Monday, January 30, 2012

Eleven Dollars Wasted

Don't go see the new "Iron Lady" movie in theaters right now. 70% of the film portrays Thatcher in her current state as a helpless 90 year-old struggling with dementia. This would be no different than putting out a film called "The Champ", complete with badass promotional displays of Muhammad Ali in his 1960's prime, only to have it be a 2-hour portrayal of the former boxer's present-day struggle with Parkinson's. Sorry, no time for scenes from the height of his popularity - you know, the ones that people might care about and that actually made the man famous. Not entertaining and in no way pays tribute to the main character's defining triumphs.

And that's probably the whole point. Why pay tribute to one of the greatest conservative leaders of our time? Far better to portray the right-wing pro- (or is it an-?) taganist at her weakest and hopefully cast aspersions about whether such mental deficiencies existed during her time in power.

I'm a huge Reagan fan but I have to say my favorite politician of all time was Thatcher. More so than any 20th century politician, she cut against the political consensus of the time and fought tooth and nail to revolutionize her nation's economy. All four of her successors, split across both parties, have credited her with positively transforming Britain.

A far better account of Thatcher and her reign can be found in Part 4 of the BBC's History of Modern Britain, which came out a few years back:

4 comments:

Pl0we said...

Thatcher hated the irish.

HANK said...

PlOwe, the Irish Thatcher hated were communist.

I agree with the IRA's stance to demand equal rights for Catholics and to end Britain's tyrannical rule, but the Republican forces were full of Pinko Commies. Thatcher might have worked more with the IRA if this wasn't the case.

Patrick said...

We need to be clear on our definition of Irish here. The truth is that all the people living in Ireland that had any remote semblance of drive, initiative, rationalism, cleanliness etc. left that country in the 1800's for American shores.

At that point, Ireland stopped being Irish, and was left with lazy drunks, socialists, terrorists, and ugly girls. Savannah is more Irish than Dublin.

Pl0we said...

I dont like socialist or terrorist, but ugly girls do come in handy.