Watching the Senate races this year and I wonder if Tim Robbins realizes what he created:
Just insane.
Reader Interactions
49Comments
Comments are closed.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.
Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.
Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.
Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.
Nothing worth doing is easy.
Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.
When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.
My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.
The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.
We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.
We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.
Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.
The lights are all blinking red.
If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.
Their shamelessness is their super power.
Books are my comfort food!
They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.
Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.
I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.
People are complicated. Love is not.
After dobbs, women are no longer free.
Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.
When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.
The revolution will be supervised.
burnspbesq
And “The Handmaid’s Tale” wasn’t supposed to be an instruction manual. Hard to predict how some on the right will deal with certain kinds of information.
Violet
Oh, I love that movie. Scary as hell and so great.
Steaming Pile
And “A Modest Proposal” was supposed to be snark.
WereBear
Tim Robbins didn’t create it; just was one of the folks, working on the movie, who took a trend to a logical conclusion.
But I admit actually living in satire is not what I expected…
Violet
Weird double post. Edited.
El Cid
Other instruction manuals recently employed: 1984 and “Idiocracy”.
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
Sorry, but the Religious crazies didn’t need to read The Handmaid’s Tale to get those ideas. The person who describes what’s in others’ heads isn’t responsible for what those others try to do when they get power.
CJ
As a fencer, no one says “fencing enthusiast.” Or does it outside.
Violet
Tim Robbins didn’t create it. He just observed it and made a movie about it. He was prescient, not inventive.
Nick
Yesterday my formerly Republican aunt asked “How did this happen?” pointing to people like Paladino, O’Donnell, Buck and Angle.
I think we’re beginning to see a serious realization among Americans that their country is really teetering on the edge of the cliff of fascism, and a sense of fear of what Generalissimo Beck and Serena Joy from Wasilla are whipping up.
Kryptik
@WereBear:
We’ve long passed the line where satire is simply obsolete. No matter how absurd you try and be, real life will find idiocy not only more absurd but accepted as simple common sense truth. Look at how the Onion ‘coverage’ of Glenn Beck’s Glorious Beckathon may as well have been written verbatim from the CNN video feed.
norbizness
What’s the over/under on the James Harrison suspension betting pool?
Benjamin Cisco
@El Cid: And coming soon: Falling Down and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
Ash Can
Irony was too despondent to even bother leaving a suicide note.
Kryptik
@Benjamin Cisco:
I think we’ve already passed the point of Falling Down. Look up ‘Sovereign Citizens’, ‘Oath Keepers’, and pretty much any teabagger.
freelancer
@Benjamin Cisco:
You forgot The Dead Zone.
We are all Johnny Smiths now.
WereBear
@Kryptik: Very true.
I can’t help but feel that the “anonymous staffer” who told a reporter that “we create our own reality” was telling the simple truth, as they saw it.
We see it with our own eyes; so many on the Right see what they believe; not what is really there.
El Cid
@Nick: The odder thing is that we have so far avoided the truly capable and far-sighted fascists. People like Mussolini would have looked upon today’s Republican, TeaTard, and militia ultra-rightists as dupes and minions, not leaders.
kdaug
I know I’m not going to short Diebold anytime soon. They’re going to prove increasingly useful, and besides – who doesn’t love that name?
Lee
Anyone else catch a very young Jack Black in the clip?
kdaug
@Kryptik: Idiocy? I think the Dead Kennedys had a closer bead on the target about 25 years ago…
Martin
@Nick: Winning >> Governing.
If you don’t believe in government, then the only thing left to do is win at all costs. You’ve already declared all other aspects of political office to be unnecessary. Why not just spend your days in office forwarding emails of horses fucking women?
Violet
@Lee:
Is that who that is? I was trying to place him. He’s the one about to faint over how wonderful Bob Roberts is, right?
Omnes Omnibus
@CJ: They do if they are enthusiasts for lawn enclosures.
cleek
@Lee:
wow. young indeed.
Davis X. Machina
Inevitable since the day marketing became a university discipline, with its own faculty, side by side with humane letters, divinity, medicine, and the law….
Ash Can
@El Cid: Knock on wood.
Jim in Chicago
@Kryptik:
As Lily Tomlin says: “No matter how cynical I am, I can’t keep up.” And The Onion has been doing this since at least early 2001 when they printed Bush’s real Inauguration Speech “Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over.”
asiangrrlMN
I saw this movie during W.’s regime, and I couldn’t laugh at all. It was too painful to watch because I saw the country headed in that direction. Granted, the only reason I watched was because Alan Rickman was in the movie (and he has the best line as he mumbles something sanctimoniously and then says, “Let’s pray.” By the way, if someone is in a movie for ten total minutes, he is not the star, no matter how big he has become in the meantime. I’m just sayin’).
John PM
@freelancer: #16
I had the exact same thought about the Dead Zone. And Stephen King wrote it in 1979, before Reagan’s election. Fortunately Reagan turned out to not be crazy enough to start a nuclear war, but I can think of several current Republicans who could. Could you imagine President Palin with one of those Christian fundamentalists from the Air Force? We wouldn’t even make it through a year of her administration.
Bubblegum Tate
“Vote first, ask questions later” = teabagger candidate slogan, considering how many of them literally run away from the press.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@El Cid:
When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
kdaug
@John PM: “Gentlemen, the missiles are in the air. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Davis X. Machina: I know you have great fun with this particular snipe, but,as long as one accepts the idea that business is a subject worthy of university study, marketing must be a part of it. Marketing as a field is much more that salesmanship and advertising. It covers areas ranging from corporate governance strategies to new product development. It is really an interdisciplinary area falling between economic, sociology, and psychology.
Disclaimer: My wife has an MBA specializing in marketing and is pursuing a PhD in Marketing Strategy. In her specific area, she is split almost evenly between econ and soc.
Martin
@Jim in Chicago: Or how Tina Feye worked through an entire SNL skit by reading a Palin transcript nearly verbatim.
Todd
@Lee: Yes. FTW.
Southern Beale
Dear lord. I remember seeing that movie and thinking it was just too outlandish to be believed.
How naive I was. This movie came out in 1992 so it only took … 18 years…
Poopyman
@Lee:
Miss 3 Mile island?
Poopyman
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Very succinct and dead on. We’re not done with these people yet.
Will
@Omnes Omnibus
Without disagreeing with you, I’ve found that business schools generally suck at doing serious academic work. Some professors are better than others, but the B school culture is too focused on fluffing executives and corporate donors to be able to produce the type of independent research that comes out of a College of Arts and Sciences.
So, the subject area is definitely worthwhile. The trouble is that B schools exist to remove the… problematic… ideas and theories from the research and material presented to students. It’s basically a preserve for the kids of well-healed conservative parents who don’t want their kids tainted by the wrong ideas.
Lee
Yep that is him.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“Without disagreeing with you, I’ve found that business schools generally suck at doing serious academic work.”
How about Berkeley’s – two Nobel laureates (Akerlof and Williamson) received the Nobel prize while on the B-school faculty.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
I think Bob Robert’s was shrewd and smart, but knew he was fooling the rubes.
I don’t think the current wingnuts are as a smart as Bob Roberts was protrayed.
Maybe Coulter, who I think does the math and figures she has X number of years to cash in on the Pretty Wingnut Cash Stream before the looks fade and she doesn’t get the bookings on Fox anymore.
Omnes Omnibus
@Will: At a Tier 1 research school, the connection between the research done by the professor and what is taught in undergrad and MBA courses is rather tenuous. The PhD seminars seem to go a different direction. In addition to Akerloff and Williamson, I would also mention von Hippel at MIT and Heide and Rindfleisch at Wisconsin. All are doing very cutting edge research in marketing strategy, governance, and innovation (or so I am told).
hilzoy
I loved that movie, for the most part. (AsiangrrlMN: ditto about Alan Rickman.) I believe Robbins didn’t release a soundtrack because he didn’t want it to be misused, which is a pity, because some of the songs are really wonderful. I mean, how can you not love this:
“We are marching for the children
We are marching for the poor
We are marching for self-interest
We’ll march forever more”
And, of course, “Complain”
Citizen Alan
I could never bring myself to watch “Bob Roberts” all the way through. Like “Idiocracy,” I always saw our future in that movie, and it was too terrible to contemplate. I have actually submitted “Bob Roberts” before as my answer for “what is the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?”
MoeLarryAndJesus
Robbins also captured the casual, mindless racism of the teabaggers perfectly in one scene. A black employee of Roberts overhears a woman yukking it up with some fools about a black woman she knows who “has never even eaten fried chicken.” And the look on his face shows you that he knows he’s betraying his own dignity by working with the bastards.
But still, he stays.
It’s a great film for many reasons. Its prediction about the teabaggers and their fascination with Colonial costumes is dead-on.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
Having said that, I will say that there ain’t much conceptually challenging about an MBA.
The Capital Assets Pricing Model or Option Pricing are interesting, but there’s more meat in the first half-hour of a second-year undergrad physics, chemistry or engineering lecture.
r€nato
I watch Bob Roberts every four years, when presidential elections come around.
Loved that film since it came out…