Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

I do not know which aspect of the 2008 Presidential Campaign is considered more annoying: the ultramarathonlike length of the event, which began at least a year ago for most candidates and even earlier for others, or the inevitability of the choices of front-runners (Old School Senator John McCain versus New Changes Senators Barack Obama and/or Hillary Clinton) and the feeling that Big Media insists on portraying the race with virtually no deviation from a “Wag the Dog”-like script.

Others would strongly disagree with the premise of the above-mentioned scripted portrayal. I agree completely. This campaign does not resemble Hollywood films like “Wag the Dog” or “The Candidate.” No. Wrong films. It’s “Blazing Saddles.”

For those of you who have no knowledge of this 1974 film, the basic premise: a 19th Century railroad company wants to rid an all-white town of its population because it is in the way of the railroad line under construction, one of the company’s representatives meets with the state’s governor, they decide to appoint a black sheriff for the town with the expectation that everyone will find another place to live because of the new sheriff, and the railroad company will get what it wants. By the film’s end, the railroad company’s plan is a complete failure and the townspeople rally around the sheriff, who literally rides off into the sunset.

Yes, it’s a comedy.

A comedy that loses nothing in translation when one substitutes the cast of the Presidential hopefuls and our contemporary era in place of the actors from the movie and its period setting. The following are a few examples of what one might see in a version of “Blazing Saddles” as political documentary, using the original and unchanged dialog written by Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, and Alan Uger.

(Scene: President George W. Bush making a final visit to Iraq to pump up the troops. He unfortunately picks the hottest part of the year to make this visit, which does not register with him in his air-conditioned vehicle.)

BUSH: Come on, boys! The way you’re lollygaggin’ around here with them picks and them shovels, you’d think it was a hunnert an’ twenty degrees! Can’t be more than a hunnert an’ fourteen!

(Scene: Illinois Republican candidate James C. “Jim” Mitchell, Jr. meeting Illinois Democratic candidate Senator Barack Obama for the first time.)

OBAMA: What’s your name, anyway?

MITCHELL: Well, my name’s Jim. But most people call me… Jim.

(Scene: Governor Mitt Romney removing himself from the list of GOP candidates for President. After a campaign that included his being figuratively “dragged through the mud” and doing his share of the same to his fellow candidates, he finds himself with a rope tied around one of his ankles and literally being dragged through a mud puddle by members of the news media.)

ROMNEY: Well, that’s the end of THIS suit!

(Scene: Rush Limbaugh sitting in the Oval Office with the President.)

RUSH: My mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention.

BUSH: Ditto!

RUSH: “Ditto”? “Ditto,” you provincial putz?!

(Scene: Senator Hillary Clinton at New Hampshire. Television news cameras are rolling. A tear is faintly seen in one of her eyes. She begins to sing in a voice that sounds like an odd mixture of Marlene Dietrich and Mike Ditka.)

CLINTON: I’m…tired…tired of playing the game…ain’t it a crying shame…I’m…so…tired…

(Scene: the ghost of the late actor Cleavon Little, Sheriff Bart from “Blazing Saddles,” visits Senator Obama in his hotel suite at midnight, following his first primary loss.)

LITTLE: What did you expect? “Welcome, sonny?” “Make yourself at home?” “Marry my daughter?” You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know . . . morons.

(Scene: a montage of footage from both parties’ National Conventions. The “campfire scene” sounds can and should be used in place of dialog for the sake of accuracy.)

So when Barack Obama is inaugurated as President of this still-great country on January 20, 2009, do not be surprised to hear the voices of America singing the lyrics of Mel Brooks in unison:

He conquered fear and he conquered hate
He turned our night into day
He made his blazing saddle
A torch to light the way

OK, be surprised. And watch “Blazing Saddles.” You’d do it for Randolph Scott.