Home | Away

Thursday, April 08, 2004

I’m Hennery the Fifth, I am

A couple of days ago I had Bush/Macbeth running on the Altermanian slogan, “something extremely ugly this way comes.” But Scott Newstrom reminds me that the proper Shakespearean obsession for fawning Bush fans has always been Henry V.

Newstrom writes:

A consulting company, Movers and Shakespeares, uses the Bard’s plays to present “Fun, Team-Building, Executive Training, Leadership Development & Conference Entertainment based on the insights and wisdom of the Bard . . . as relevant in today’s world as they were 400 years ago!” (Look closely on the Web site, and you’ll find photos of Donald Rumsfeld and Cokie Roberts merrily reciting in costume.) The writer of the Fortune article wanted me to confirm a few of their claims about what Shakespeare’s plays teach us.

Most of these claims were, on the whole, largely innocuous, if blandly reductive and politically conservative. The leaders of the workshops, Ken and Carol Adelman, are both Republican politicos and thus tend to read Shakespeare as a kind of proto-free-market capitalist.

Must . . . remember . . . to breathe.

Whew!  Yes, you read that right, Ken Adelman.  The same Ken Adelman who told us that Iraq would be a cakewalk, the same Ken Adelman who assured us in the 1980s that we could survive a nuclear war by covering ourselves with dirt.  This Ken Adelman is now leading Cokie Roberts and Donald Rumsfeld in “interactive discussions on ethical problems that face leaders and thinkers today.”

Never mind Prince Hal-- let’s pick someone more appropriate to this administration.  How would Falstaff handle the debacle in Iraq, I wonder?  Let’s start with 1 Henry IV, II.iv, and Falstaff’s account of his bravery back in II.ii:

HAL.  What, fought you with them all?

FALSTAFF.  All?  I know not what you call all, but if I fought not with fifty of them, I am a bunch of radish!  If there were not two or three and fifty upon poor old Jack, then am I no two-legg’d creature.

HAL.  Pray God you have not murd’red some of them.

FALSTAFF.  Nay, that’s past praying for.  I have pepper’d two of them.  Two I am sure I have paid, two rogues in buckram suits.  I tell thee what, Hal-- if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face, call me horse.  Thou knowest my old ward.  Here I lay, and thus I bore my point.  Four rogues in buckram let drive at me.

HAL.  What, four?  Thou saidst but two even now.

FALSTAFF.  Four, Hal.  I told thee four.

POINS.  Ay, ay, he said four.

FALSTAFF.  These four came all afront and mainly thrust at me.  I made me no more ado but took all their seven points in my target, thus.

HAL.  Seven?  Why, there were but four even now.

FALSTAFF.  In buckram?

HAL.  Ay, four, in buckram suits.

FALSTAFF.  Seven, by these hilts, or I am a villain else.

Apply to Bush/Cheney as you see fit.  EPA assessments of Ground Zero.  Medicare overhaul.  National Guard service.  Mercury poisoning.  Troop pay and veterans’ benefits.  Counterterrorism planning.  Accounts of Bush’s activities on September 11, 2001.  WMD and yellowca

WARNING.  Your server’s capacity for satire has been exceeded.  Any attempt to comment further on Ken Adelman, Shakespeare, and George Bush will result in an illegal operation that will shut down michaelberube.com.

Posted by Michael on 04/08 at 05:36 AM
(0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages