Wednesday, October 06, 2004

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here -- this is the War Room!"

The Movie: Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb, 1964 (Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern & Peter George, screenwriters, from the novel by Peter George; Stanley Kubrick, dir.)
Who says it: Peter Sellers as President Merkin Muffley
The context: The Joint Chiefs of Staff’s disagreements over how to save the world from the Russians’ Doomsday Machine have degenerated into a free-for-all.
How to use it: To stop an argument.

Couldn't tell you why this movie occurred to me last night while I was watching the Vice Presidential debate... I had described it to my friend Anna earlier in the day as "Dr. Evil vs. Robin the Boy Wonder," and she replied that it was more like "Father Knows Best vs. Opie Taylor." Let's compromise and call it "Dr. Evil vs. Opie Taylor," okay?

And so much for trying to keep my own political views out of this blog.

My immediate family is a good microcosm of the American voting public, though (it helps that there are ten of us, including sons-in-law). At the moment, based on my own informal poll, we're evenly split between the two candidates, and a couple of us might even change our minds in the voting booth -- speaking strictly for myself, it's happened before.

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