I currently blog politically/policywise at Obsidian Wings.
Scroll down for Amygdala archives! You know you want to. [Temporarily rather borked, along with rest of template.]
Amygdala's endorsements are below my favorite quotations! Keep scrolling!
Amygdala will move to an entirely new and far better blog template ASAP, aka RSN, aka incrementally/badly punctuated evolution.
Tagging posts, posts by category, next/previous post indicators, and other post-2003 design innovations are incrementally being tweaked/kludged/melting.
Above email address currently deprecated! Use gary underscore farber at yahoodotcom, pliz! Sanely free of McCarthyite calling anyone a traitor since 2001!
Commenting Rules: Only comments that are courteous and respectful of other commenters will be allowed. Period.
fi
You must either open a Google/Blogger.com/Gmail Account, or sign into comments at the bottom of any post with OpenID, LiveJournal, Typepad, Wordpress, AIM account, or whatever ID/handle available to use. Hey, I don't design Blogger's software: sorry!
Posting a spam-type URL will be grounds for deletion.
Comments on posts over 21 days old are now moderated, and it may take me a long while to notice and allow them.
I've a long record in editorial work in book and magazine publishing, starting 1974, a variety of other work experience, but have been, since 2001, recurringly housebound with insanely painful sporadic and unpredictably variable gout and edema, and in the past, other ailments; the future? The Great Unknown: isn't it for all of us?
I'm currently house/cat-sitting, not on any government aid yet (or mostly ever), often in major chronic pain from gout and edema, which variably can leave me unable to walk, including just standing, but sometimes is better, and is freaking unpredictable at present; I also have major chronic depression and anxiety disorders; I'm currently supported mostly by your blog donations/subscriptions; you can help me. I prefer to spread out the load, and lessen it from the few who have been doing more than their fair share for too long.
Thanks for any understanding and support. I know it's difficult to understand. And things will change. They always change.
I'm sometimes available to some degree as a paid writer, editor, researcher, or proofreader. I'm sometimes available as a fill-in Guest Blogger at mid-to-high-traffic blogs that fit my knowledge set.
If you like my blog, and would like to help me continue to afford food and prescriptions, or simply enjoy my blogging and writing, and would like to support it --
you are welcome to do so via the PayPal buttons.
Donate to support Gary Farber's Amygdala:
Please consider showing your support for Amygdala by clicking below and subscribing for $5/month!
Free koala bear included! They're so cute!
To subscribe for further increments of $5, simply click above again, after completing one, for as many $5 subscriptions as you desire!
Advance notification of cancellations are helpful, but it's all up to you.
"The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include With ease, and you beside"
-- Emily Dickinson
"We will pursue peace as if there is no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there is no peace."
-- Yitzhak Rabin
"I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be."
-- Alexander Hamilton
"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport."
-- Barbara Jordan
"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to
trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule --
and both commonly succeed, and are right."
-- H. L. Mencken
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
-- Aldous Huxley
"I have had my solutions for a long time; but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
-- Karl F. Gauss
"Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire,
the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind;
and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise
the improvements of social life."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his
expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were
respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."
-- Edward Gibbon
"There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify
the evils, of the present times."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority.
They show disrespect for elders and they
love to chatter instead of exercise.
Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They
no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize
their teachers."
-- Socrates
"Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments."
-- Sidney Hook
"Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness."
-- Sidney Hook
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect
disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest
and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Faced with the choice of all the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all the
land, we chose a Jewish state without all the land."
-- David Ben-Gurion
"...the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him
an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this
or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages
to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also
to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing,
with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess
and conform to it;[...] that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion
and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty....
-- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson
"We don't live just by ideas. Ideas are part of the mixture of customs and practices,
intuitions and instincts that make human life a conscious activity susceptible to
improvement or debasement. A radical idea may be healthy as a provocation;
a temperate idea may be stultifying. It depends on the circumstances. One of the most
tiresome arguments against ideas is that their 'tendency' is to some dire condition --
to totalitarianism, or to moral relativism, or to a war of all against all."
-- Louis Menand
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
-- Dante Alighieri
"He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers."
-- Henry B. Adams
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the
poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge."
-- Anatole France
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
-- Edmund Burke
"Education does not mean that we have become certified experts in business or mining or botany or journalism or epistemology;
it means that through the absorption of the moral, intellectual, and esthetic inheritance of the race we have come to
understand and control ourselves as well as the external world; that we have chosen the best as our associates both in spirit
and the flesh; that we have learned to add courtesy to culture, wisdom to knowledge, and forgiveness to understanding."
-- Will Durant
"Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is
but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest
winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?"
-- Herman Melville
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"It is an error to suppose that books have no influence; it is a slow influence, like flowing water carving out a canyon,
but it tells more and more with every year; and no one can pass an hour a day in the society of sages and heroes without
being lifted up a notch or two by the company he has kept."
-- Will Durant
"When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music."
-- Louis Menand
"Sex is a continuum."
-- Gore Vidal
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802.
"The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible,
and in many things leave one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters, and
man suffers from this almost congenital disease that he will not give in when once a controversy is started, and
after he is heated he regards as absolutely true that which he began to sponsor quite casually...."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must disbelieve?"
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller, 1814
"We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort,
are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true,
the 'objectively' line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore 'Trotskyism is Fascism'. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated.
This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions."
-- George Orwell, "As I Please," Tribune, 8 December 1944
"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn-on?"
-- "Aaron Altman," Broadcast News
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
-- Lewis Thomas
"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?"
-- Cicero
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."
-- Samuel Johnson, Life Of Johnson
"Very well, what did my critics say in attacking my character? I must read out their affidavit, so to speak, as though they were my legal accusers: Socrates is guilty of criminal meddling, in that he inquires into things below the earth and in the sky, and makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger, and teaches others to follow his example."
-- Socrates, via Plato, The Republic
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The term, then, is obviously a relative one; my pedantry is your scholarship, his reasonable accuracy, her irreducible minimum of education, & someone else's ignorance."
-- H. W. Fowler
"Rules exist for good reasons, and in any art form the beginner must learn them and understand what they are for, then follow them for quite a while. A visual artist, pianist, dancer, fiction writer, all beginning artists are in the same boat here: learn the rules, understand them, follow them. It's called an apprenticeship. A mediocre artist never stops following the rules, slavishly follows guidelines, and seldom rises above mediocrity. An accomplished artist internalizes the rules to the point where they don't have to be consciously considered. After you've put in the time it takes to learn to swim, you never stop to think: now I move my arm, kick, raise my head, breathe. You just do it. The accomplished artist knows what the rules mean, how to use them, dodge them, ignore them altogether, or break them. This may be a wholly unconscious process of assimilation, one never articulated, but it has taken place."
-- Kate Wilhelm
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed."
-- Albert Einstein
"The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual."
-- Franz Kafka, Aphorisms
"All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
-- Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho
"First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you."
-- Nicholas Klein, May, 1919, to the Third Biennial Convention of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (misattributed to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 1914 & variants).
"Nothing would be done at all, if a man waited till he could do it so well, that no one could find fault with it."
-- Lecture IX, John Henry Cardinal Newman
“Nothing is more common than for men to think that because they are familiar with words they understand the ideas they stand for.”
-- John Henry Cardinal Newman
"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
-- James Madison
"Our credulity is a part of the imperfection of our natures. It is inherent in us to desire to generalize, when we ought, on the contrary, to guard ourselves very carefully from this tendency."
-- Napoleon I of France.
"The truth is, men are very hard to know, and yet, not to be deceived, we must judge them by their present actions, but for the present only."
-- Napoleon I of France.
"The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know."
-- On the subject of torture, in a letter to Louis Alexandre Berthier (11 November 1798), published in Correspondance Napoleon edited by Henri Plon (1861), Vol. V, No. 3606, p. 128
"All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible."
-- George Santayana, Dialogues in Limbo (1926)
"American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism."
-- George Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States, (1920)
"If you should put even a little on a little, and should do this often, soon this too would become big."
-- Hesiod, Work And Days
"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
-- Eugene V. Debs
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
"All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written "al-Qaida," in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies."
-- Osama bin Laden
"Remember, Robin: evil is a pretty bad thing."
-- Batman
Gary Farber is now a licensed Quintuple Super-Sekrit Multi-dimensional Master Pundit.
He does not always refer to himself in the third person.
He is presently single.
The gefilte fish is dead. Donate via the donation button on the top left or I'll shoot this cutepanda. Don't you lovepandas?
Current Total # of Donations Since 2002: 1181
Subscribers to date at $5/month: 100 sign-ups; 91 cancellations; Total= 9
Supporter subscribers to date at $25/month: 16 sign-ups; 10 cancellation; Total= 6
Patron subscribers to date at $50/month: 20 sign-ups; 13 cancellations; Total= 7
...writer[s] I find myself checking out repeatedly when I'm in the mood to play follow-the-links. They're not all people I agree with all the time, or even most of the time, but I've found them all to be thoughtful writers, and that's the important thing, or should be.
-- Tom Tomorrow
"Gary Farber is a gentleman, a scholar and one of the gems of the blogosphere."
-- Steve Hynd, Newshoggers.com
"Well argued, Gary. I hadn't seen anything that went into as much detail as I found in your blog."
-- Gareth Porter
Gary Farber is your one-man internet as always, with posts on every article there is.
-- Fafnir
Guessing that Gary is ignorant of anything that has ever been written down is, in my experience, unwise.
Just saying.
-- Hilzoy
I read Amygdala...with regularity, as do all sensible websurfers.
-- Jim Henley, Unqualified Offerings
Okay, he is annoying, but he still posts a lot of good stuff.
-- Avedon Carol, The Sideshow
Amygdala - So much stuff it reminds Unqualified Offerings that UO sometimes thinks of Gary Farber as "the liberal Instapundit." -- Jim Henley
...the thoughtful and highly intelligent Gary Farber... My first reaction was that I definitely need to appease Gary Farber of Amygdala, one of the geniuses of our age.
-- Brad deLong
Gary is a perceptive, intelligent, nice guy. Some of the stuff he comes up with is insightful, witty, and stimulating. And sometimes he manages to make me groan.
-- Charlie Stross
I bow before the shrillitudinousness of Gary Farber, who has been blogging like a fiend.
-- Ted Barlow, Crooked Timber
Favorite.... [...] ...all great stuff. [...] Gary Farber should never be without readers.
-- Ogged
I usually read you and Patrick several times a day, and I always get something from them. You've got great links, intellectually honest commentary, and a sense of humor. What's not to like?
-- Ted Barlow
One of my issues with many poli-blogs is the dickhead tone so many bloggers affect to express their sense of righteous indignation. Gary Farber's thoughtful leftie takes on the world stand in sharp contrast with the usual rhetorical bullying. Plus, he likes "Pogo," which clearly attests to his unassaultable good taste.
-- oakhaus.com
The only trouble with reading Amygdala is that it makes me feel like such a slacker. That Man Farber's a linking, posting, commenting machine, I tell you!
-- John Robinson, Sore Eyes
Jaysus. I saw him do something like this before, on a thread about Israel. It was pretty brutal. It's like watching one of those old WWF wrestlers grab an opponent's
face and grind away until the guy starts crying. I mean that in a nice & admiring way, you know.
-- Fontana Labs, Unfogged
We read you Gary Farber! We read you all the time! Its just that we are lazy with our blogroll. We are so very very lazy. We are always the last ones to the party but we always have snazzy bow ties.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber you are a genius of mad scientist proportions. I will bet there are like huge brains growin in jars all over your house.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber is the hardest working man in show blog business. He's like a young Gene Hackman blogging with his hair on fire, or something.
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
Gary Farber only has two blogging modes: not at all, and 20 billion interesting posts a day [...] someone on the interweb whose opinions I can trust....
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
Isn't Gary a cracking blogger, apropos of nothing in particular?
-- Alison Scott
Gary Farber takes me to task, in a way befitting the gentleman he is.
-- Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
My friend Gary Farber at Amygdala is the sort of liberal for whom I happily give three cheers. [...] Damned incisive blogging....
-- Midwest Conservative Journal
If I ever start a paper, Clueless writes the foreign affairs column, Layne handles the city beat, Welch has the roving-reporter job, Tom Tomorrow runs the comic section (which carries Treacher, of course). MediaMinded runs the slots - that's the type of editor I want as the last line of defense. InstantMan runs the edit page - and you can forget about your Ivins and Wills and Friedmans and Teepens on the edit page - it's all Blair, VodkaP, C. Johnson, Aspara, Farber, Galt, and a dozen other worthies, with Justin 'I am smoking in such a provocative fashion' Raimondo tossed in for balance and comic relief.
Who wouldn't buy that paper? Who wouldn't want to read it? Who wouldn't climb over their mother to be in it?
-- James Lileks
I do appreciate your role and the role of Amygdala as a pioneering effort in the integration of fanwriters with social conscience into the larger blogosphere of social conscience.
-- Lenny Bailes
Every single post in that part of Amygdala visible on my screen is either funny or bracing or important. Is it always like this? -- Natalie Solent
People I've known and still miss include Isaac Asimov, rich brown, Charles Burbee, F. M. "Buzz" Busby, Terry Carr, A. Vincent Clarke, Bob Doyle, George Alec Effinger, Abi Frost,
Bill & Sherry Fesselmeyer, George Flynn, John Milo "Mike" Ford. John Foyster, Mike Glicksohn, Jay Haldeman, Neith Hammond (Asenath Katrina Hammond)/DominEditrix , Chuch Harris, Mike Hinge, Lee Hoffman, Terry Hughes, Damon Knight, Ross Pavlac, Bruce Pelz, Elmer Perdue, Tom Perry,
Larry Propp, Bill Rotsler, Art Saha, Bob Shaw, Martin Smith, Harry Stubbs, Bob Tucker, Harry Warner, Jr., Jack Williamson, Walter A. Willis, Susan Wood, Kate Worley, and Roger Zelazny.
It's just a start, it only gets longer, many are unintentionally left out.
And She of whom I must write someday.
MORE SITH HAPPENS. More dropped lines, this from Anakin and Obi-Wan discussing the Jedi Council's assignment that Anakin report on the Chancellor:
OBI-WAN: Anakin, regardless of how it happened, you find yourself in a delicate situation.
ANAKIN: You mean divided loyalties.
OBI-WAN: I warned you there was tension between the Council and the Chancellor. I was very clear. Why didn't you listen? You walked right into it.
ANAKIN: The Council is upset I'm the youngest to ever serve.
OBI-WAN: No, it is not. Anakin, I worry when you speak of jealousy and pride. Those are not Jedi thoughts. They're dangerous, dark thoughts.
ANAKIN: Master, you of all people should have confidence in my abilities. I know where my loyalties lie.
OBI-WAN: I hope so . . .
ANAKIN: I sense there's more to this talk than you're saying.
OBI-WAN: Anakin, the only reason the Council has approved your appointment is because the Chancellor trusts you.
Nothing major there, but a bit more establishing Anakin's indecisive tension at this point.
I was slightly amused that we don't see the same shots in the film as those in the commericals and trailers wherein this takes place:
MACE: It's very dangerous, putting them together. I don't think the boy can handle it. I don't trust him.
It's common for shots in commercials/trailers to not be the same in the film, but I'm always trivially amused. I'm not sure, but I think Mace's first line there is a variation, too.
ANAKIN: (growing angry) Don't ask me to do that, Padme. Make a motion in the Senate, where that kind of a request belongs. I'm not your errand boy. I'm not anyone's errand boy!
I may be wrong, but I think the "errand boy" lines were dropped. The irony, of course, is that he winds up nothing but Darth Sidious's errand boy.
ANAKIN: The Jedi are selfless . . . they only care about others.
PALPATINE smiles.
PALPATINE: Or so you've been trained to believe. Why is it, then, that they have asked you to do something you feel is wrong?
ANAKIN: I'm not sure it's wrong.
PALPATINE: Have they asked you to betray the Jedi code? The Constitution? A friendship? Your own values? Think. Consider their motives. Keep your mind clear of assumptions. The fear of losing power is a weakness of both the Jedi and the Sith.
A few of those lines were also dropped. Darth Plagueis, incidentally, was Darth Sidious's master, and Sidious the apprentice who killed him, which, naturally, he omits telling Anakin.
A few lines from this Jedi Council meeting were cut:
MACE: Given our resources, I recommend we send only one Jedi . . . Master Kenobi.
ANAKIN: He was not so successful the last time he met Grievous.
OBI-WAN throws ANAKIN a dirty look.
ANAKIN: (continuing) No offense, my Master, but I'm only stating a fact.
OBI-WAN: Oh no, you're quite right, but I do have the most experience with his ways of combat.
YODA: Obi-Wan, my choice is.
This faintly foreshadows the furthering of tension between the two.
There's a long scene where Obi-Wan visits Padme; I didn't see it, but that might have been the minute I had to duck out to the bathroom. Left in was a later line where Anakin tells Padme he thinks Obi-Wan had been there, and she acknowledges it. Was the following scene 94 in the film?
PADME: Several times . . . I was so happy to hear he was accepted on the Jedi Council.
OBI-WAN: I know ... he deserves it. He is impatient, strong willed, very opinionated, but truly gifted.
They laugh.
PADME: You're not just here to say hello. Something is wrong, isn't it?
OBI-WAN: You should be a Jedi, Padme.
PADME: You're not very good at hiding your feelings.
OBI-WAN: It's Anakin . . . He's becoming moody and detached. He's been put in a difficult position as the Chancellor's representative . . . but I think it's more than that. I was hoping he may have talked to you.
PADME: Why would he talk to me about his work?
OBI-WAN studies her.
OBI-WAN: Neither of you is very good at hiding your feelings either.
PADME: Don't give me that look.
OBI-WAN: I know how he feels about you.
PADME: (nervous) What did he say?
OBI-WAN: Nothing. He didn't have to.
PADME is a little flustered. She stands and Obi-Wan follows. She walks to the balcony.
PADME: I don't know what you're talking about.
OBI-WAN: I know you both too well. I can see you two are in love. Padme, I'm worried about him.
PADME looks down and doesn't answer.
OBI-WAN: (continuing) I fear your relationship has confused him. He's changed considerably since we returned . . .
They stand on the balcony and look off at the early morning city. OBI-WAN starts to leave. PADME stays looking off into the distant city.
OBI-WAN: (continuing) Padme, I'm not telling the Council about any of this. I ... I hope I didn't upset you. We're all friends, I care about both of you . . .
PADME: Thank you, Obi-Wan.
OBI-WAN: Please do what you can to help him.
Scene 95 was, I think, also dropped, another of those Potential Rebel Establishing Scenes:
95 INT. CORUSCANT-PADME'S APARTMENT-DAY
PADME, MON MOTHMA, and five other Senators (BANA BREEMU, FANG ZAR. CHI EEKWAY, GIDDEAN DANU, BAIL ORGANA) sit in Padme's living room. C-3PO serves drinks to the guests.
PADME: We cannot let this turn into another war.
BAIL ORGANA: Absolutely, that is the last thing we want.
MON MOTHMA: We are hoping to form an alliance in the Senate to stop the Chancellor from further subverting the constitution, that's all.
PADME: I know a Jedi I feel it would be wise to consult.
BANA BREEMU: That would be dangerous.
MON MOTHMA: We don't know where the Jedi stand in all this.
PADME: I only wish to discuss this with one . . . one I trust.
GiDDEAN DANU: Going against the Chancellor without the support of the Jedi is risky.
PADME: The Jedi aren't any happier with the situation than we are . . .
CHI EEKWAY: Patience, Senator.
FANG ZAR: We have so many Senators on our side, surely that will pursuade the Chancellor.
BANA BREEMU: When you present the "petition of the two thousand" to the Chancellor, things may change.
BAIL ORGANA: Let us see what we can accomplish in the Senate, before we include the Jedi.
PADME takes a deep breath in frustration and disappointment.
Again, I think leaving this out hurts.
The whole storyline about clone "Commander Cody," General Kenobi's longtime friend and second-in-command, making his betrayal far more dramatic and personal, pretty much fell out of the film.
98 INT. REPUBLIC BATTLE CRUISER-HANGAR-SPACE
CLONE TROOPERS stand at attention in rows on the floor of the hangar deck, waiting to board landing craft. OBI-WAN stands next to his BLUE JEDI FIGHTER- talking to SEVERAL CLONE COMMANDERS with their helmets off. A hologram of the planet Utapau is projected by R4-G9 into the middle of the hangar.
CLONE COMMANDER CODY: Fortunately, most of the cities are concentrated on this small continent here . . . on the far side.
OBI-WAN: I'll keep them distracted until you get there. Just don't take too long.
CLONE COMMANDER CODY: Come on, boss, when have I ever let you down?
They laugh.
OBI-WAN: (laughing) Cato Nemoidia . . . for starters.
OBI-WAN climbs into his Jedi Fighter.
CLONE COMMANDER CODY: That was Anakin who was late. I believe.
OBI-WAN: Very well, the burden is on me not to destroy all the droids before you get there.
CLONE COMMANDER CODY: I'm counting on you.
Cody is still there, but with only about three lines, and his finding and returning Obi-wan's light saber, on Otapu.
No one will miss Jar-Jar's other (non) appearance in the film, but missing this additional bit of Palpatine sowing doubt in Anakin's mind is a small loss:
They enter the main hallway of the Senate Office Building. They pass SEVERAL SENATORS, including REPRESENTATIVE JAR JAR BINKS from Naboo.
JAR JAR: Helloo Annie. Good en to see yousa . . .
The Gungan waves to Anakin.
ANAKIN: Hi, Jar Jar.
JAR JAR: Oopsin da Chancellor!! So sorry, Your Highness, sir.
Anakin turns back to the Chancellor.
PALPATINE: There are rumors in the Senate about Master Kenobi. Many believe he is not fit for this assignment.
ANAKIN: Not fit? Why would anyone think that?
PALPATINE: They say his mind has become fogged by the influence of a certain female Senator.
ANAKIN: That's ridiculous. Who?!?
PALPATINE: (slyly) No one knows who she is ... only that she is a Senator.
ANAKIN: That's impossible. I would know.
PALPATINE: Sometimes the closest are the ones who cannot see.
ANAKIN becomes worried.
PALPATINE: (continuing) Idle Senate gossip is rarely true and never accurate. I'm sure your Master will do fine.
Palpatine has a nice way of establishing the resulting thoughts he wants in someone's mind by saying the opposite. This also gave Anakin some at least faintly quasi-rational basis for his jealous suspicion of Obi-Wan and Padme in the final battle scenes, and without it, his jealousy seems completely insane.
Scene 109, where Obi-wan chooses his riding dragon on Otapu is no great loss (and it's more dropped Force Suggestion, which perhaps they felt was getting a bit tired as amusing -- although you can never have too much Force suggestion! ("I can never have too much Force suggestion"), but here it is:
109 INT. UTAPAU-CITY-DRAGON CORRAL-DAY
OBI-WAN makes his way through the city, looking up at the tenth level with electro-binoculars from his utility belt. He tries to figure out how he is going to get up there. He hears strange bellowing cries and he investigates. He comes across a corral filled with about half a dozen DRAGON-LIKE LIZARDS. SEVERAL WRANGLERS are standing around. OBI-WAN walks up to the WRANGLERS and uses the Force with his slight hand movements.
OBI-WAN: I need transportation.
WRANGLER: (subtitled, in native tongue) You need transportation.
OBI-WAN: Get it for me.
WRANGLER: (subtitled, in native tongue) I will get it for you.
One of the WRANGLERS turns to the others and chatters away in his strange tongue. OBI-WAN walks along the line of DRAGON/LIZARDS, checking out each one. He looks at their teeth, legs, etc. Finally he pats one on the neck.
OBI-WAN: This one.
The WRANGLER brings the chosen one over to him.
WRANGLER: Boga. She answers to Boga.
OBI-WAN: Good girl, Boga.
OBI-WAN swings onto the back of the LIZARD. The beast rears up and scurries outside to the edge of the sinkhole.
Notice, of course, the consistent motif of the bad guys in the first trilogy using droid transportation while Jedi repeatedly ride animals they use the Force to commune with.
More minor cuts:
GENERAL GRIEVOUS: It won't be long before the armies of the Republic track us here. I am sending you to the Mustafar system in the Outer Rim. It is a volcanic planet which generates a great deal of scanning interference. You will be safe there.
Maybe I missed it, but I think the part about the "scanning interference," which explains why they're being sent there, theoretically, was dropped.
GENERAL GRIEVOUS: General Kenobi, you are a bold one. I find your behavior bewildering . . . Surely you realize you're doomed, (to droids) Kill him!
I seem to recall the film going from "bold one" directly to "kill him!"
This response of Obi-wan's was dropped:
GENERAL GRIEVOUS: You fool. I have been trained in your Jedi arts by Count Dooku himself. Attack, Kenobi.
His arms separate and grab all four lightsabers on his belt. His four arms create a flashing display of swordsmanship.
OBI-WAN: You forget I trained the Jedi that defeated Count Dooku!
I suspect it might be because Grievous could have logically responded to the effect that, yeah, and Count Dooku beat the crap out of you twice.
This following, Scene 116, again dealing with the political thread, I miss:
116 INT. CORUSCANT-CHANCELLOR'S OFFICE-SUNSET
PALPATINE listens to a delegation from the Senate, which includes PADME and five other Senators: NEE ALAVAR, FANG ZAR, MALEDEE, SWEITT CONCORKILL, and MON CALAMARI. ANAKIN stands to one side of PALPATINE.
PALPATINE: I understand your reservations completely, Senator, and I assure you the appointment of Governors will in no way compete with the duties of the Senate.
PADME: May I take it then, that there will be no further amendments to the Constitution?
PALPATINE: I want this terrible conflict to end as much as you do, My Lady, and when it does I guarantee an immediate return to democracy . . .
PADME: You are pursuing a diplomatic solution to the war, then.
PALPATINE: You must trust me to do the right things, Senator. That is why I am here.
FANGZAR: But surely . . .
The Chancellor turns on FANG ZAR.
PALPATINE: I have said I will do what is right, that should be enough for your . . . committee.
PADME: On behalf of the "delegation of two thousand," I thank you, Chancellor.
PALPATINE: I thank you for bringing this to my attention, Senator.
PADME gives ANAKIN a frustrated look, then turns and exits with the other FIVE SENATORS. PALPATINE turns to ANAKIN.
PALPATINE: (continuing) Their sincerity is to be admired, although I sense there is more to their request than they are telling us.
ANAKIN: What do you mean?
PALPATINE: They are not to be trusted.
ANAKIN: Surely Senator Amidala can be trusted . . .
PALPATINE: These are unstable times for the Republic, Anakin. Some see instability as an opportunity. Senator Amidala is hiding something. I can see it in her eyes.
ANAKIN: I'm sure you're mistaken.
PALPATINE: I'm surprised your Jedi insights are not more sensitive to such things.
ANAKIN: I simply don't sense betrayal in Senator Amidala.
PALPATINE studies ANAKIN carefully and gives him a skeptical look.
PALPATINE: Yes, you do, but you don't seem to want to admit it. There is much conflict in you, Anakin.
Since the scene further establishing Anakin and Padme's political differences, and all the other political scenes, for the most part, were cut, it's consistent to drop this as well, but still. (Mon Calamari, you may or may not recall, aside from sounding like a nice Italian seafood dish, was the military commander of the Rebels as seen in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, while Mon Mothma was the political leader.)
I'd like to direct everyone's attention to the request in the left sidebar that people please not post comments anonymously? I can't tell, for instance, if the above two comments are by the same, or different people, and that kinda bugs me. Thanks for choosing a handle in future, please.
Anon, you're quite right that Mon Calamari are the race, and Admiral Ackbar whom I was thinking of, and I confused the two momentarily; thank you for the correction.
Well, there are stormtroopers on dewbacks in the special edition of A New Hope. Then of course Han also rides a Tauntaun. Does Yoda being carried by Luke count? No? Oh, okay.
Post a Comment