Saturday, November 26, 2005

Close Your Eyes and Pretend All's Okay Part 3

If you go to the comments of the previous entry you'll find several comments; all by some rascal named Anonymous. Upon closer inspection you'll see that one of the comments was apparently generated by a person who wants to direct the reader to his/her website dealing with miracle cancer cures or financial advise or some other "money-making opportunity." Ignore those. Your correspondent has nothing to do with that stuff.

On the other hand, there are a couple of comments posted by another Anonymous who actually comments on what yours has put forth. For the purpose of this blog, this Anonymous will be referred to as the Real Anonymous and it is his comments that part of this entry will address. The Real Anonymous is worthy of attention. The other guy is the Susan Powter of commenters -- a conman looking for the main chance.

To get to cases. It's unfortunate that Monsieur Anonymous chose Pamela Anderson and Grace Kelly as the Yank versions of Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve. Pamela Anderson was born and raised in Ladysmith, British Columbia, Canada, and only arrived in the U.S. after her adulthood. Her only talent is the exhibiting of her surgically enhanced figure and her rather plain face. Her motion picture career has, up until now, rather limited, and her television career, in Los Angeles, has pretty much been limited to late night television. At the best Ms. Anderson could be called the better looking (but not by much) older and more shapely cousin of the Olsen Twins from the Great White North.

Grace Kelly, while from a Philadelphia Mainline family, abandoned the States to become a monarch of a Cote d'Azure gambling hell called Monaco. She traded in her Gadsen flag for a tiara. I think I need not say more. Maureen O'Hara, Irish born and bred and now living in Bermuda (or is it the Bahamas?) has shown more loyalty to the Great Republic than did Princess Grace.

If we are going to make analogies of French celebrities regarded as Marianne to American celebrities regarded as symbols of Liberty, the better choices would be Rhonda Fleming (Bardot) versus Jacqueline Smith (Deneuve). One is prettier than the other, but who would you rather have loading your shootin' iron while fighting off Indians, Redcoats, Rebels, or Yankees. Now that I think of it, I'd probably rather have Jane Russell by my side since she could kick Robert Mitchum's ass, and she was eminently huggable. By that's neither here nor there.

The point is that the symbol of Liberty or Marianne, from your correspondent's point of view, is that Liberty is something to be embraced, as is Marianne. Not something to be stood back from and admired. Take Delacroix's painting of Liberty Leading the People to Freedom. The painting shows Liberty (the model for Marianne) in liberty cap and carrying the tricolor storming the ramparts of monarchy.. Is it not easier to imagine the divine Bardot doing such a thing than Mme. Deneuve?

But that's enough of that. I'm suing for a truce with M. Anonymous. He's correct in that it's a Ginger versus MaryAnne argument. I like MaryAnne.

In the real world, we have an old article by a German about the state of Europe:FrontPage magazine.com :: Europe -- Thy Name Is Cowardice by Matthias Dopfner

And if you have a few bucks to spend buy a copy of Robert Spenser's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades. It'll let you know what the Mohammedans are all about.

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