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FROM THE PHONE BOOTH: The Smallest Space in  Hollywood

	FINEFROCK

Camelot, Lancelot,
Barack-alot, Spamalot
by Steve Finefrock - Hollywood Forum [scriptwriter] 8/13/08

What do the simple folk do, asked Guinevere of her King Arthur. In the delightful song, they concluded in the last verse that simple folk spend their time wondering what royal folk do. Just one of many lively songs in a tragic musical that became the calling card of the tragic JFK meme contrived by the left upon his assassination. Now, we have a Neue Camelot? Is Barack Hussein Obama akin to John Fitzgerald Kennedy? One middle name hints at a Muslim-minded father’s ambition for his son, another at an Irish schemer’s hope for at least one son to benefit from in-laws with Bostonian political gifts.

This week’s Meet The Press featured a look back at a question placed before the nation by David Broder, on July 7, 1963, that very year that “Camelot” would begin to become a meme of DNC and Jackie’s design. Senator John Tower was asked by Broder, if the queries in 1960 of JFK’s lack of leadership gravitas had come to be proven prescient, by virtue of JFK’s poor performance. A juicy choice for MTP to make to celebrate Broder’s 400th appearance on MTP – it reminds us that perhaps those who questioned JFK’s poor gravitas might have been thus labeled anti-Catholic, or anti-Irish to so challenging this new, bright and promising face filled with drugs and deception.

That Camelot myth is slowly eroding, as a new one is being contrived by the left, and the media, albeit with a few belated dog-days doubts in this convention-bound August heat. Looking at the lyrics of only a few of that Broadway hit’s songs is full of political mirth. When Lancelot asks, rhetorically, who is able to do great and glorious things, his self-satisfying reply is “C’est Moi”:

A knight of the Table Round should be invincible,
Succeed where a less fantastic man would fail.
Climb a wall no one else can climb,
Cleave a dragon in record time,
Swim a moat in a coat of heavy iron mail.
No matter the pain, he ought to be unvinceable,
Impossible deeds should be his daily fare.

But where in the world
Is there in the world
A man so extraordinaire?

C’est moi – French for “it is I” and so it is Barack, whose fictional Robert Goulet Broadway ancestor adds:

C'est moi! C'est moi, I'm forced to admit.
'Tis I, I humbly reply.

That mortal who
These marvels can do,
C'est moi, c'est moi, 'tis I.

I've never lost
In battle or game;
I'm simply the best by far.

When swords are crossed
'Tis always the same:
One blow and au revoir!

C'est moi! C'est moi! So adm'rably fit!
A French Prometheus unbound.
And here I stand, with valor untold.

JFK lost many a battle and game, starting almost before his inauguration, ‘flipping’ in a flop before the swearing-in, that he’d reconsidered how bad the Soviets were as a threat to American safety, suggesting that now – he, the cold warrior extraordinaire who accused the Ike team of being soft on commies – he thought perhaps the U.S. should make a unilateral arms reduction initiative. Then came the Bay of Pigs, next a stupid drug-addled appearance at the crucial Austrian summit with Khrushchev [after which the commies decided it was safe to initiate their nascent plan to put missiles in Cuba], and so on until that summer when Broder suggested that election doubts may have come home to roost.

That Prometheus unbound had lost much valor, and his ‘rep’ and ‘cred’ became Camelot-enshrouded only due to that deadly steel-jacketed slug piercing his skull.  Now comes Barack, for whom Lancelot’s continued lyrics apply:

The soul of a knight should be a thing remarkable,
His heart and his mind as pure as morning dew.
With a will and a self-restraint
That's the envy of ev'ry saint
He could easily work a miracle or two.

To love and desire he ought to be unsparkable,
The ways of the flesh should offer no allure.
But where in the world
Is there in the world
A man so untouched and pure?

C’est Barack! Of course, JFK worked very few miracles, save for the save of his rep by the conspiracy to enshroud his failed presidency with the Camelot mantle. That administration was never remotely deserving of the label of Camelot, but retrospectively was so dubbed, with the conspiring cooperation of the media, historians, perfessors of political science and other usual suspects. Today? There is a different media, rising numbers of conservative historians and journalists, and a very turbulent public-debate environment that will challenge a Barack Camelot, not easily allow the establishment of Barackalot.

C'est moi! C'est moi, I blush to disclose.
I'm far too noble to lie.
That man in whom
These qualities bloom,
C'est moi, c'est moi, 'tis I.

I've never strayed
From all I believe;
I'm blessed with an iron will.

Had I been made
The partner of Eve,
We'd be in Eden still.

C'est moi! C'est moi! The angels have chose
To fight their battles below,

And here I stand, as pure as a pray'r,
Incredibly clean, with virtue to spare,
The godliest man I know!
C'est moi!

The tragedy of Camelot was that lust won over purity, the dragon’s spine was triggered, and Camelot faded into mere memory and apocrapha. Jealousy, and rage, and envy, and power played their ugly hands. Arthur’s dream was tarnished. Later cinematic incarnations, such as the grungier “Excalibur” re-cast the story: humans are frail, heroes may rise, who are imbued with expectations beyond that of mortals, but are also imbedded with the frailties of the simple folk.

They sit around and wonder what royal folk would do
And that\'s what simple folk do

There is no Camelot in the making with a Barackalot presidency. He is neither Lancelot – never been in a serious battle, either military or political – nor Arthur, with imbued holy powers and a special sword forged by magical angels. His vision is as idealistic as Arthur’s, but as unspecific as that of  young Arthur in “Excalibur” who must yet still prove he is worthy of knights’ loyalty. Is there a scene in Barackalot’s life akin to that “Excalibur” first-act moment in the moat, when young Arthur concedes that he’s yet to be even a knight, still “but a squire” who may not yet demand loyalty of knights who’ve known fear, shed blood and displayed courage in battle?

In that film, all combatants are stilled at all points of the moat and castle wall, to nervously watch young Arthur, who indeed has pulled the noble steel from the stone, but the divided knights watch in wonder, as even Merlin is amazed at a moment his magic did not foresee: Arthur concedes the rebel leader ’s philosophical point, hands over Excalibur to the rebellious knight who a second earlier humbled at its steel point. I must first be a knight before I may demand your loyalty as king he admits, and kneels, lowers his head, revealing his neck to the sword now in the sturdy, battle-tensed hands of his challenger.

Is there such a moment in the history of Barackalot? There are many in the life of MacAlot – long before that golden BB put him into the lobby of the Hanoi Hilton [Paris Hilton as desk clerk?], he’d faced many a pilot who wanted him dead, and triple-A [anti-aircraft artillery] crew who fired salvoes along with SAM [surface-to-air missile] emplacements looking for more clients at their local POW processing center. Barackalot has had no such experience in the moat. For MacAlot, it’s part of his young adulthood’s daily bread.

Somewhere among the growing, somewhat bolder cabal of conservative creatives in Hollywood is an update, a spoof, of Monty Python ’s “Spamalot” that will convey this point with humor and memorable parody. My meager talents only exhumed the lyrics for re-capitulation. Triple-A and SAM fire were Mac’s test of fire. For Barack, it was finally having to make a life-or-death choice, in mere political terms, to cut loose his pastor.

Some Excalibur moment, Barackalot!

Thus, a suggestion for some creative conservatives now conspiring to conceive some programming for the RNC conclave at month ’s end.  A musical number, “Barackalot” that borrows from Monty Python and serves notice: IF BARACK IS JFK, HEAVEN HELP US. For Merlin can’t, nor other holy forces. JFK’s Camelot was a myth, forged after his death, as magically as was Excalibur by that Lady of the Lake.

Barackalot is even more spurious, maybe not yet as dangerous as nuclear-tipped missiles are not as much a threat as in 1963 – though not all gone, a la Putin’s latest Olympic torch of Georgia – but still a chimera of silliness. Barackalot is a lot of spam.  All spice and cheap cut of inferior meat. If this were “Where’s the Beef” season, or where’s the ham as it were, it would all be spam, a lot of spam. No triple-A or SAM in Barackalot’s moat – just community organizer and editor of his law review.

When Arthur submits in “Excalibur” the rebel leader pauses, considers this moment’s meaning, then raises the sword high over his head, and then lowers it briskly, to  cheerfully dub Arthur with his knightly authority, converting him into a knight, thus bringing cheers to all around, noting that only one who was the descendant of Luthor Pendragon would be so brave and noble to make such a daring concession. Arthur had earlier held only the ‘title’ of king, but not yet the gravitas which a king must possess to command men into battle, to demand their loyalty, to expect their blood sacrifice.

That ’s a message not yet grasped by the voting public, or by Paris Hilton, or Barackalot’s acolytes. Maybe not yet grasped by MacAlot’s campaign staff. What do the simple folk do? We think about what we want our royal folk to do, and also have the vote to choose our royal folk. Hopefully, we will see who has the beef, and who has the spam. This time, BEFORE the election, rather than thirty years later, in a question by that decade’s David Broder. ExileStreet

copyright 2008 Steve Finefrock

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