Great Interview with Terry Jones in Salon



Key quote for me (Read the whole thing here):

It was the Archbishop of Arundel who was the real mastermind behind this, the Henry Kissinger of his day. He did exactly what is happening now. He put this illegitimate, illegal regime in power and he lied and cheated to get power himself. Then he neutralized the opposition by declaring a war on heresy. A war on heresy suited his purposes because it was open-ended, he could define heresy how he liked. And he defined it as "you're either with us or you're a heretic." If you criticized the church, you were criticizing the king. It was all the same thing. You saw people using the same mechanisms and tools of power in the 14th century that are used in the war on terror today.

Terry Jones says elsewhere in the interview that he can't be funny writing about George W. Bush. I understand that. It is hard to tell a joke when you are living inside a joke. Knowing that people as ridiculous as Bush and his coterie of nimrods could decide whether you live or die today is comic, but it isn't funny. Comedy of this sort requires Kundera or Kafka. We need The Unbearable Lightness of Dubya, or The Book of Enron and Forgetting. Bush could fit comfortably into Kundera's chapters on Stalin's son and kitsch. Tony Blair would make an admirable substitute for Dubcek.

Posted: Fri - January 21, 2005 at 03:27 PM        

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