Tom Toles for May 04, 2011

A movie made 70 years ago is so universally known to Americans that most folks get the “shocked, shocked” reference?

Or is it just old fogies like me who get it?

How many can name the character who first blandly uttered that memorable “I am shocked, shocked to find that …”?

Or rather, how many cannot?

Do non-Americans get the reference?

I suppose that’s why Toles had to put all the “Bin Laden” signs on the building. I think the cartoon would be just as good without them, even better in fact, but perhaps it would have been too subtle.

What do you all think?

When I watch old movies, read old books, etc., I always wonder how many things like this were perfectly clear to people generally when the movie, book, or whatever was created, but perfectly incomprehensible to us now.

^ “Your winnings, sir…”

Don’t worry, Doughfoot, I got the Casablanca reference, and I’m an “X’er.”

Best movie ever, btw.

“….shocked that YOU would dare to invade our sovereign territory like that!”

if the us was hiding someone from the pakistani’s, it would be,,”heroic”

^^^^ I remember that line. Its the same thing Alan Greenspan said about Wall Street two years ago.

Thanks, Wildcard.

I love it, too. Though I’ve heard that young women (watching it at a campus showing where my wife was present a few years ago) howled and threw popcorn at the screne when Ilsa said, “You’ll have to do the thinking for both of us.”

Still, where else can you find a pair like Rick Blaine and Louis Renault?

Bin Laden took two American bullets to the head - money well spent. But….

Al-Qaida pulled off the September 11 attacks for a cost of about $500,000 according to the 9/11 Commission. By the end of fiscal 2011 the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is about $1.26 trillion, according to the Center for Defense. Thus, Bin Laden realized a 2,520,000:1 return - one of the enemy’s all time great investments. But…..

The US has about 823 military bases worldwide. The DOD occupies space about 22% larger than the state of Ohio. That is a huge cost in just building and maintenance.

Secretary of State William Marcy in 1783 said: The expense of keeping up powerful navies and large standing armies as permanent establishments is detrimental to national prosperity and dangerous to civil liberty. …..they are in some degree a menace to peace among nations. A large force ever ready to be devoted to the purposes of war is a temptation to rush into it.”

There were some smart people back then! Will the present cadre of leaders have the same wisdom to pull back when the golden opportunity presents itself?

But we’ll always have Abottabad.

“Oh, you were looking for him?”

You know, the population of Pakistan is today about 170,000,000; roughly the same as the US’s when I was born in 1956. And some folks think it amusing to suggest that Bush should have wiped the country off the face of the earth in a way that would make Stalin and Hitler look penny-ante. I guess Mr. Adams thinks Bush belongs in the same class as the greatest mass murderers in history. I think he’s being too hard on poor Bush.

Bin Laden learned thirty years ago that superpowers can be manipulated into self-destruction in the same way that a wildebeest can be driven to run itself to death by a swarm of stinging flies. Bin Laden & Reagan, working together, brought down the USSR by breaking their economy through war in Afghanistan and the arms race.

Bin Laden learned the lesson well. Just a few of his stinging flies have driven the USA to the brink of bankruptcy, and the decay of our standard of living, using our own obsession with being Number One to bring us.

Other than in military spending, where are we still number one? Not in education, nor social mobility, nor equality, nor opportunity, nor personal freedom, nor longevity, nor health, nor technology. We’re doing pretty good still, living on capital, credit, and reputation, but that is not sustainable.

Uncle Sam is still the richest man in town, but he’s spending his savings and credit on guard dogs and security guards, and on a fat and pampered wife, while his house goes unrepaired, and his children live on fast food and go uneducated. The competition is gaining on him, and while they are still far behind, the trends are all in their favor.

Bin Laden and his cause have lost. Good riddance. But they went a long way to drag us down with them.

Actually, with all the “nation” stuff, I’m reminded, yet again, that in this part of the world TRIBAL associations mean far more than any “nation-state”. We didn’t get it in Viet Nam, we don’t get in Africa, and we don’t get it in south Asia. Neither did Mongols, the British, or the French. We didn’t get it in the “Americas” either, putting the Hopi reservation INSIDE the Navaho reservation for example.

The phrase was used by the character played by Claude Raines. Also appearing was Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre. They were all wonderful actors/actresses.

Most movies of the era have had time to fade into well deserved obscurity, but Casablanca was one of the great ones.