The Eight Answers

Nothing heavy tonight. I like to celebrate the Saturday evening posts with something easy and fun. This little skit on how to sound smart and stay dumb is my idea of fun.

Sometime in the first week of my American government class at PSU, I will play a clip from the movie, Born Yesterday. I’m thinking of the 1993 version, not the 1950 one. This one has Don Johnson as Paul Verall, the Washington insider, Melanie Griffith as Billie Dawn, the political novice, and John Goodman as Harry Brock, Billie’s boyfriend/keeper/boss.

Billie seems likely to make a lot of trouble for Harry in Washington, where he has come to buy some Senators, so he hires Paul Verall to “smarten her up” a little. Paul starts very conventionally by telling her to get a copy of the Washington Post and circle any words she doesn’t know. It turns out that there are quite a few she doesn't know. That’s not good enough for getting smart quickly in Washington, so he comes up with another plan.

At this point in the presentation, I mention to my class that the expression, “the liberal arts” was once one of a set of two. I ask them to think of these two as options. They are two ways one might go about the process of learning about American government. The other phrase was “the servile arts.” So we have “the arts fit for free men” and “the arts fit for servants.” I promise them that I will teach the course in the liberal arts mode, but I admit that there is nothing to prevent them from taking the course in the servile arts mode.

Then I play the clip. It takes two minutes and 57 seconds. Paul tells Billie that everyone in Washington talks about the same thing at parties and that the only time anyone is willing to say he doesn’t know something is when he is being indicted. So the deal is that he will stand across from her and (unobtrusively) hold up from one to eight fingers. That way she will know which of the eight "answers" to parrot. This practice is called psittacism, by the way, a word I never utter in class. The closest English verb is "to parrot."

Here are the eight answers. You will notice that they are answers in the sense of “things you can say when people ask you something.” Beyond that, they aren’t much.

Answer 1. Here’s what I’d like to know. Who elected the Washington Post president?

Answer 2. We can’t be the policeman of the world, but until we get another cop on the block, we have to support our friends.

Answer 3. Being a superpower has a price.

Answer 4. It’s still a dangerous world out there.

Note: At the party, Billie starts with 2 and adds 3, pauses, and adds 4. It’s beautiful

Answer 5. That’s about as likely as a Democrat being elected president.

Note: This after the previous 12 years of the Reagan and Bush administrations.

Answer 6. It makes you wonder if a parliamentary system isn’t better.

Answer 7. I don’t think Abe Lincoln himself would know what to do about that.

Note: There is a pathetic little exchange after this one. Paul says, “You say that one when you don’t know what to say. Billie responds, “Good. I’ll just say that one.”

Answer 8. If only the U. N. would take out the Vernor amendment to Resolution 165, we’d have the power to do what needs to be done.