For every 200 phony egalitarians among the winners in the genetic lottery, one understands that freedom comes before equality.
Since we questioned whether all men are created equal, readers have been arguing passionately that God loves all of us equally, and that's why it's in the Declaration of Independence. My point was not that God loves special people more because they are more handsome, accomplished and virtuous than you or me. Rather, they may be so much above the norm in so many areas because God loves them more. Anyway, theology and theodicy are always fun, but we have more pressing matters to attend to.
This segment was going to expand on the activities of the Left to actually make all humans equal. With genetic engineering, it may be possible soon. Eventually, the ruling elites may turn all of us into hermaphroditic worms. I was also going to expound on the benefits of fuzziness in politics and philosophy. But the events of last week upended content priorities.
The worst bill in history, that piece of treasonous and imbecilic crap wrought by our finest last week, shook me to the core. I have to revise my theory, for a mere disconnect from reality cannot account for this phenomenon. Nobody can be that stupid, well, outside of maybe ten people I can think of among the august conspirators. So, I have to consider now that in addition to the fuzziness issue, there is something more clever and sinister going on. A paper has been written on this subject that I consider important enough to call it Federalist #86. Much to digest here, so we'll defer it to next time.
Meanwhile, a news event has just transpired that highlights nicely the interplay between freedom and equality. On Sunday, May 27, The Cannes Film Festival paid tribute to Henry Fonda. It had been planned, though, as a surprise tribute to another Fonda. In a gala attended by one hundred of those who count in certain circles (the French call it tout le monde), the festival's president, Gilles Jacob, handed the lifetime achievement "Golden Palm" award to Jane Fonda. The award had been granted in the festival's 60-year history only to three giants of the French cinema, Alain Resnais, Gérard Oury, and Jeanne Moreau.
Jane Fonda is a good actress, but Jeanne Moreau she ain't, let alone Alain Resnais. You know where I am going with this, don't you? For the speech accompanying the award invoked not Barbarella, or even On Golden Pond, but the Vietnam War, FBI spying on subversives, "justice," and "defending the oppressed." You have to experience the gilded splendor of the banquet's venue, the Hotel Carlton, sample its divine food, and partake of the service by its punctilious servants, to fully appreciate the irony of this occasion.
No matter, the pox on these a******s. What was a lot more interesting was Jane Fonda's acceptance speech. I read excerpts of it in news wire releases in English, thought they were misprints, and went to French print news sources. Corroborated now, this is what she said – in my translation from French, for the AP-AFP-Reuters-BBC-CNN Social Justice Che Guevara Lives News promises to draw and quarter you if you quote them:
For my father, his films were his manner of representing justice, quality, democracy.
The younger, activist Fonda was defending here the older Fonda from charges of "non-activism" that the presenter of the award had just made. But that tripartite template above surely enfolds equality in its holy troika, not quality, non? Particularly in the land of Liberté, Fraternité, Equalité.
If Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda, the dynastic heiress of Henry Fonda and Frances Ford Seymour; the heiress to their genes and the genes of the favorite wife of Henry VIII; the partaker of the Rolodexes of Roger Vadim, Tom Hayden, and Ted Turner, has enough honesty and presence of mind to substitute "quality" for "equality," the latter one being a hollow bromide in her or her dad's case, and she does so despite being a liberal creampuff, there is still hope for the world.
But I couldn't believe it in my bones. It's too much to believe of someone who, with her Hollywood royalty status, once said, Revolution is an act of love; we are the children of revolution, born to be rebels. It runs in our blood. So I went to other sources, both in French and English. Sure enough, they quote Fonda as saying, [H]is films taught me important things: justice, democracy. The stumbling word is missing here.
Not good enough. Why the discrepancy? I went on in my search, and it paid off. If you can take the multiple incongruities of a sideways, sexy, 70-year-old aristo left-wing grandma speaking heavily accented French to socialist sophisticate sycophants with a reverb bouncing off the crystal chandeliers of one of the most luxurious spaces in the world, you will discover with me that she said la justice, l'équalité, démocratie. She just stumbled a little on her l'équalité, so harried hacks took it down as la qualité, and translated it as "quality." Equality became quality. May we be so lucky.
Where we are headed in this world is indeed branded on the foreheads of those harried hacks in Cannes. Cannes turns 60 with U2 show, pouting Polanski, reads one headline. Another one reads, Paps boo Pam, Polanski boos press in Cannes. But my take on it is Paps boo Pam, Polack Polanski pouts.
Apparently, the most important thing that happened that day was that Pam Anderson gave the metaphorical finger to hundreds of media people she had kept waiting for nothing. The second most important thing was a touted media conference, to discuss a monumental film, To Each His Cinema. 31 of the most talented film directors in the world were sitting on the stage. They had each contributed a segment to the film. 200 reporters from all over the world were present. And the reporters, instead of asking questions about the film, were asking why there weren't more women in this prestigious group.
So, Polanski, who, like me, is plugged into the common sense of the Old World before it became the nonsense of the EU World, told those hacks off. You're not interested in cinema, he told them. He said that lunch would be a better use of his time and walked off the stage.
But freedom is not lost as long as Brigitte Bardot is there to fight for it. For every 200 phony egalitarians among the winners in the genetic lottery, one understands that freedom comes before equality. While shoulder straps were slipping, and champagne was being sipped between puffs of socialist opium in Cannes, the original goddess of Cannes, Brigitte Bardot, utilized her time to demand of the castrati at the European Commission to take a firm position against the stoning to death of women accused of adultery in Sudan. Just two years older than Lady Seymour, and highly pedigreed too, Bardot does what she can to do good, without spouting nonsense. Long may she live.
taksei@gol.com
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