| 10 March 2008
The best movie monologue of all time
From Other People's Money (1991).
The Scene: a final stockholder meeting to determine the fate of a dying company, New England Wire & Cable.
Two men take the stage in turn to make their case: company chairman Andrew Jorgenson (Gregory Peck) and Corporate raider Lawrence Garfield (Danny De Vito).
Jorgensen goes first, with a speech to warm the heart and stir the soul:
It's good to see so many...familiar faces, so many old friends. Some of you I haven't seen in years. Thank you for coming.
Bill Coles, our able president, in the annual report, has told you of our year, of what we accomplished, of the need for further improvements...our business goals for next year and the years beyond.
I'd like to talk to you about something else.
I want to share with you some of my thoughts concerning the vote that you're going to make in the company that you own.
This proud company, which has survived the death of its founder, numerous recessions, one major depression and two world wars, is in imminent danger of self-destructing.
On this day, in the town of its birth, There is the instrument of our destruction.
I want you to look at him in all of his glory. "Larry the Liquidator."
The entrepreneur of post-industrial America playing God...with other people's money.
The robber barons of old at least left something tangible in their wake. A coal mine, a railroad, banks.
This man leaves nothing.
He creates nothing.
He builds nothing.
He runs nothing.
And in his wake lies nothing but a blizzard of paper to cover the pain.
Oh, if he said, "I know how to run your business better than you"... that would be something worth talking about.
But he's not saying that.
He's saying, "I'm gonna kill you because at this particular moment in time...you're worth more dead than alive."
Well...maybe that's true, but it is also true that one day this industry will turn. One day when the yen is weaker, the dollar is stronger, or when we finally begin to rebuild our roads, our bridges, the infrastructure of our country, demand will skyrocket.
And when those things happen, we will still be here, stronger because of our ordeal, stronger because we have survived. And the price of our stock will make his offer pale by comparison.
God save us if we vote to take his paltry few dollars and run. God save this country if that is truly the wave of the future. We will then have become a nation that makes nothing but hamburgers, creates nothing but lawyers and sells nothing but tax shelters.
And if we are at that point in this country where we kill something...because at the moment it's worth more dead than alive.
...well...
...take a look around. Look at your neighbor. Look at your neighbor. You won't kill him, will you? No. It's called murder, and it's illegal. Well, this, too, is murder, on a mass scale.
Only on Wall Street, they call it maximizing shareholder value, and they call it legal. And they substitute dollar bills where a conscience should be.
Damn it! A business is worth more than the price of its stock! It's the place where we earn our living, where we meet our friends, dream our dreams. It is, in every sense, the very fabric that binds our society together.
So let us now, at this meeting, say to every Garfield in the land... here, we build things, we don't destroy them. Here, we care about more than the price of our stock.
Here...we care about people.
The crowd cheers. In most movies, this is the point where the mushy music would begin, the heartless corporate lizards would crawl off in disgrace, and the happy ending would occur.
But then, something remarkable happens. For once, reason triumphs over mawkish Hollywood sentimentality, when Larry the Liquidator takes the microphone and delivers his devastating riposte.
"Amen" indeed.
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Phillip Island
Spent the weekend of the 2nd March down at The Island, watching the World Superbike races. The racing was rather dull, but the weather was beaut, and much fun was had getting drunk with a particular bunch of degenerates.
The ride down was fun, but marred by heavy roadworks on the normally awesome Cooma-Bombala run, and then by rain and ultra-slippery road on the Cann River highway. Here's a random photo taken at Orbost. The bloke on the other bike is BikeMe webmaster Alan Moon.
The ride back was better, though I was very lucky to evade a much higher police presence. My blessed VTR is a superb long-distance mount.
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The joys of multiculturalism
Gee, I never saw this coming......
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A typical socialist success story
It seems old melon-head in Venezuela is fucking things up royally.
Not that this will register with the usual imbeciles, who still regard poverty-stricken totalitarian Cuba as a paradise on earth. After all, poverty is unimportant once the correct feelings are in place.
(Via J.F. Beck)
Once-Great Britain
This is simply disgusting.
Pilger hearts psychotic Islamists
Proving that there's no bunch of homicidal thugs he's not in love with, here's John Pilger:
The breakout of the people of Gaza in late January provided a heroic spectacle unlike any other since the Warsaw ghetto uprising
Had Pilger been writing in WW2, he'd have been cheerleading for Waffen SS, and praising National Socialist wealth redistribution.
My favourite photo of Pilger says it all:
Poor old prune-face has never recovered from the loss of his beloved.
An encounter at the shopping mall
Silly fellow. You'd have been much better off under the benevolent regime of the anti-gun crowd. The police would have been very professional at cleaning up the corpse of you and your child. And you'd have the satisfaction of knowing your death was part of creating a safer society.
Then again, maybe you should have just shot the cunts and cleansed the gene pool. I for one would have cheered.
(Via Billy Beck)
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