Photo by Bent Lorentzen
October 19, 2008 10:06 AM EDT
(Updated: September 29, 2009 08:25 AM EDT)
(c) Urban (København, DK) Date: Sept 17, 2008. This image is my scan from the front page of the Urban, a Copenhagen daily. The Danish caption above the image translates to: McCain is Losing Because of His Body Language. Whoever caught this photo ought to get an award. I burst out in nearly uncontrollable laughter when I opened the paper in the underground metro of Copenhagen, yesterday. It's priceless in far more ways than one... And it gives a view from overseas about the election in the USA. Remember, everyone, the vote you cast on Nov. 4 will have a monumental global impact, which will echo back to America's domestic interests, including the economic, with amplification. Vote for Obama! Sorry for the plug, but I hate seeing the world commit collective suicide. Such an event would bring about a catastrophic end all our dreams, including the one in America... and whatever threads of discussion we have going on in Gather! If anyone wants to know the last I time I bust out in such culturally-relative laughter - in a Copenhagen theater with some friends from the University in 1972 - I'd be happy to share the story behind the story of a film called It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World. I was the only one in that full cinema to be laughing my head off. The same yesterday afternoon, in the Copenhagen Metro.
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Comments: 47
I'm going to post the link here. I put a link in my comment on her article to a little ditty on YouTube that is fun and goes perfectlyl with the picture.
Oh, my! This just keeps getting funnier.
What an old doddering fool.
You are right.. this is about the whole world... Obama has to win. thanks for your great picture and all you write and say..and my great grandfather Rasmus Andersen was from Copenhagen originally.
cheers,
Isis Andersen
Anyways, Jimmy Durante's character just got released from a long jail term after a bank robbery, so he's tooling along a precipitous desert mountain road, with a host of comic characters also driving this remote mountain road for each their own silly reasons, that gets explained later.
Jimmy doesn't make a curve, and he rolls the car down an embankment. That host of other characters behind him in other cars stop to help him. But they get more interested in what Jimmy's trying to tell them about where he had buried the loot 30 years earlier, from the bank robbery. But he keeps apparently dying before spitting it out. Each time he comes to life again, surprise, he reveals a bit more of the loot's location. Each time Jimmy dies, everybody around his body get disappointed. When finally he stiffens back to life, in his Durante way, he spits out, "Under the big W." For a moment, he fades again, and everybody again tries to revive him to learn more... but then the camera goes to Jimmy's feet, and he kicks the old bucket that happens to be there...
I never burst out so loud in laughter, among so many people who had no clue what the hell had gotten me to laugh. Good thing it was in a dark theater, cause I got real red, since my date didn't understand the symbol. She smiled later when I explained, but she still couldn't understand why kicking the bucket would be so hilarious in that context. This really really funny moment in the film's opening scene entirely flew everyone's head in Copenhagen, and didn't get translated in the subtext.
Of course, were this to happen today, I'd still burst out laughing, and I would care less what anyone thought.
And, Thank you for posting to this group whose only purpose is to thank you for posting to this group. Really.
I wanted to add... Great News! I just got some very beautiful information from my Ritzau newswire, which I've actually been anticipating for some time.
I've said it several times. Colin Powell will be a key figure in the next presidential administration. Republican Colin Powell just publicly endorsed Democrat Obama. He is a man who has a proven track record for deep compassion balanced by incredible international insight. Despite - and perhaps because of - being a patsy for Bush before the UN, he has learned a hard lesson about how power so easily becomes absolute and blind as Oedipus.
It's a Mad Mad Mad World is one of my favorite films...haven't seen it in ages...and yes that scene with Jimmy kicking the bucket is classic...though out the whole movie they used sight gags like that...
I saw Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama on TV and the man stated in very well defined reasoning why he supports Obama and why he thinks the McCain campaign is going down the wrong path with their negative ads and robo calls...also why he thinks Palin is not material for president or V.P.
:O)
Bent, I too used to udnerstand things in American films that the then staid British audiences didn't get the references to. The Blues Brothers was just such one of those films!
McCain is a joke. Sarah Palin was on SNL last night and they were taking the piss out of her so much, she is either a good sport or she is totally clueless as to when she is being made a mockery of!
Go Obama!
The picture is real and was taken at the end of the debate, Ann, when McCain took the wrong way when walking off the stage. I've added the picture below. McCain habitually pulls silly faces (see photo further down) and says things like "I screwed up" (see recent interview with Letterman) in failed efforts to cover his mistakes. Great post, Bent, imagine this disastrous duo McCain/Palin in the White House: "Oh, we just nuked Copenhagen, we screwed up!"
Photoshop is so sophisticated these days that I never know what's been altered and what hasn't. The political blogs have done some very interesting things with photos of both candidates.
In Denmark, David Letterman comes a week after broadcast, to do the subtext and other contractual stuff. So I Really appreciated the link to that interview... and it too is hillarious. It should be seen to the end, when McCain finally cops, about the Ayers/terrorism palling bs, "Well, gee, there's a million words said in a campaign..."
I don't see this as a minus for him, although there are many minuses.
Salud
It is refreshing to finally see a good candidate for the president who does not cower to a huge symbol of power. Many in the GOP have reminded me often of a lizard who has this ability of puffing out a display of skin around its head, to project an image of vitality and size... but it's just a display, and so many run for the hills... forgetting to be a seasoned swift boat commander, for example.
Before you all jump on me, I am not voting for McCain either!!!
Have any of you ever paused a DVD you were watching? I have done it often, and without trying I can get the person on screen in the worst possible pose.
Mariana, my respect for Colin Powell just dropped by at least 65%. I would have voted for him if he had ever run. His support of Obama just confirms my belief that we are sunk.
There are several other candidates. Unfortunately, they do not have the money that the Dem & Rep candidates have, so they do not get the exposure and promotion that the wealthy elite have.
Obama is NOT this countries potential for good.
However, in all multi-party democratic systems of the world that have any influence, they enter into coalition agreements (block politics) at election time, in order to give particular political philosophies any real influence. In my educated opinion of this, this does end up pretty much like the US 2 party system. One of the problems of a multi-party system with a coalition government is what can happen in the middle of an important political debate within a country, where the factions in the coalition legally break down, forcing a national election suddenly in the middle of the debate.
Now that may be fine for a small country, and it may even work in some larger countries... but I have a sneaky suspicion from having studied and lived so long in America, that the chaos from such an event would make the current political storm of a planned election pale in contrast.
The 2 main parties of America actually reflect most of Europe's 2 primary coalition, or block parties. What often happens though, is that if within a multi-party system, a small party with an angry agenda gains a tiny bit of power, then it could actually fracture the very philosophy it wishes to empower, since the opposition party will be able to capitalize on the split and gain even more power.
Awesome Bent, simply awesome...
I just wanted to say I am finally going through what is now under 6,400 pieces of gather new mail that is in my inbox on here. So with that in mind I have finally come to a piece of mail that was addressed to me in regards this article submission you have created to share with the gather community. Thank you for taking the time and sharing your piece with us here at gather. :o)