Snakes and Adders

Bonjour Mes Amis.

It's late, as always, and I am watching Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" instead of watching all the people filing by the casket in California.

"Greed is good".

Everyone knows that line.

"Say hello to my little friend!" (Scarface), "Thou shalt not kill women and children." (Born on the Fourth of July), "I am Death." (Platoon); it is a testament to Stone's writing that these lines spring to the fingertips with such ease.

"Greed is Good".

That infamous venom, spit so sweetly from the mouth of Gordon Gecko (Michael Douglas), is remembered for it's poetic irony but also for it's relevance to the 1980's.

In the '80's, culture became business-culture and that is now the story the world over. Greed is good. Wealth is right. Victory is Divine.

Losers (financial, social, political, aesthetic, ideological) don't exist.

In the 80's music became modeling, art became stock swapping and cinema became television.

As we watch the dark shadow that has gathered around this nascent milennium, we can see its black roots twisting out from beneath the Huxtable's doormat and crawling up Molly Ringwald's thigh.

God bless us every one.

God bless that dead human man with all of his flaws, lying in wait to lie in eternity where I hope he finds peace and an end to all longing.

Like all men his legacy will be writ large and small by all who knew him and all who did not.

By his fruits we shall know him.

Here's one for the Gipper.

www.joenolan.com