We watched V for Vendetta the other day. And now I’m interested in reading the original graphic novel, as I know there are quite some differences, and Alan Moore, the original author, did not endorse the Hollywood version. I may read “The Watchmen” first though, since my husband told me “The Watchmen” is a better story (and we already have a copy at home).
The perpetually smiling Guy Fawkes mask was creepy. But then, V is a dark, creepy character. Would we really herald such a character as our hero if we were living in that kind of world? For example, I would never condone the destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center (if it were still standing in the fictitious future) no matter how oppressive the government had become. Would you?
The real voice of the people is in the news, on the big screens, on TV, on our blogs, in our newspapers, books, magazines. The more we allow partisan news articles, politicians who set up their brother-in-laws for $50,000-a-year jobs operating toll booths…oh, yes, America, $14.6 billions later your tax money is still paying for Boston’s Big Dig project – you know, the project that had to do with the tunnel where a ceiling panel that weighed 3 tons killed a woman in July this year? Your tax money will also foot the bill for the investigation, as well as the law suit the Mass Turnpike Authority chairman filed to try to save his face and job. (Well, all right, maybe this latter part will only hit the unfortunate Massachusetts residents, who like paying more taxes anyway.) Futhermore, after failing to save his job, the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority chairman Matthew J. Amorello resigned effective August 15th, but will be paid his $223k salary as well as all insurance and benefits through February 15th. He will also start collecting his $56000-a-year pension when he turns 55. No wonder so many people want government jobs.
Sorry for my rambling digression. (Massachusetts politics always makes me think of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.) My point is, we are responsible for putting these people in office.
Food for thought…below is an excerpt from Wikipedia’s biographical entry on Donald Trump. I’m not touting for the Donald, but I think the description is very revealing of our government officials nowadays:
The development saga of the Javits Convention Center gave Donald Trump a revealing lesson in the ineptitudes and inefficiencies of the New York City government in that a project he’d estimated could’ve been completed by his company for $110 million ended up costing the city between $750 million to $1 billion. He’d offered to take over the project at cost but found that the New York City bureacracy had virtually no interest in the prudent expenditure of taxpayer’s money.[citation needed]
This debacle would repeat itself in the city’s attempt to restore the Wollman Rink in Central Park – a project started in 1980 with an expected 2 1/2 year construction schedule that was still, with $12 million spent, nowhere near complete in 1986. Trump offered to take over the job at no charge to the city, an offer that was initially rebuffed until the New York City media got wind of the story which changed their minds in a “New York minute“. Trump was given the job which he completed in six months and with $750,000 of the $3 million budgeted for the project left over (he used the leftover money to renovate the adjacent skatehouse and restaurant).
It should be noted that the city had started the Wollman Rink restoration project at the same time (May 1980) that Trump had broken ground for his landmark Trump Tower project, which he completed in 1983.
The Penciled Sky 