The Bishop Gambit

[trof]

In light of Bush*s statement (last night or today) about "closing Saddam's torture and rape rooms"...this said while his defense department seems to be crumbling around his ears as a result of our re-opening the "torture and rape" rooms...I thought it appropriate to bring this back to page one.


A 1967 movie, "Guide for the Married Man", consisted of a series of more or less tongue-in-cheek 'blackouts', or vignettes, showing how men could spice up their lives a bit by engaging in extra-marital 'activities'. One might say that it rode the crest of the wave of The Sexual Revolution.

In one of the more surreal segments (which could be subtitled "Deny-Deny-Deny") stand-up comedian and Sinatra Rat Pack member Joey Bishop is an apparently hapless hubby. His wife returns home unexpectedly to discover him in the marital bed with a scantily clad, well endowed young woman. She launches a venomous harangue.

As his outraged spouse is bombarding him with "How COULD you? You RAT, you WORM", etc., Bishop calmly goes about the business of helping the young woman dress and making the bed. All the while, he keeps up a running dialogue (monologue?) with his wife.

"I don't understand? What are you talking about? What do you mean? You saw WHAT? That's impossible!" And on and on. As the young woman slips quietly out the door, he says "What girl? Where? Are you CRAZY? Have you taken leave of your senses? What's come over you?"

By the time he has finished fluffing up the pillows and smoothing the spread his wife is convinced that nothing at all happened and whatever she thought she had witnessed with her own eyes was somehow a figment of her overactive imagination.

With the War on Terror, the WMDs, the invasion of Iraq, the torture of prisoners, the tax cuts and the economy, the environment, Kerry's voting record, Kerry's military service, etc., I would posit that Bush*, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al are using a variant of the Joey Bishop Gambit.
And some are falling for it.