Hey Letterman - What Touches You?
David Letterman gets under my skin. I don’t watch him anymore because he long ago ceased to be entertaining, as has all of Hollywood. But you end up hearing sound bites of his sniping at conservatives, Bush, and other safe targets. Targets that will neither sue him, imprison him nor behead him. Beheadings, stonings nor the massacre of Christians will never gain a Letterman’s attention or concern because they exist in a world that he and those who think like him, have refused to acknowledge. To take note of real evil is beyond the moral scope of such men for whom the likes of Bill O’Reiley and George W. Bush loom as more of a threat than the Islamists who daily preach their visions America defeated and the West shrouded in the veil of sharia.
Liberatas captures beautifully the nature of men like David Letterman.
Sphere: Related Content“Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, and David Letterman are cut from the same cloth. Not liberal cloth. Gutless cloth. Because they refuse to come down from the ether of irony where nothing touches them and nothing matters and isn’t it all just a joke?. Isn’t everything a joke to them? Well, at least until they tear into someone or something they don’t like. But ask them to defend that mean streak, that pessimism, that smug assuredness and it’s quip time. Insult time. Peanut gallery laughing and saving them time. So smug. So smart. So unserious. And yet these smirkers are taken seriously. They’re quoted and desired guests on news shows (even O’Reilly).
For some reason … They matter.
In Inherit The Wind, Tracy plays a supposed atheist defending the school teacher from Frederic March’s holy rolling prosecutor. Gene Kelly plays a reporter; he plays Jon Stewart, Maher, and Letterman. He plays a smug cynical above-it-all smirker eager to destroy anyone with ideas though he has none of his own; but that’s what makes him better than them — he’s no sucker! – he believes in nothing.
At the end of the film it’s just Tracy and Kelly left in the courtroom. Tracy’s won. March is dead and disgraced. But Kelly wants more blood and is ready to print it when Tracy and he have this exchange:
Tracy: My God, don’t you understand the meaning of what happened here today?
Kelly: What happened here today has no meaning.
Tracy: You have no meaning. You’re like a ghost pointing an empty sleeve and smirking at everything that people feel or want or struggle for. I pity you.
Kelly: You pity me?
Tracy: Isn’t there anything … What touches you? What warms you? Every man has a dream. What do you dream about? What do you need…?
No answer.
Tracy: You don’t need anything do you? People. Love. An idea just to cling to. You poor slob. You’re all alone. When you go to your grave there won’t be anyone to pull the grass up over your head. Nobody to mourn you. Nobody to give a damn. You’re all alone.”
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 at 3:53 pm and is filed under America, Hollywood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
"Conjure magic for them and they'll be distracted. Take away their freedom, and still they'll roar. The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the Senate. It's the sand of the Coliseum. He'll bring them death... and they will love him for it."
