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America
on the Rocks: Shaken not Stirred
(NFL
Nationals Version)
©
Brady Henderson 1999
You
thought you were safe, didn’t you?
You thought that I was merely another harmless orator giving
a speech.
Well you were wrong!
The cut of my coat conceals my Walther PPK. The top button of
my jacket, is actually a miniature camera.
And in my pocket, my license to kill.
Obviously, I’m not who I appear to be.
My name is Bond, James Bond, the real one, not one of those
imitators from the silver screen.
Notice, the debonair and cosmopolitan appearance, fine
clothing, and body the ladies find, irresistible.
You
don’t believe me do you?
I guess you’re noticing the big nose, bad hair, and
eyebrows that give a visage like Sherwood Forest, or maybe it was
just the fact that I’m not British.
Well I guess I should stop pretending, I’m not James Bond,
but I want to be.
You see I’ve watched every Bond film ever made, I know the
lines, I know the villains, and I know the ladies.
You could say that I’m a 007 fanatic.
This, in addition to giving me a good knowledge of Baccarat,
has given me a unique perspective on life.
I watch Goldfinger,
and think, Bill Gates.
“Q,” that’s Lee Iococa, and finally Dr.
No, Jack Kevorkian.
And when I look at the world around me, I think of James
Bond, because I see a generation being brought up obsessed with the
ideals of Bond, the movie hero, and having lost touch with about
everything else.
So let’s take a journey through the fantasy of 007, and
compare it to our own reality.
So hop into the Astin Martin, and fasten your seatbelts for
our mission through the twists and turns of a society that has lost
control.
Now
in my long history as a fan, I have discovered that every Bond film,
and Bond star, have but three critical and unwavering features.
Namely, sex, violence, and suave sophistication.
First,
let’s talk about sex!
I said that rather loudly, didn’t I?
It used to be that sex was a taboo subject, but thanks in
part to Bond and his movie harem, sex and sex-appeal have become the
greatest obsessions of our society, often overtaking far more
important values.
Just watch one episode of Baywatch
and you’ll find its probably not the intricate plots,
enamoring storylines, or the poiyant portrayals by the actors that
make “Babe-watch,” as it is often called, the most popular
television show in the world.
When it comes to this obsession, both men and women play a
part.
Ever since Helen of Troy’s face sailed a thousand ships, it
seems men have proceeded to rate every women they meet in “Milli-Helens.”
The chief consequence of this obsession is born by women.
In fact, contrary to popular belief, the number one wish of
girls age 13 to 17 is not to be my girlfriend, it’s just to be
thinner.
In the extreme, this can lead to anorexia or bulimia, or even
augmenting one’s body with silicon, sometimes with deadly
consequences. All because young people view sex-appeal as being so
critical.
And perhaps their right.
Instead of entering meaningful and long-lasting
relationships, we go out every weekend, walk up to someone we’ve
never seen before
and say, “Nice shoes, wanna----”
Well
you get the idea.
In
fact have you ever wondered why we’ve had five James Bonds, a new
one about every 3 films?
My theory: they’ve been steadily dying of STD’s.
In the movies 007 gives us the example of the man who gets
around, and we are becoming better and better at following it.
Recently in my own High School, a popular student whom I have
known for over 10 years was diagnosed with the AIDS virus.
While this was shocking enough, far more horrifying was his
charge last month for nineteen counts of involuntary manslaughter
for the nineteen people to whom he has already given the fatal
disease.
And I don’t even know nineteen girls’ phone numbers.
Let
us now leave the world of sex for the real “macho” feature of
every James Bond film, the violence.
For over 20 years, 007 has been blowing away the bad guys,
not once reloading the gun.
As a child, my friends and I would run through the
neighborhood with our toy M-16’s and AK-47’s.
We had fun with toy guns because that’s what our heros did,
heros like James Bond.
Our games were like his movies; the good guys always won, and
nobody ever really got hurt.
Unfortunately that was not the case last March in Jonesboro,
Arkansas, where 13 year old Mitchell Johnson and 11 year old Andrew
Golden armed up and opened fire on their own classmates.
The whole nation was shocked, but passed it off as “an
isolated incident.”
Then two more angry students in Littleton, Colorado proved
that it was far from isolated.
In fact in the last four years alone, 165 students have been
slain at school.
This
juvenile violence, though, is not a new problem.
In fact the lessons of Columbine, and Jonesboro, were taught
two decades ago, when California teenager Brenda Spenser opened fire
on her school yard from across the street, saying “I don’t like
Mondays.”
Unfortunately, the lessons taught, like those of Jonesboro,
weren’t learned, with almost no action being taken to prevent such
tragedies in the future, a future realized on April 20th of this
year.
The stories of Brenda Spenser and Jonesboro were shocking at
first, but then passed from the headlines faster than a dry martini
through James Bond’s lips.
A whole society, shaken, but not stirred.
Not stirred to action, or even stirred to care.
When
it comes to victims of violence in our society, genuine caring is in
short supply.
Recently police officer Lisa Jobes recalled a short time
spent with students at innercity Los Angeles high school.
The students were discussing the random and
senseless
murder of one of their classmates, who was shot to death the night
before by a drive-by shooter, as she slept on the couch in her
living room.
In the course of the discussion one of the students rose and
said, “The stupid girl deserved it; she was sleeping on her couch.
Everyone in this neighborhood knows you’re supposed to
sleep in your bathtub.”
Perhaps
this student’s comment is indicative of America’s crisis.
We have become so desensitized by what we see and hear that
instead of facing problems, we ignore them, and live our lives
instead in the warped belief that it’s all somehow normal.
This
brings us to the last part of our James Bond journey, that of suave
sophistication. This is perhaps the one feature of James Bond that
we have not imitated, and ironically it’s the one we probably need
to.
Indeed
sophistication provides the best direct comparison of Bond and
reality:
007 plays Blackjack in Monte Carlo, we play Lotto in gas
stations.
Bond might travel the world in search of the perfect
champaign, we travel to Texas to buy cold 6-point beer.
Bond’s villains use everything from high-tech lasers to
killer viruses to stamp out human life, in America 13 people are
killed each year by falling Coke machines.
James Bond watches his enemies closely, while we watch Jerry
Springer.
It
is, in fact,
TV Talk shows like Springer’s that have taken us from Moonraker
to Muckraker, all giving us the same thing.
Absolutely nothing.
That is to say no content, no substance, and no reality.
Indeed it is this ignorance of our society that has lead to
the apathy of our society.
After all, why should we worry about Sexually transmitted
diseases or violence in our schools when both are tragically
trivialized while stupidity is immortalized, and all For
Your Eyes Only.
So
do we smash our televisions to bits, a rip up our movie screens, of
course not, because the answer to our problem comes amazingly enough
from James Bond.
You see there is one other feature of all eighteen Bond
films, James always wins, always survives, despite impossible odds.
He does so by having a firm grasp on reality, by facing
problems, instead of ignoring them, and most of all, by never giving
up.
Fortunately, we don’t have to endure the hardships James
Bond does to save the world.
We can do it more simply.
Like young people realizing the danger of obsession, and
taking a stand against it.
Or parents talking to their kids about sex, drugs, and
violence, before movie heros and talkshow fanatics become their only
teachers.
And most importantly, all of us realizing that life is not a
movie , nor a game, and there are real problems to be faced in a
very real world.
When we do that, we’ll see the one thing even James Bond
could never experience, real joys, when we live life as aware
individuals boundless in our possibilities, not as slaves in bondage
to what we see on the screen.
And
with that, we finally come to the happy ending, so let’s roll
credits.
The
cast is only one, and I have no key grips, so let’s get right to
the disclaimer:
The
people, places, and incidents portrayed in this speech, are real.
Any similarities should be inferred.
And any unauthorized duplication and advocation of the ideas
expressed in this speech will result in severe improvements in our
families, schools, and nation.
Then
there’s always the final reassuring message at the very end of the
reel, “James Bond will Return,” because America must not
continue to just be shaken, we must be stirred.
©
Brady Henderson 1999
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