October 18, 2009
(The Swamp) - In 1941, John "Pappy" Ford finished directing the black and white film masterpiece, How Green Was My Valley. It did quite well at the box office and won the Oscar for Best Director and Best Picture among several others. The only great Ford movie talents who weren't in the classic were John Wayne and Ward Bond. It's still as relevant today as it was then, with its sense of fair play and homely values. It was Ford's favorite.
There are hundreds of sermons embedded in it - tales of neighbors and voluntary charity, unbridled greed and the results of unintended consequences, Godly faith and false religious pride; hard work and harder death.
The movie is laced with unintended modern irony. Prime among the symbols is the character of Dai Bando. Played perfectly by Rhys Williams, he embodies the just righteousness of the common man over the smug self-righteousness of pseudo-intellectualism.
Dai Bando was a prize fighter and a resident of Cwm Rhondda, the small town with the huge colliery. Roddy McDowall, the young son of Guilliam Morgan, comes home from the government school, beaten mercilessly by the school's sadistic schoolmaster. He persuades his father and brothers not to interfere. They acquiesce.
But Dai Bando and his side-kick Cyfartha, played by Barry Fitzgerald, pay the Schoolmaster a painful visit. It is one of the most satisfying scenes in all of movie-making.
In terms of our present plight, it is perfectly symbolic.
However, there is a real problem: Those of us who are suffering under the arrogance of our schoolmaster.. our Professor Of The United States.. have no Dai Bando.
We have a friendly, sincere, and honest cornpone. We have a handsome geek. We have a moose dresser. We have an old soldier who has already lost. But no Dai Bando. If there is anybody who could have been, he or she is either not yet ready or simply unappealing.
And frankly, it's not going to be enough to elect an all libertarian/conservative congress. They can pass all the recisions of this current body of morons they want, but it will be meaningless, if the morons still have their prancing ego maniac in power to veto every measure. Especially with pretend-sapients like Olympia Snow for allies.
The real problem may well be that no decent person would want to sully herself by being involved with the viper-culture that slithers about in Washington. There is real evil there, such evil that God alone would conquer it. Who can blame anyone for saying, "No."
Yet, a Dai Bando we need.
- Dick Anderson
