Luke is marched sullenly back into the camp under the harsh and watchful eyes of the dour guardsmen and is flanked we see, by a brace of white, perfectly-coiffed, French poodles.

He stands at drooping before Le Capitán and knows it is to be a hellish night in the box for him.

The other students/inmates are both confused and saddened by his obstinacy. Why will he not submit? “A line! A phrase! A single spoken word will be enough to save you,” their eyes seem to say, but he will not relent. He will not be broken so easily. Exasperated beyond all reason, Le Capitán is infuriated by his strange and unprecedented willfulness.

“What we have here… is a failure to communicate…

BILINGUALLY!!”

;p (sorry, language teacher humor)

Best Regards,

George C.

p.s. A full transcript of the sketch can be found here:

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/79/79qcamp.phtml

Sorry, couldn’t find the video.

On a lighter note, I’m also reminded of the the old ‘Not Ready For Prime Time Players’ sketch when Strother Martin hosted SNL.

Bill Murray (Luke) and Garrett Morris (Alvin) have been sent to a bi-lingual ‘French Camp’ to study during their Summer vacation. Everyone is wearing berets and those stupid wide-horizontal-striped shirts that I suppose French sailors wore at one time when who should walk up but Le Capitán (!), Strother Martin, who proceeds to lay down the law to the unfortunate group. ‘It’s this rule,’ he barks, “It’s that rule,” as he explains the draconian regime of the camp: berets to be worn at a tilt, no semi-soft cheeses in the bunks, etc. And anyone who doesn’t get their mind right “spends a night in The Box!” (with headset and study tapes of course).

Naturally Luke refuses the compulsory spoken French, rebels, and runs off into the woods that very night.

Suddenly, the yelps of howling dogs echoes through the night. The hounds are after him!

He runs, fleeing desperately he knows not where, but to no avail.

“He’s got him, Boss! Ol’ Blue’s got him!”

Throughout his imprisonment Luke remains true to himself, not in some robotic or ‘tower-of-iron-will’ two-dimensional way, but in one both utterly and immensely human. A sort of a modern (not POST-modern!) Thomas Paine, who in the end was himself ostracized even by his revolutionary compatriots for the dual heresies of deism (read ‘atheism’) and free-thought.

While men and women who have the kind of personal integrity our two examples exhibit are, I fear, becoming more and more rare, they are yet to be emulated, celebrated, even exalted in these grim times. Can you imagine anyone else at court referring to Napoleon as “the completest charlatan that ever existed,” as he launched the imperial dictatorship?

Why, with that kind of integrity one might, against all odds, through the storm-swept and raging sea, pull one’s self and one’s fellows through to the sandy shore, wipe the sweat and encrusted salt from raw and blistered skin and, with a wry smile, utter simply:

Sometimes nuthin’ can be a real cool hand.”

And mean it.

Thank you Proudhon,

I’m rather fond of Luke myself and would hate to think of any of us in the roles of the foul Boss Paul, the horrific Boss Godfrey (the Man with No Eyes), or the patronizing and emotionally self-mutilated Captain (let alone the sickeningly sycophantic Dog Boy, ).

What I have always appreciated about the Luke character is the fierce will with which he asserts his own individuality and identity throughout the picture, refusing to be bound by the idiotic strictures that his so-called ‘betters’ are bound & determined to inflict upon him. We here that he had been a decorated war hero and promoted to the rank of sergeant, but mustered out as a buck private. “I guess I was just marking time, Cap’n,” he says. And remember what Luke was sent up for in the first place, his ostensible ‘Crime’? Cutting the heads off parking meters while drunk.

His ultimate penalty?

Death.

But it was his identity, a free man (and this is his *true* crime), for which they really killed him.

Kevin, I have THE BIG BLACK LIE on order and can hardly wait to read it. I’ll be back to you when I finish it. Glad you are there and speaking up. I am frustrated with my black friends who won’t.

Now, everyone, using your best Strother Martin voice…

“What we have here is a FAILURE to COMMUNICATE!”

Each and every one of us MUST keep punching, and refuse to conform to this radical marxist groupthink.

God help us all.

George C.

p.s. Hey, that might make a pretty good sign. Obama’s face on Strother Martin’s (the Captain’s) body and the slogan: “What we have here is a FAILURE to COMMUNICATE!”

hmm…