The other night, I happened to flip on Turner Classic
Movies and came upon a film called The Student Prince in Old
Heidelberg. This was a silent version of a novel that became
an operetta by Sigmund Romberg and was most famous as a movie
musical starring Mario Lanza in 1954. Having seen the Lanza film
many times, I watched the silent for a while and although I missed
the wonderful singing, I nonetheless could follow the plot,
familiar as I was with the story itself.
Similarly, I have enjoyed watching the silent version of
Showboat that was filmed on the cusp of the talkie era in
1929. Again, I rate the 1936 adaptation of the Kern/Hammerstein
musical much higher — the scene with Irene
Dunne doing the shuffle with Hattie McDaniel is alone worth the
price of admission — but the silent version essentially tells the
same story.
Many folks disdain all older films and especially the
silents as primitive and unentertaining, given that there is no
spoken dialogue. And this always makes me laugh given what passes
for witty repartee in modern movies. But just as a picture has
always been worth a thousand words, much of the subtitling was
deemed unnecessary, as when a damsel waved goodbye to her hero at
the train station; there are just some things you can comprehend
merely by looking at them. This got me to thinking about the
upcoming mid-term elections as I watched the evening news; so many
are the liberal scenes to which we’ve become accustomed that need
no oral embellishment.
Now in days past, liberal presidents were better spoken
than the current occupant of the Oval Office. But with Barack Obama
and the current crop of Democrats, after we have read copies of
their speeches beforehand — or even when we haven’t — we need not
turn up the volume on our TV sets: we know exactly what they’re
going to say. So now that the election season is upon us, let me be
your guide to what would be a blessing from heaven: liberal silent
movies — no teleprompters needed.
In our first scene, a white Democrat is seen exiting a
black church arm in arm with the pastor and either Al Sharpton or
Jesse Jackson, which denotes one of two things. If this takes place
from August to November, it is to demonstrate that he is a friend
to all those who are “down for the struggle.” Now if it is not an
election cycle, and the liberal is merely carrying a bible in hand
with a painful look of contrition on his face, no subtitle will be
necessary, only the poignant sound of a tinkly piano and the tear
leaking out of one eye.
An old standby that is almost a requirement out on the
hustings are scenes where liberal nerds like John
Kerry attempt to be portrayed as average guys playing football
or Al Gore paddling
a canoe. But the most telling scene is when liberals are
photographed while hunting
to demonstrate their love for the kinds of firearms that only kill
animals. You don’t need to actually hear them say it to know that
they were raised by their pappies to hunt n’ shoot before they
could walk.
Almost as popular as gun-loving liberals out on the
campaign trail is the sight of them
scarfing down all sorts of food they would otherwise never
allow to cross the thresholds of their homes let alone their
gullets. A wonderful combination of the two comes from the erudite
Joe Biden who, proving that liberals are their own subtitles,
said at a fish fry in Castlewood, Virginia. in 2008: “I
guarantee you Barack Obama ain’t taking my shotguns, so don’t buy
that malarkey.”
Another scene guaranteed to take place is on election day
itself, when the cameras will follow our intrepid heroes to a
polling place they’ve surely never seen before, all the while
demonstrating the kind of retch-inducing forced familiarity that
makes dialogue for all of these scenes utterly superfluous. They
can glad-hand the hoi polloi all they like; we’ve seen this movie
before.
And probably the worst of all climaxes — a horror scene
actually — is when a group of liberals stand smiling before a
podium at the Capitol in the second week of November to
announce…well, anything. We don’t need any audio or graphics to
know that things are about to get seriously worse. But hopefully,
this is one scene that will remain on the cutting room floor this
year.
