‘Authentic Frontier Gibberish’

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The best comedy ever made? That’s a tough call, but if it’s not Animal House, then surely it must be Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles — and not just because I first saw it as a 15-year-old with my dope buddies Mike and Dave after we’d toked up some fine Colombian gold bud.

Even without the buzz, it’s one of the zaniest things ever captured on film, but that day in 1974, I quite literally fell in the floor in spasms of painfully hysterical laughter. There was no film tradition Mel Brooks did not mock, nor any taboo he did not violate. The humor was a madcap mix of everything you could possibly imagine — vaudeville innuendo, sight gags, fart jokes — perfectly aimed at an audience that had grown up reading Mad magazine and had more recently graduated to National Lampoon and George Carlin albums.

Kids who see Blazing Saddles today cannot possibly imagine how shocking it was to see it in 1974. Unfortunately, most younger people now have only seen it on cable TV, where it gets chopped to pieces, and younger viewers are jaded by having seen other comedies that followed through the gigantic holes that Mel Brooks punched through the wall of Things You Can’t Say or Do in a Movie.

One of the running gags in the movie is that everybody in the “peaceful town called Rock Ridge,” is named Johnson. After the bad guys have made their first violent raid against Rock Ridge, there is an emergency meeting at the town’s church. One of the speeches — if you can call it that — is given by Gabby Johnson, a grizzled old-timer who jabbers incomprehensibly but with much passion and angry gestures. After Gabby has finished making noises about these sidewindin’ bushwackin’ hornswagglin’ cracker croakers, Olson Johnson then stands up to address the assembled citizenry of Rock Ridge:

“Now who can argue with that? I think we’re all indebted to Gabby Johnson for clearly stating what needed to be said. I’m particularly glad that these lovely children were here today to hear that speech. Not only was it authentic frontier gibberish, it expressed a courage little seen in this day and age.”

For some reason, that came to mind today as I was reading President Obama’s statement about the military coup in Egypt. No, it’s not authentic frontier gibberish, but it is certainly as incomprehensible as anything Gabby Johnson said that day in Rock Ridge:

“Core principles . . . universal human rights . . . legitimate aspirations . . .  the democratic process . . .  we are deeply concerned . . . an inclusive and transparent process . . . Given today’s developments, I have also directed the relevant departments and agencies to review the implications under U.S. law for our assistance to the Government of Egypt.”

Exactly what the hell does this mean? Have the White House speech writers been replaced by a Random Platitude Generator, a computer program that automatically cranks out empty rhetoric, glittering generalities and vague diplomatic argle-bargle?

The new sheriff . . . Well, he’s failed to answer the critical question we now face in Egypt: “What are we going to do about these sidewindin’ bushwackin’ hornswagglin’ cracker croakers?”

As for me, I say we work up a Number Six on ’em . . . .

 

 

UPDATE: Linked by The Lonely Conservative — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!

The latest news out of Egypt is . . . well, it’s not really news: The Muslim Brotherhood hates Jews,  John Kerry is a liar, and President Obama is a Stuttering Clusterf–k of a Miserable Failure.

Meanwhile, in the comments, I notice that some people are claiming Young Frankenstein is funnier than Blazing Saddles, which is proof some people smoked too much weed back in the day. You could have said Airplane or Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, and I’d have said, “OK, maybe.” But Young Frankenstein? No, sorry.

 


153 comments

  1. Monty Python and the Holy Grail would be a strong candidate, too. I rate it #1, Blazing Saddles in the #2 position.

  4. Thank you for the clip. I’d forgotten it and now eagerly look forward to my earliest opportunity to call someone a pious, candy-ass sidewinder

  6. Candy-ass, yes, but he strike me as way more effete and arrogant than pious…

    Now, Pelosi and her laughable reverence of “the Word,” (her favorite word!)…THAT’S a pious candyass sidewinder.

  12. I wish the Almighty had cameras at the Judgement Seat, because that piece of work getting the Eternal Debrief would be deeply instructive.

  13. ” I have also directed the relevant departments and agencies to review the implications under U.S. law for our assistance to the Government of Egypt.”

    Translation: “Yeah, we’re going to have to sequester a few more million away from red states in order to crank up the bribes.”

  15. The idea that we can somehow transplant the American mind-set, experienced and governing philosophy into the middle east is beyond bizarre and yet we have spent the last 12 years trying to do so. The utterly corrupt and despotic Palestinian Authority may, in the end, be the very best outcome we can expect.

    You don’t sell them a few tanks and aircraft, build a few roads, wells and schools over 10 years and suddenly create millions of Washingtons, Adams, Jeffersons and Franklins.

    Destroy those who have attacked us and cause everyone else to fear the consequences of doing so ever again. Then let them wallow in the hell-holes they have created and leave them alone as long as they leave us alone.

    Expecting to recreate Philadelphia in 1776 in Kabul or Damascus or Baghdad or Cairo in 2013 is pure self-delusional fantasy!

  17. Yep, there were some classic ground-breaking comedies from the late ’60s to late ’70s. Pink Panther, Dr. Strangelove, Holy Grail, BS, Animal House, Young Frankenstein, Caddyshack.

  18. Have the White House speech writers been replaced by a Random Platitude Generator, a computer program that automatically cranks out empty rhetoric, glittering generalities and vague diplomatic argle-bargle?

    “Replaced?” Whaddya mean by “replaced?”

  22. “…the White House speech writers been replaced by a Random Platitude Generator…”

    I like to call it:”Platitudes-R-Us”

  23. Also, a somewhat obscure movie:

    “The Kentucky Fried Movie” (the parent movie of Airplane)
    Am I the only person that liked “The Gong Show Movie?”

  24. The educated and propertied classes in such places tend to be more Westernized. Beirut used to be quite an enlightened and affluent place, y’know. The problem is that modernity tends toward decadence — secularism, materialism and demographic decline — so that the more “Westernized” segments of these societies became decadent and lost their influence over the masses, which then gave heed to demagogues appealing to their superstition, ignorance and resentment.

    Of course, much the same is true in the West itself. The beliefs of the typical Democrat voter (e.g., Peggy Joseph) are no less ignorant and superstitious than the sort of Egyptians who voted for the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Palestinians who support Hamas.

  27. What’s even better is when you ask dimwads, errr, excuse me, Obama supporters ” Explain what the hell Obama just say said”, they double down on nonsense and gibberish.

  28. I watched Blazing Saddles in a movie theater in Amsterdam with a Jewish friend from Detroit. The Dutch viewers couldn’t understand why we were roaring with laughter. Most of the gags flew right over their heads.

  31. But Morsi and Ahmadinejad and Erdo?an and Bin Laden are educated and in some ways “westernized” but they are religious zealots bound and determined to drag the people into Islamic fundamentalism and far too many people are willing to follow them back to the 7th century.

    We have to deal with the entire culture and all the people and there are more than enough zealots in the Middle East to insure that 10 years of “nation-building” is not going to produce a flowering of American-style political philosophy leading to a classical liberal democracy in any nation there any time in my lifetime.

    Our governing elite’s goals of bringing civilization-changing reform to Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan, Libya, Kuwait, and other places is fundamentally delusional. Given 500 years, we might change some “hearts and minds” but these thugs aren’t going to sit by idly while we try and frankly, we don’t have the time, money and resolve to wage a 500 year long crusade to convert the heathens…

  34. The saving grace in Egypt, he [King Abdullah II of Jordan] said, was that Mursi seemed too unsophisticated to successfully pull off his vision. “There’s no depth to the guy,” he said of Mursi.

    … this certainly explains why Barack Obama got along with Morsi so well.

  35. Well, a lot of that is just that they’re products of a government education system that scarcely taught them to read, much less to think for themselves.

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