And Now For Something Completely Different

Among the things Santa brought to my house this year was a copy of Monty Python's Life of Brian.

Couldn't help feeling a bit of deja vu while watching this next segment (and not because I'd seen the movie before) when Brian first encounters the "revolutionaries" of the People's Front of Judea:

Brian: Are you the Judean People's Front?

Reg: ____ off!

Brian: What?

Reg: Judean People's Front! We're The People's Front of Judea! Judean People's Front, ___!

Rogers: Blighters...

Brian: Can I...join your group?

Reg: No, ____ off!

Brian: I didn't want to sell this stufff, it's only a job! I hate the Romans as much as anybody!

All in PFJ: Ssch! Ssch! Ssch! Ssch! Ssch!

Brian: Oh.

Judith: Are you sure?

Brian: Oh, dead sure. I hate the Romans already.

Reg: Listen! If you wanted to join the PFJ, you'd have to have really hate the Romans.

Brian: I do!

Reg: Oh, yeah, how much?

Brian: A lot!

Reg: Right, you're in. Listen, the only people we hate more than the Romans, are the Judean People's Front.

All in PFJ except Brian: Yeah!

Judith: Splitters!

Rogers: And the Judean Popular People's Front!

All in PFJ except Brian: Yeah! Splitters!

Loretta: And the People's Front of Judea!

All in PFJ except Brian: Yeah! Splitters!

Reg: What?

Loretta: The People's Front of Judea. Splitters!

Reg: We are the People's Front of Judea!

Loretta: Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.

Reg: People's Front!

Rogers: Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?

Reg: He's over there.

All in PFJ except Brian: Splitter!

Regular readers of the Gazette will recall this report from an American participant at the recent anti-Bush demonstrations in Trafalger Square:

I marched with the other Americans that I could find after the initial chaos. On television, marches look like a single, cohesive unit. They aren't. While all the participating groups may agree on ending the war, they don't necessarily agree with each other.

For example, the American Expatriates didn't want to be near the neo-communists. We thought it wouldn't help our 'we aren't anti-American' image if we were photographed with hammer and sickle flags in the background. As we moved away, the socialist workers filled the gap. But the neo-communists and the socialist workers didn't like each other either. Each group tried to get as far away from the other, while still moving forward. It was like pushing the same poles of a magnet together.

At this point, the dreaded hippy-mobile came up behind the American expatriates. The hippy-mobile was a psychedelic construction. Bicycles, wagons, and carts connected together in a train, painted green, with a windmill on top and lots of speakers blaring music. Hippies with fairy wings and dressed in animal costumes maneuvered it through the crowed.

It was the physical incarnation of everything I hate about hippies.

While I appreciate their anti-war/pro-peace sentiments, I'd rather be photographed with the anarchists than the hippies. I know they want to help, but they only succeeded in making the rest of us look foolish, and they played into the anti-war stereotype. They were leaning into a punch the anti-anti-war people were waiting to deliver. My only comfort was that the rest of the crowd didn't seem happy to see them either

I suggested to a no-nonsence-take-charge woman with the Wesley Clark 2004 campaign that we should make a break for the front and get away from the hippies. She agreed. We then led a mad dash through the crowd, dodging and weaving around hundreds of protesters and police. The rest of the Americans followed as best they could.

Now, if you've been studying very hard, you should be able to tell whether the following is from Monty Python, a recent Democratic debate, the last Al Qaeda tape, or Michael Moore's website, or...

Reg: They bled us white, the bastards. They've taken everything we had. And not just from us! From our fathers, and from our father's fathers.

Loretta: And from our father's father's fathers.

Reg: Yeah.

Loretta: And from our father's father's father's fathers.

Reg: Yeah, all right Stan, don't delay with the point. And what have they ever given us in return?

Revolutionary I: The aqueduct?

Reg: What?

Revolutionary I: The aqueduct.

Reg: Oh. Yeah, yeah, they did give us that, ah, that's true, yeah.

Revolutionary II: And the sanitation.

Loretta: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like.

Reg: Yeah, all right, I'll grant you the aqueduct and sanitation, the two things the Romans have done.

Matthias: And the roads.

Reg: Oh, yeah, obviously the roads. I mean the roads go without saying, don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads...

Revolutionary III: Irrigation.

Revolutionary I: Medicine.

Revolutionary IV: Education.

Reg: Yeah, yeah, all right, fair enough.

Revolutionary V: And the wine.

All revolutionaries except Reg: Oh, yeah! Right!

Rogers: Yeah! Yeah, that's something we'd really miss Reg, if the Romans left. Huh.

Revolutionary VI: Public bathes.

Loretta: And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.

Rogers: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it; they're the only ones who could in a place like this.

All revolutionaries except Reg: Hahaha...all right...

Reg: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Revolutionary I: Brought peace?

Reg: Oh, peace! Shut up!