooselimb terrorists would've taken a pass on their "Death to America" jihad and started singing Kumbayah at the top of their lungs, holding hands, turbans toward the setting sun, if there'd been a liberal Democrat in the White House on 9/11?
Is that what you parasitic narcissistic hypocritical traitors tell yourselves?
And if we had had the misfortune to have a Dimocrat in the White House on 9/11 when the terrorist attacks went down, do you really think that president would NOT have been obliged to recognize that event for what it was: an ACT of WAR?
Do you? Do you think?
I think not. Because thinking would require morality and decency and actual intelligence, and whatever spark of any of those things you ever had long ago dissolved into the soft mist of a utopian dreamworld where pastel-colored unicorns frolic while spoofle dust swirls in sparkly clouds around their little prancing hooves.
And the rarefied air you breathe makes you so superior to those Americans who now lie in early graves -- having given up their right to breathe at all -- to ensure that you continue to enjoy freedoms unprecedented in the history of mankind; right?
Right.
Pathetic presumptuous pointy-headed prig, thy name is Benny Mankiewicz. You're not worth the suicide bomber it would take to blow you to kingdom come.
Round up the usual suspects
I'm sick of the socialist progressilibs' elitist stake-claiming of the arts. Liberals did not invent and do not own exclusive rights to beautiful music and good movies and great paintings and other forms of creativity instilled in human beings by their Creator.
But since libs're convinced they are the primary purveyors of and principal partakers in all things artistic, why would the muling manko-brat think it necessary to ruin a perfectly lovely evening by bringing up politics (which, by the way, he kept insisting he "hated to do, but ...")???
I know why. Because there's a little speck on the horizon called a presidential election and it gets closer every minute, and they are terrified.
Why else all the agitation, the name-calling, the mud-slinging, the hand-wringing, the intimidation, the muckraking, the invective-hurling, the lie-spinning, the general sturm und drang that seems to attend liberals' every waking moment?
I'll say it again: They're quaking in their five-thousand-dollar boots at the mere contemplation of their useless O'bummer opposite just about anyone we care to run against him.
Why, I bet we could put the late Ronald Reagan on the ticket against Obama and the mere mention of his name would take Texas and the entire Southeast, if not win the whole banana by a respectable margin.
This time I know our side will win
So they'd better be scared. Because there's something else coming around the bend like a two-mile-long freight train and it's called Conservative America.
Casablanca ... White House ... get it? I don't think the oblique reference is coincidental.
Well, they're all about to get it. Permanent letters of transit, as it were. Just be patient.
NObama 2012. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.
Oh, and Bruce? Mr. Springsteen? Word to the wise. Manky-panky's got a man crush.