That's Still Funny

One of the silver linings in the coronavirus cloud ("bad cloud", as opposed to "good cloud" like Microsoft's Azure and Amazon Web Services) is that boredom and ennui have led to revisiting old videos.

Tosh Togo

The Three Stooges were a top-three favorite when my parents let this kindergartener watch on the old black-and-white during the '50's. I howled at the ridiculous physical comedy, complete with the sound effects of face-slapping, head-bashing, and eye-poking.

[Related: I also enjoyed watching the fake violence of pro wrestling on Saturday mornings and was later thrilled when Tosh Togo got the role of Oddjob in Goldfinger.]

But back to the Stooges, who had material for the adults, too. In 1940 they starred in one of the first anti-Hitler Hollywood films. You Nazty Spy! is filled with Nazi references such as "storm" troopers who wear raincoats while carrying umbrellas and "books" burning to erase gambling debts.

When arms dealers seek to install a puppet dictator, they entice wallpaper hanger Moe and his assistants Larry and Curly. Dialogue:

Paper-hanger Moe smears black
paint above his lip by accident.

Moe: What does a dictator do?

Arms manufacturer: A dictator, why he makes love to beautiful women, drinks champagne, enjoys life, and never works. He makes speeches to the people, promising them plenty, gives them nothing, then takes everything. That's a dictator!

Curly: A parasite! That's for me.

The cinematography is obsolete, but the script is not.

Hungarian Mish-Mash

Vladimir and Viktor, 2015 (WSJ photo)

Donald Trump's foreign policy--whether it be tariffs, North Korea, Iran, climate change, you name it---comes under daily criticism from the media, the foreign policy establishment, academics, and Democrats. Meanwhile, not a peep about the performance of Nobel Prize winner Barack Obama.

Case in point: Hungary. [bold added]

When Russian troops poured into Georgia in 2008, [Hungarian now-Prime Minister Viktor Orban] denounced “the raw imperial power politics” of Mr. Putin, expecting a hard line from the incoming U.S. president. Instead, Barack Obama attempted a reset to mend relations with Russia. Meanwhile, the global financial crisis and Europe’s dithering response to it left Mr. Orban skeptical about the West’s attachment to political pluralism and globalization, say former officials.

Kind of reminds me of Chamberlain's "reset" with Hitler in Munich.