Armenia

I heard today on NPR that a certain Turkish writer was awarded the Nobel prize for literature. Evidentally this had less to do with the quality of his writing, and more to do with the fact that he was interviewed by a Swiss publicaiton some months ago and mentioned the fact that in the early 1920s the Turkish army murdered a million or more Armenians for no particular reason other than they didn't like Armenians. Saying that is a serious crime in Turkey and the man was on trial for it--all charges dropped now since the Turkish government finally realized they were making temselves look increasingly foolish.

More intersting, though, was the report that the French government entered the fray over this and decided to retaliate against Turkey. How do they protest the original brutal act and the recent Orwellian law? They are in the process of passing a law that would make it a crime in France to say the Turks didn't committ genocide (Tacitus would have loved that word) against the Armenians. Maybe next year the Nobel prize can to a French fascist author who is on trial under this law. I guess there is no French word for irony.

How much better it would have been for the French to have intervened to stop the murders in the frist place--they did have their troops all over their shiney new Mandate of Syria at the time.

Or maybe, they could do something like--I don't know--send the Foreign Legion and the Airborn XX to the Sudan now to stop the murders there?

Goddamn Frogs!

Marxism and the Jew

TCM has been showing old episodes of the Dick Cavett show related to their film line-up. Tonight I saw (and for a change heard) the Groucho Marx interview. Very powerful nostalgia since I had seen the show at its original broadcast. I decided then that Groucho wasn't funny--well I must have been about 5 or 6 so perhaps it is forgivable.

One thing he said was interesting, but not per se. He said, '[Thalberg] was a pure-bred Jew from Brooklyn.' The word 'Jew' was edited out of the tape--I presume by the original censors in the 1960s. Surely they didn't think it was a slur, coming as it did from Goucho? Perhaps they just thought the fact that Jews existed in the world was too awful to reveal to the American public?

Puzzling.

___________________________________________

Groucho said that the two films Thalberg produced--Day at the Races & Night at the Opera--were by far their best work. I understand why he said that and they are certianly fine films--but I would still argue that Duck Soup is the greatest film comedy ever made--well, that or Strangelove--hard to choose between films so different.