A recent YouTube foray into clips related to "Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" had me crying silently at the comic geniuses that were Peter Sellers and Stanley Kubrick. Dr. Strangelove, if you haven't seen it, is considered by nearly every reviewer, professional or not, as one of the top 10 movies of all time.
In a nutshell, it's a comi-drama about US vs. USSR paranoia about the nuclear arms race in which a U.S. Air Force general, named Jack Ripper, plots a way to send U.S. bombers to strike Soviet missile silos and what not because he's convinced that the fluoridation of our water supply, which started in the 1950's in the effort to improve dental health, is a Soviet plot to impurify our "precious body fluids". As the nauseatingly large number of intentionally misinformed Americans have grown since 2008 proves--more believe the president's a Muslim NOW than when he was elected--a lot of Americans really believed the hogwash put out by the hysterically motivated back in the 50's and 60's.
In one very famous, very funny scene of the movie Gen. Ripper's Executive Officer is a British Wing Commander who needs to call the White House to tell them to call off the attack on the USSR. A suspicious and not terribly bright Army colonel who has captured him finally relents and allows the Executive Officer to try and call the President on a pay phone, but warns hims as he tries to close the door that if he "tries any preversions in there, he'll blow" his head off! Which reminded me...
My dad was a very regular op-ed writer to the local paper which was nationally recognized (at the time) for its liberal excellence. He was best friends with a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist with whom he'd argue politics endlessly. I used to tell my father that he was an anti-Nixon, radical Republican who was slightly to the right of Attila the Hun. Truth was, he was significantly to the right of Attila. He thought Libertarians were sissies and that an occasional benign dictatorship was okay in certain circumstances (he would've loved Cheney, W not so much).
In any event, his op-ed pieces used to evoke varied responses from the hoi polloi. His favorite letter was one from someone aggrieved by his position on something or other (I think it was his suggestion that more people had died in Ted Kennedy's car than in (pre-Chernobyl) nuclear power accidents) and called my dad and his friends a bunch of "Commies Preverts and Fags"! Which is precisely why my dad's friend's had an entire set of high-ball glasses imprinted with the motto "Commies Preverts and Fags" on one side and "OMATI" (One More and That's It) on the other.
My dad's alcoholism killed him prematurely but he lived Hedonistically, i.e., as he pleased, though unbeknownst to him (or anyone else) he was self-medicating undiagnosed bipolar disorder, aka manic depression. He was euphemistically referred to as a "functional" alcoholic since he was a successful CPA and investment banker for over 30 years before his liver cried, "Uncle!" as the result of alcoholic cirrhosis. Despite all the negative or qualifying labels, he was a nice, kind, sweet, erudite and funny man who loved to laugh.
He ultimately died as a result of a biopsy to check for cancer; he never stopped bleeding because his blood had lost the ability to clot. Or maybe it was impurities of our body fluids caused by a Commie plot. Either way, his was a tragically short life and Dr. Strangelove is a great fucking satirical movie that moved both of us to tears.
I miss him.
XOXO--Ernst W
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