Ocean's 43

[unhappycamper]

Ocean's 43
Steven Weber
Posted August 27, 2007 | 09:42 PM (EST)


If only W was as prepossessing as Clooney or as nattily attired, then even the growing disgruntled mass that wants his guts for garters would be forgiving, as the public always is with homegrown scalawags, even ones that rape, stomp, throttle and bitch slap Democracy the way he and his band of slick grifters have.

Oh, it was sweet, this one. They researched the hell out of it for decades, patiently watching the behavior, noting the patterns, seeding the grassroots, rehearsing it over and over and over -- and baby, PULLED. IT. OFF.

Years after the stinger's been inserted and the host has absorbed the anesthetizing toxin as though born to the task, Ocean's 43 are fleeing now, having palmed about as much as they can under their green-ink-and-blood-stained shirts, and swiftly taking their choreographed turns going through the revolving door in the rear of the establishment (installed in a no bid contract by Halliburton) into waiting Hummers. Alberto! Grab the steaks. Turd Blossom, you git the PBR! Last one to Dubai's a Liberal!

So W and his assembled band of smirking rogues, posing as the managers of The Greatest Store on Earth gave us what we had coming. They showed up to work. They greeted the customers. They wore "Ask Me" pins next o the flags on their lapels. They promised them big sales and price cuts and rows and rows of gleaming products -- and then they pissed on them. And even as their customers were soaking and reeking, the managers denied they were voiding their bladders and, as suspected (after decades of steady indoctrination), the customers ignored the briny swamp that washed over them. And just when everyone started to notice a slight pong in the air (alerted by a chirpy "Spill on aisle three!"), Ocean's 43 waded away, Medals of Freedom tinkling like wind chimes blowing in the Bay St. Louis breeze.

So now it's time to take our business elsewhere. America™ is no longer the great emporium it once was, the repository for people's hopes and dreams now now stands ransacked and emptied. Starting with a simple premise -- life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and an opportunity for all to participate in a united, benign, free-thinking society---it has over time become an example of what happens when laxity, greed and good old fashioned moral corruption are allowed to seep in and fester. Management has changed hands so many times, and each successive generation pushed farther away from the founders' intentions for the store and the essential services it provided, its original concept has become abandoned for more expedient ways to turn a profit. It's a testimony both to people's trust and their gullibility as well as a reminder that the two are separated by the most porous of membranes, the same membrane that separates the patriot from the profiteer. It's a flimsy measure that can be easily exploited. And then the time's ripe for a stinging of Soderberghian proportions. But you gotta be good. And Ocean's 43 were.

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