Victory in the Global War on Parody
Honestly, the mind boggles. It’s a thin book too, but evidently not thin enough. Or too thin. Keep in mind that Pyle isn’t simply naive. He facilitates terrorism and covers for the perpetrators. Pyle willfully expects to be judged for the loftiest statement of his nominal desires, not even on his intentions, let alone his results. (Desires, meaning, gosh it would be nice if there were a “third force” between communism and a dead tradition. Intentions, meaning, I’m going to give this ambitious officer money to cause trouble and then cover for him after all. And we have only Pyle’s word that his people had no idea their proxies would do something so gauche as bomb a hotel, and only Pyle’s word that his people gave the colonel – general? – a stern darn talking-to afterward.)
Comment by Alex —
August 23, 2007 @ 5:36 am
Pyle, let us remember, differed from Bush in a significant respect; not only did he actually go to Vietnam, he was personally courageous to a fault, and eventually died for his nonsense.
Comment by Sven —
August 23, 2007 @ 8:09 am
Freedom toast.
Comment by IOZ —
August 23, 2007 @ 8:24 am
I’m going to be a whore here, but only to prove that great minds think more or less . . . well, you know.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
August 23, 2007 @ 9:14 am
His speechwriters can get away with this because most of the people who will be familiar with the book (or the recent movie) are probably antiwar anyway.
Comment by dhex —
August 23, 2007 @ 9:51 am
wow.
what the living hell were his speechwriters thinking?
Comment by "Charles Dodgson" —
August 23, 2007 @ 11:17 am
It’s conceivable they’re thinking of the movie adaptation — not the second one, with Michael Caine, but the first, from 1958, in which the Pyle character was transformed into an Audie Murphy hero (played by Audie Murphy); the film itself was dedicated to Ngo Dinh Diem. Greene himself was reportedly furious.
Comment by norbizness —
August 23, 2007 @ 12:59 pm
It could have been worse, I think the first draft had a reference to Clifford The Big-Ass Red Dog.
Comment by Anonymo —
August 23, 2007 @ 4:11 pm
What the hell were they thinking indeed? Do they expect anyone to seriously believe that Bush has read such a book and substantially understood its message?
Comment by Happy Jack —
August 23, 2007 @ 4:37 pm
The speech writers probably wrote down The Quiet Man. John Wayne imagery and all.
Bush, as usual, just got confused.
Comment by barrisj —
August 24, 2007 @ 1:14 pm
And the real closer in the Bush-Vietnam story is that Junior “is said to be an avid reader of history”…who said this, Barney?
Comment by Raina —
August 25, 2007 @ 9:47 am
It’s interesting that you say so… Posted from Blogger