Episode 109: The Prescience of Bob Roberts

In 1992, the film Bob Roberts was released. And I have no memory of it! It was written and directed by Tim Robbins and he stars in the titular role.

It does what I think a good satire should, i.e., it provides a combination of funny, clever, and downright chilling material.

It's difficult to find but well worth it. Gore Vidal's character, Senator Brickley Paiste, and Giancarlo Esposito's character, John Alijah "Bugs" Raplin, tell you the way America really works. 

⚠️ Spoilers ahead.

Links: 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103850/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTINF7JjxkE

https://consaracytheories.com/blog/f/no-one-is-thinking-about-nasser

****

My award-winning biography of Dag is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Unicorn-New-Look-Hammarskj%C3%B6ld-ebook/dp/B0DSCS5PZT

My forthcoming project, Simply Dag, will be available in hardback, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats on July 29th! 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Sara Causey discusses the 1992 film Bob Roberts, a satirical mockumentary about a right-wing political candidate played by Tim Robbins. The film, which is difficult to find, is described as a political satire that blends documentary and fictional elements. Causey emphasizes the importance of owning physical media due to potential censorship and highlights the film's critique of the media, political campaigns, and the influence of wealth. The narrative follows Bob Roberts' rise to political prominence, his anti-drug stance, and the scandal surrounding his campaign. The film's climax involves a sh00ting incident, raising questions about the nature of truth and media manipulation.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Bob Roberts, political satire, Tim Robbins, mockumentary, conspiracy theories, DVD, streaming platforms, hard copies, Gen X, counterculture, Iran Contra, Broken Dove, campaign scandal, media manipulation, secret government.

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I want to talk about the film Bob Roberts. If you've never heard of it, relax. You're in good company, because I had never heard of it either. It came out in 1992 and for the life of me, I don't remember seeing or hearing anything about it. It's like it just boop blipped right off the radar. I was thinking, like, Did I see it? Maybe in the in the movie theater? Could there have been a trailer? Or did I ever even see a commercial on TV? I don't think I did. And I went to the movies fairly often with my friends, and I don't remember seeing or hearing anything about it. You may have to dig around online. To my knowledge, it's not available on any of the streaming platforms, and after I watched it, I realized why it isn't so you may have to do some digging, some strategic digging online, to find somebody that has a copy, or you might just have to purchase the DVD, which, to be honest with you, is not a bad idea. I know that this is going to definitely sound a little bit Woo, woo, even, even amongst some of the conspiracy theory enthusiasts in the audience, but the reality is, have hard copies, whether it's a book, a piece of music, an album, a print of artwork, a film, whatever. Have your own hard copy and don't rely on streaming. Because it definitely seems to me that the younger generations are getting so conditioned just rent it, just stream it. There's no need to own anything anymore, which is not by coincidence, right? You've not sing, and you would be happy. But for those of us in the older generations, it's like, no, you need to have your own copy, because you never know if it could be taken down, if it could be canceled, if it could be banned, if it could be censored, and you want to have your own stuff, that's like, I'm going to totally sound like an old man, like shaking his cane in the air. But back in my day, but seriously, back in my day, we had mix tapes. You put your cassette in the boom box and you recorded songs off the radio. I mean, for us, in Gen X, music was a huge part of how we related to pop culture. We didn't have the internet or social media, so it was like listening to the radio was a big thing to do, playing your cassette tapes, and then whenever CDs came out, playing your CDs, listening to the Walkman, and then the disc man, which skipped all the time, basically whenever it first came out. That's what we did, and it would be a total pain in the ass if the DJ talked over the beginning of the song or cut the song off too fast at the end. It's like, man, and you're ruining my mix tape, dude, but that's what we did. And so to me, like, there's still a real value in having your own hard copy. So if there's a movie that you think at some point this is just going to be disappeared, and they're going to try to do like the mandala effect, and tell us that it was never part of the culture, like nobody ever did this movie. Like these are not the drones you're looking for. Like, if somebody tries to brainwash you later, like, I literally fucking have the DVD. I know that it exists. So if this sounds like a film that you would like and you want to check it out, it might not be the worst of ideas to spend a few bucks on online to get a DVD copy of it. It's done in kind of a documentary, mockumentary style. It is political satire, tongue in cheek, and there were so many things that I liked about it. It does so many of the right things that I think satire should do. It's biting, it's funny, but at the same time, there are parts of it that are downright chilling. It was written, directed, and then also stars Tim Robbins, which that hits another dream for me, like I don't have any desire to star in anything myself. I'm in my 40s, like I'm not interested in trying to get my face all Botox up and look perfect for a camera. No, I mean, I do for for photographs and things like that for promotional purposes and just for artistry, but to star in a movie, hell no. But the idea of writing and directing something appeals to me tremendously. And I really don't even mean a movie. I mean, like, there was that movie sudden fear, where Joan Crawford plays a playwright who directs and casts her own stuff. And I'm like, oh, that's the dream. I would love to be able to have my plays make it to a stage where I'm the director. I do the casting, I decide who gets the parts, and then I get to nitpick and kind of be a Frazier crane about the delivery, so that whenever it's performed on stage, I know that it's authentic to what I was seeing in my head. So it's like Tim Robbins gets to. Do that because he's written the screenplay, he directs the movie, and then he also stars as the titular character, Robert Bob Roberts Jr, who's this right wing politician that becomes a candidate for US Senate. And normally, I would say, watch it for yourself and make up your own mind. And I still want to do that here. If you can find a copy of it. Please do watch it for yourself, but you may not be able to find a copy of it ahead of time before you download this episode, it is what it is. There will be spoilers here. I hate to do it if you haven't seen it, but again, when something is super difficult to find, it is what it is, nevertheless, saddle up. Choose your frosty beverage of choice, and we will take this very interesting ride.

Just a reminder, Sara's award winning biography of Dag Hammarskjold, Decoding the Unicorn, is available on Amazon. Her next nonfiction project, Simply Dag, will release on July 29th to learn more about her other works, please visit SaraCausey.com. Now back to the show.

As I mentioned in the introduction, Bob Roberts is done in a satirical, fake documentary, mockumentary kind of way, and there are scenes that bear similarities to the 1967 documentary film, don't look back, which was directed by Pennebaker, and it covers Bob Dylan's 1965 concert tour in England, except that now it's done for like this Richie, rich political conservative that's running for Senate, which just kind of makes the satire even more pointed. I think this character was a spin off from Saturday Night Live, and even though I pretty faithfully watched SNL all through the 90s. I don't remember it. You can find the sketch online, and I will drop a link to it so you can see it for yourself. But like the skit, opens up with the Mohawk Lodge, and the little sign says, Welcome Young reactionaries for a Better America tonight, we have a book burning and a weenie roast with guest Bob Roberts, and he's this, like folk singing guy that wants to sing about right wing politics. The film begins in the state of Pennsylvania in October of 1990 and we're told that it's a documentary film by this man named Terry Manchester, who's a British documentary filmmaker, and he's going to follow Roberts across the rest of his campaign for this US Senate seat. He comes out on stage with an acoustic guitar, and he's joined by a band, and the house is crowded, and everybody's like clapping their hands, and it's the sort of like Country Jamboree type environment, and he starts singing the song, complain. Some people will work, some people will not, but they'll complain and complain and complain, it's society's fault that I don't have a job. It's everybody else's fault that I'm a slob. Give just give me your your welfare, and let me be. And then everybody's like, in the audience, like, Yeah, this is great. Amidst this overlay of people praising Bob, he's a man of the people. He's amazing. We see footage of Bob and a fencing partner, like, in their fencing outfits and everything, having a fencing duel on the side of the road. Like, like they're on an embankment or something out on the side of the road having a fencing duel by a by a road covered in like a terminal leaves. And you're just like, What even is this? But in a good way, what even is this? In a good way, like, what is happening? We also see a little vignette of Ray Wise, who plays Chet McGregor Roberts campaign manager, like, oh, he just got in this restaurant and just started singing this song, and it was incredible. There's also, like, a smaller part played by Alan Rickman. He plays this man named Lucas Hart the third who is Robert's campaign chairman. And even though his part is small, it winds up being incredibly important to the story, as well as to the overall point that Tim Robbins is trying to make to the audience. We learn that Bob had a debut album three years earlier. We just sort of like appeared on the scene. He's somehow this wealthy, clean cut guy that has also decided, like, in addition to playing the market and being this Gordon Gekko type stockbroker dude, he's just going to drop an acoustic album of country type songs, part of his whole shtick is that he's very anti 1960s counterculture, which is funny in and of itself, Because when we think about Dave McGowan making the argument in weird scenes that the counter culture was engineered anyway, it's like, here we have somebody else that's clearly engineered, that is railing against controlled opposition that was also engineered, I think it just sort of shows us the Ouroboros that we live. In the snake eating its own tail. It's like even the criticism of the criticism is somehow carefully manicured and controlled. So Bob releases a second album as part of his nod to I hate the 60s. He he releases an album called times are changing back, and it has a little like subtitle that says something like what the teacher said, don't vote. Complain, complain, complain and retake America. I guess those were the songs on it. The narrator, who's also the documentarian, says that Spin magazine once called him a crypto fascist clown. In addition to being very anti 1960s he's also very anti drug and that's a key part of his platform, is that all through the 80s, he watched American society be polluted by drugs, and he's going to be tough on crime, tough on drugs, if elected. We also learn that Bob Roberts and this man played by Alan Rickman Lucas Hart the third, have gotten together as part of their, you know, just deep seated upset at the war on drugs not really working yet, they have formed this anti drug charity called Broken dove, and it's like they're going to try to rehabilitate people, get them off drugs and clean up America. He gets up at this obviously staged charity fundraiser at broken dove with a bunch of kids, and he doesn't even like the kids, and the kids are loud and clingy, but hey, it's a photo op. You have to kiss those babies. And he sings this song about, like, what did the teacher tell you today in school? He's he said, prayer is not welcome here and God's not welcome here. Like, okay. I mean, we can, we can pretty rapidly see where this is headed. As Terry takes us back to learn more about who is Bob and where did he come from, we learned that he was born in 1955 on a commune in rural Pennsylvania. His parents say, like, Yeah, we were trying to raise him in a collective environment. This was all pre hippie, but we just thought like, if he was in an environment where everybody had collective responsibility and there was a tight knit community, it would be good. Obviously, that experiment doesn't work out, and they wind up later in his childhood, moving to the city of Philadelphia. He tells his audience that when he was 17, he ran away from home. His grades were slipping. He wasn't happy where he was, and so he ran away, but not to be a freeloader. No, no, no. He didn't do any panhandling. He didn't ask for any handouts. By God. He worked for everything that he got. He saved his money and then he enrolled in a school that would teach him what he wanted to be taught, the kind of school that he wanted to go to. And everybody's applauding and raw, raw. And then his mom comes on is like, well, that's not really true.

Mom comes on and says, Well, he actually stole a check, forged my name, and then enrolled himself in a military college, they flash up a fake newspaper article that is hilarious. It says Robert Roberts Jr, teenager reappears, claims parental abuse. Parents are pot heads. Claims wayward son. He goes on a talk show, like a morning talk show, to talk about his platform. The reporter tells him, before the interview ever even starts, like, I'll do this because it's my job, but I am against everything that you stand for. He gets on there, he's like, Oh, the 60s were a stain. It was a time of immorality, and it was just awful at which I think we certainly can make the argument that the 60s were a stain. I go back to a quote that I read from a member of the silent generation who said that from the time dag was murdered in 1961 until Bobby Kennedy was murdered in 1968 and all of the pop pops in between, he was like, that's it. I don't have a sense of hope anymore. Anybody that stands up and tries to work for peace, and they really have a platform to make change, they'll be killed. That's the end of it. There is no hope. We can certainly say that there were things like that that did leave a stain, left a scar on the national psyche. Is that what Bob is talking about? No, of course not. And the reporter is like, so are you talking about things like Watergate and the invasion of Cambodia and Vietnam War? And he's like, No, I'm talking about people like you. And she's like, what? And he's like people who use drugs and are sexually loose and immoral. We're told that he does well in military school, in fact, so well that he gets selected to go after an MBA at Yale. So it's like, even though we have this guy who is promoting himself as being anti liberal establishment. He winds up getting an MBA from the Ivy Leagues after the interview on the morning talk show, the documentarian interviews the reporter, who's clearly anti Bob Roberts, and she says like he's trying to destroy anything good that came out of the 60s, being able to stand up for your. Right to politically protest being at least trying to be informed about what the government is doing. And she says Bob Roberts is like Nixon, only he's shrewder and more complicated. She also says some very interesting things about how Bob has taken the persona of the free thinking rebel and turned it on its head. And that reminded me a lot of the book, simulacra and simulacrum, which I need to review. I need to sit down and talk about that book. At some point, there was a lady that I went to college with. She was a non traditional student, so she was when we were in our, you know, late teens and early 20s. She was in her early 40s, and I remember talking to her about one of our classmates, because there was this particular girl that, like everybody in the arts department, fawned over, and they just acted like, oh, anything she does is incredible. She's the artist here. It's like nobody else was allowed to be an artist at the school except her. So odd, at least, it was odd to me, but then my friend was like, she's a safe rebel. That's why they love her. She's not going to change anything. She's not going to do anything. She titillates them just enough to make them feel a little excited, but she's not going to actually change the status quo. And it just struck me that I think the French mind understands that concept better sometimes than the American mind, and I think part of it, you know, you can see in simulacra and simulacrum, just the fakery that goes on in society. And so I think she's making a really deep point. It's one of those things where, when you're first watching the movie, it's easy to kind of gloss over that, but she's making an excellent point there. Somebody's taking the concept, the trope of the free thinking Rebel, and then turning it on its head by saying, well, actually, I am the free thinking rebel. I'm totally in favor of the status quo. I'm going to help the corporations and all of the big dogs stay in power. But now that makes me rebellious. She also calls it deviant brilliance, and says that he's a Machiavellian poser, which I think is a pretty good analysis. At the same time as Bob is going out on his concerts and seeing his weird rah rah anthems, there's this reporter played by John Carlo Esposito, named bugs raplin, and he's a journalist who works for something like the troubled times newspaper. The troubled times reports he keeps trying to get a sit down interview with Bob, and Bob just blows him off. Like, yeah, ask my people. Get a permission slip. Look for some time on the calendar. We'll get back to you. He's just giving the guy the brush off. We learned that Bob's tour bus is basically like a rolling stock trading floor on wheels, and there are people on there with, by our standards, now, primitive desktop computers and headsets, making trades at all hours of the day and night. And even though he's going out and singing these folk songs, and then he's coming back to this rolling stock market on wheels. The funny thing is, like, he doesn't hide his desire of wealth. I mean, he goes and sings songs to the public like it's, I'm I'm rich and I'm proud of it. Grand grandma was proud to be rich, and she'll leave me an inheritance. And he's singing all this stuff about being very proud of being rich and being very proud of money. So I think this also adds another dimension to the satire, because it's like he's singing these kind of folksy, Woody Guthrie songs, but they're they're all about money and the status quo and prayer in school and things of that nature. In a clip from a fake news segment, we finally see Senator Brickley paste, who is Bob Roberts opponent, the incumbent senator, and he's played by Gore Vidal, really about as perfectly as I think could be done. I mean, it's an excellent foil for Bob Roberts to have, kind of this older liberal statesman type, played by Gore Vidal. You also see the difference in the way that they campaign, because Brickley pace is out on the campaign trail, he's like, sampling baked goods at a baked sale and doing a ribbon cutting. And then you have Bob Roberts with the louder rallies and the music and more more hooping and hollering. So there's also a sense, I think, of like the incumbent is more of the old guard, and then this new guy is louder and more raucous. The documentarian asks what Lucas Hart's connection is with Bob Roberts, and he gets shut down immediately, like, oh, well, Lucas just helps from Washington. He's just sort of peripherally involved with the campaign, and there's very much this sense of shut the fuck up, and don't ask that again. Meanwhile, a scandal breaks, oh, isn't it so? And it says senator, paste and teenage girl, paste and TA teenage liaison, and it shows him in a car with this blonde teenager exiting the vehicle. Now he says that it's not what it looks like. Everything is perfectly innocent. It's just been framed by the media as being a sex scandal when it is. Percent, his response is that the photo has been cropped to make it look like it's something guilty. But the girl is a friend of his granddaughter, and his granddaughter was in the backseat, and they were just dropping this girl off at home. There wasn't anything sexual going on, because the granddaughter was in the car, and they were all just talking and giving this other girl a lift home. Another irony that I think is well done here, but it's easy to gloss over, is that Ray wise, the man who's playing the campaign manager, talks about how we're doing really well in economically depressed areas, places where people are having their homes foreclosed upon, the industries have left they can't find a job, Bob's going to do something to help them. And they really see that, and they really support him. Meanwhile, he's walking around in a three piece suit on this stock market on wheels, and you're thinking like, well, the dichotomy is pretty obvious. You know, if you have people living in a rural area, their home has been foreclosed upon, they don't have any money, but yet they're looking to Richie Rich to help them out. I mean, stop me when any of this sounds familiar to you, the documentarian tells us that Bob Roberts was a self made man by the age of 35 and was worth 40 million, at least adjusted for inflation. You can imagine how much more that would be in if the film were made today, and he's asking him about market crashes and like, aren't you worried about the vol volatility of what you're doing? Part of what he's referring to there is Black Monday, which happened in 1987 where there was this severe and so we're told, unexpected stock market crash on Monday, October 19 of 1987 and Bob Roberts is like, No, I was fine. I mean, the slow people were the ones that suffered. You got to be able to read the markets and get out. And he without overtly saying it, he intimates that he was involved in insider trading. Like, well, I got some very good gold plated information, and I got it in enough time to be able to react. So you know, you just have to know the markets, and you have to know whose information you can trust. And it's like, sounds like insider trading as he goes to various campaign events, this reporter bugs keeps following him, keeps trying to get an audience and continues to get the brush off as they are reviewing some campaign posters and TV spots. It's obvious that everybody on the campaign is just a sycophant. It's like, oh yes, Bob, this is great. Yes. Oh the red, white and blue. Oh, perfect. Oh the TV spot, amazing. And it just all looks like generic crap. Doesn't sound like unimpressive. But he's told that the mayor's wife has shown up, and she wants to meet him. She brings her three sons with her, one of whom is a very young Jack Black, I think, possibly in his first real film role. And she's obviously into him, so she's being flirtatious with Bob Roberts. And then the three boys idolize him, and they absolutely have, like, white supremacist INCEL vibes. I'm just gonna say it. It is what it is. I could, I could name some commentators that are popular right now that they remind me of. I won't go there. But just when you, if you see this movie, which I hope you will, you'll, you'll have the same exact thought, I promise. Because it's just like, huh, we just, we love you, Bob. We're just we we started a band, and we play your songs all the time. We just think you're amazing. And so they're, they're a creepy lot, and they show up to throw their support behind Bob. Before they leave, the woman makes a joke, like, Oh, I just love you, and I wish I could vote for you 100 times. And he goes, Well, you could, I think there's a way to do that. And then they all pause, and he's like, Oh, Haha, just kidding. After a few seconds of a backstage prayer, huddle up that seems fake and contrived for the cameras, we then hear the voice of bugs raplin, the journalist who's been trying to get the attention of Bob Roberts to do an interview. And he's talking to the documentarian, and he says, in in order to really understand who Bob Roberts is, you have to first understand Lucas Hart the third. So bug starts explaining to the documentarian the history that he knows about Lucas Hart the third. He says that he's a spook, one of the Langley crowd. He said that he had been living in the shadows for years, but he had been a lieutenant in Vietnam and the Special Forces, and he had worked on the infamous Phoenix program. He transferred to South America, he helped in coups and overthrows, and then he helped to set up this organization called Broken dove. And he starts talking about how transport planes from the US had hands in the Iran Contra affair. And then we see a brief clip of Lucas Hart testifying before Congress for his potential involvement in the Iran Contra affair. As the camera pans out, we see that it's the incumbent senator from Pennsylvania, played by Gore Vidal, the senator brick paste, who's the one that is interrogating Lucas Hart in the Iran Contra hearings before Congress, and he's like asking about his involvement, and of course, he's playing dumb, like well, my planes were only contracted to fly humanitarian supplies into impoverished regions in southern Honduras. I didn't have anything to do with drug trafficking or arms trafficking. Most certainly not. The documentarian reminds bugs that broken dove was investigated and totally exonerated, and bugs replies that the so called investigation was nothing but a sham. Bugs furthermore states that he is going to meet with a contact who can thread the needle between broken dove and a failed savings and loan. We then see a clip of yet another folk song. This time, Bob is standing with some, I guess, amateur beauty queen. It was like she had been nominated Miss broken dove, and they had their own beauty pageant or talent show or something. And so she's standing there singing with him, and they're like, drugs stink. People are bad that do them. People are bad that sell them, string them up from the highest tree, and you're like, Oh my God. Now at this point in the film, we start to hear more from Senator paste, who's played by Gore Vidal, in his position. And you have to remember that this is also amidst the backdrop of poppy Bush's attempt to go after Saddam Hussein, the official dates of the Gulf War, I believe, August 2, 1990 through February 28 of 1991 and I think that this was really in my lifetime, and I'm really trying to think back. I remember when the Berlin Wall came down in 89 and I remember people like high fiving and holding hands and hugging, and for me, it was such a pivotal moment. Now, I've talked before about how I think everybody has their IgY moment, and then later they have their end of the innocence moment. My IgY moment was seeing the Berlin Wall come down in 89 and then my end of the innocence moment was 911 but I think as best as I can remember the first televised war that I ever saw as a Gen Xer was the Gulf War. I do remember seeing CNN showing footage of bombs being dropped in Iraq, and I know that for the boomer generation that would have been Vietnam. Vietnam was really the first televised war where people had a better sense of what was actually happening, and I think that that was one of the factors that kind of turned sentiment against the war, because when you start to see the images of people suffering, and you start asking this question of, What the hell are we even doing over there Anyway, people begin to ask some real questions. But I think the Gulf War really was the first war on television in my generation that I ever remember seeing it and paying any real attention to so amidst this backdrop, we have Bob Roberts being like, well, you know, we hate to use force, but in defense of democracy, we just have to do what we have to do. And then we have Senator paste offering a different perspective. And I want to dive in to what he says, because this is another scene in the movie that if you're just casually watching it, you can gloss over it, but he makes a very important point in the dialog here. So we see this clip of Senator paced saying that he's totally opposed to a war in the Middle East, and then it's basically the enemy of the Month Club. So it's like today, Saddam Hussein is considered to be the most evil man since Adolf Hitler. But before that, it was Noriega, and he was the most evil man. And then before that, it was Gaddafi, and then it was Castro. And he starts talking about how these figures are thrown out by the White House and the media as being great monsters as bad or worse than Hitler, and you have to increase your military budget, and you have to invade these other countries, and you have to blow up the land, because if you don't, it's like the appeasement at Munich. It's just like Hitler. It's just like World War Two. So whoever they want for their enemy of the Month Club is who they'll trot out. And as I said, it's a moment in the movie that goes by kind of fast. And so if you're not completely paying a. Attention you can miss exactly how important that is, because it's true, in my opinion. Let's come up with an enemy of the month. Let's talk about how some people are oppressed and we want to go help them for humanitarian reasons. Wink, but really we're after and then insert whatever here, oil, natural resources, money, some strategic location for a military base, etc. When is it really about humanitarian aid? I also think it's important to note that Uncle Sam can be in bed with some particular dictator or some particular regime one day, and then the next. It's like, oh, well, there, there is evil as Hitler, we have, they have to be gotten rid of. They have to be toppled because they're evil. And it's like, well, they weren't evil last year when, when we were in bed with them. So what has really changed? The documentarian asks one of the campaign workers who's on this, like rolling stock market tour bus thing. He's like, Well, how do we know that a war in the Middle East wouldn't turn into another war in Vietnam, some endless thing that drags on and on with no clear purpose, and a guy just gets this really smart alecky look on his face, and he's like, how do I know? Because a little bird told me, Well, that's very reassuring, sir. Meanwhile, Bob turns up at a beauty pageant and bugs the reporter ambushes him, and he starts talking about how before broken dove reinvented itself as an anti drug charity organization, it was responsible for transport planes that, in fact, were transporting narcotics. Naturally, Bob denies it, but bugs keeps going and says that the transport planes were purchased with money that was supposed to be for a low income housing development, which instead didn't happen. Furthermore, there was money funneled into this scheme by a West Pennsylvania savings and loan that has become insolvent.

So Bob asks, well, what are you saying? And he's like, I'm saying that you took money meant for low income housing and used it to buy planes to smuggle drugs. May essentially accuse bugs of yellow journalism and slander, and like, we're glad that we've got you on camera in this documentary, because you're making all of these allegations without proof, and this is going to come back to haunt you, not me, because we've been exonerated. And then, as he's being dragged off by one of Bob's handlers, he's like, is it true that you call crack the great equalizer? Are you going around saying privately that you think that the crack epidemic was good because it reduced the African American population. This is what you really think. And of course, Bob is just like, Get out of here and they're hauling him off. But you certainly get the sense that bugs knows exactly what he's talking about. And on that same note, I intend to record an episode at some point about Gary Webb's book, Dark Alliance, the Charlie India, alpha, the Contras and the crack cocaine explosion, because the evidence that Gary Webb found and ultimately paid the price for was that all of these things are connected, and the epidemic didn't happen on accident. It wasn't something that just oops, a daisy, occurred organically. This is another theme that we see right like how Dave McGowan said that the counterculture didn't spring up organically. I would argue, particularly myself, as a victim of that it didn't spring up organically. These Shit happens. Incidents tend not to be a random occurrence of nature. There's a political debate between Bob Roberts and Senator paste and Gore Vidal is trying to make this argument of like politics is about reality. It's not about image. I'm here to talk about the real issues, not flash and pizzazz, which that, in and of itself, is part of the satire, because we all know that that's not true. Politics is very much not about the real issues. It is, in fact, about flash and style and the jazz hands over the over anything that's real after this debate, Roberts and paste are basically neck and neck, because paste is talking about we need to sacrifice, we need to allocate money to deal with things like homelessness and poverty in the country, and Bob Roberts is on the debate like you're getting screwed out of your American dream, and it's because of all of these social welfare programs. We're all just millionaires in the making, if it wasn't for these social welfare programs. And then the public eats that up, so they catch up with pace. The documentarian catches up with pace to ask him what he's thinking post debate, and he says, I. Get vibes from Bob Roberts of a very disturbing sort. I don't really know who he is. I don't have any idea what he's like, and I feel that I'm not supposed to have any idea what he's like. I think he's proved to be a master of pushing these buttons of racism and sexism, and things that get a lot of attention, things that that revolve around the politics of emotion, but I don't think that I'm supposed to actually know who he really is as a person. That's another moment in the movie that's easy to gloss over, but it's, it's poignant, I think, because that's it, you're not supposed to really know if some talking head is trotted out to be the show pony. No, you're not supposed to know who they actually are, where they came from, and what they stand for. As Bob and one of his beauty queens are up on stage singing about lazy people. Let's just give money to the lazy people and throw away our nuclear bombs and try to live with the Arabs and peace and all of his all of his junk. The documentarian is back with bugs, and he talks, he talks about how his source, who he refuses to name, has been able to indeed thread the needle between broken dove and even more scandals that he didn't realize. So the source says that broken dove procured real estate loans under the pretense of building housing for the homeless, and then proceeded to use that money to buy the transport planes for private enterprise and active board members at the time included the businessman Lucas Hart, the third and US senatorial candidate Bob Roberts. So this is kind of like the bump bump bomb moment, where a source has been willing to go on record to say they took this money, embezzled it for or appropriated it. I guess you would say inappropriately. They took it under the pretense of building low income housing, but instead they bought transport planes. He and Lucas Hart, who earlier we learned was a spook from Langley, and used it to transport drugs as part of the Iran Contra affair. Bugs takes what he knows to a television station in Harrisburg, and one of the reporters picks it up and starts talking about how Lucas Hart, the third might be subpoenaed in order to tell what he knows about the defunct savings and loan, and then what happened to the money that was supposed to be used for low income housing. And of course, the reporter is like, this could be a blow for Bob Roberts campaign, which had been seriously picking up steam when the documentarian asks the campaign workers about it, they're like, Oh, this is just a bunch of bunk accuse your enemy of doing what you're doing yourself. It's the pot calling the kettle black. It's all fake. And when the camera pans back, Bob and his fencing partner are doing a fencing match on like this rock wall outside of an Exxon gas station. Hart indeed gets subpoenaed to go before Congress to say what he knows about this failed savings and loan and the accusations. So the Roberts campaign gets pretty negative in their campaigning against paste. That's like they show this ad where paste is asleep at his desk, and they're saying he's going to give your money to welfare recipients. He's going to give jobs to deadbeats that could have been your jobs. He's asleep at the wheel, and they show like a post it note taped to the telephone that says, I heart teens. But part of what makes it so funny is it absolutely looks like a real campaign ad that somebody would have run at about that time. As it gets closer to election day, Bob gets asked to make an appearance on a sketch comedy show, and it's done in kind of the same manner as SNL, or Whose Line Is It Anyway? And he's going to show up and play a song that they had agreed to let him play. But then he decides that instead of doing what he said that he would do, he wants to play a different song. John Cusack has a very small bit part as the host. So again, we're really getting reminiscent of Saturday Night Live, like John Cusack is playing the actor that's going to be the host, and he's like, I thought somebody else was going to be the musical guest tonight. Like, well, they got sick and they had to cancel, so that's why we're bringing Bob on. He's only going to be the musical guest. Like, he's not going to steal any of your thunder. And John is complaining to this guy who's who seems to me to be playing like a stand in for Lauren Michaels, like, I don't want him here. And he's like, Oh, it's It's fine. Don't worry about it. They're trying to just make sure that the show goes off without a hitch. John Cusack's character basically just gets disgusted and walks off and really doesn't even want to be on the same stage as all of this. This is going on, and they're trying to sort out who is going to be where on this SNL parody show. We cut back to an interview with Senator paste, and he's like, he's saying, like, I would not say that being a professional singer is necessarily the best background for being in the legislature of the US, but I think that Bob Roberts has a background where he does have some experience with the Charlie India alpha. And so in that regard, he probably comes better prepared than most people do to the Senate with a knowledge of what the real government of the United States is, and that is the National Security Council, which was created in 1950 by Harry Truman, and the country is governed by the NSC, the Defense Department and the Charlie India alpha, in combination with the weapons manufacturers around the country. So in that regard, it's like Bob Roberts has already had some initiation into the true power of our country. And, okay, that's another moment, because, like, your mind is still thinking about what's going on with this SNL parody, and John Cusack saying he wants to walk off the show. He doesn't even want to be seen with Bob Roberts. And so they slipped this little part in. And it's, it's crafty the way that they've done it, because it could be easily missed, but it's like, in my opinion, Gore Vidal's character, and it's also based on what I read when I was pulling my show notes together for the show, Gore Vidal improvised a fair amount of his dialog and his monologs to the camera, and it's like you're being told, like, there it is. I don't think most sane people could dispute what he's saying there about the decisions that actually get made and who's actually in charge around here, but it's one of those moments where it could be so easily missed, and so if you do check this film out, I hope that you'll pay attention to what he's saying.

John Cusack's character is talking about how we rely on weapons manufacturers to make the big bad bombs, and we're guilty of plenty of things, but hey, you're not going to hear about it, because we also own the news corporations. And Bob is sitting there with his wife and kind of a scowl on his face like he's in complete disagreement. It's like he understands that what John Cusack is saying is true, but he has to keep the mask on and act like, Oh, that is just an affront to my dignity, sir. There's a bit of a scramble. They're trying to figure out, if John Cusack walks off and won't come back and won't host the show, then what can we do? Well, it's live TV. There's expected to be a broadcast tonight. The show must go on. We'll we'll figure it out. So you see a little bit of kind of cheesy sketch comedy going on, and then it's time for Bob to come on as the musical guest and sing, and he tells the audience, I was supposed to sing a song tonight called don't smoke, but instead, since this is live television and I can pretty much do whatever I want to do, I'd rather sing a different message in light of the troubled times that we're Living in, and the cast and the crew are like, oh shit. Like, what is he getting ready to go out there and say? Because we agreed that he would sing a song about don't smoke, meaning, I guess, don't smoke cigarettes, don't smoke crack, don't smoke drugs. And now he there's no telling what he's going to come out there and say, but it's basically just like a campaign, an extended campaign slogan. So the crew gets into an argument with our character. That's like a Lorne Michaels stand in, and one of the crew members gets so pissed off about what's going on that she decides to pull the plug. And so she does, she literally, like, pulls the plug mid performance, so that he can't finish his song, and the show will, in fact, not completely go on. And I really want to take a second just to reflect on the fact that if something like that were to happen, that in and of itself, would be enough publicity, and it would be the kind of thing that it would be surrounded in controversy, and it would get everybody's attention, because it'd be like, Oh my god, were you watching that night they pulled the plug, he started singing, and somebody pulled the plug, and the screen went blank, and then the network had to just scramble on an infomercial. It was so crazy that that would be a story all its own, and it would be something that people would remember. So it would become this memorable part of the Zeit. Guys like, Were you watching the night that Bob Roberts was on and they fucking blew up the TV show rather than let him speak? People can use that kind of publicity to their own advantage. It's like the Hollywood yarn that all publicity is good publicity, even if it seems bad at first, it can somehow be spun around to be good publicity as he's exiting the TV studio or trying to exit the TV studio, there's a little crowd of people gathered. Some of them are applauding and cheering, and some of them have notepads and pins sticking up in the air because they want him to stop and sign autographs. Lucas Hart fresh. From his testifying in front of Congress is also there bugs. The reporter is there, and he's standing behind Bob Roberts trying to yell stuff at him, but he's, you know, he's just ignoring bugs. He's signing autographs and enjoying being around his public all of a sudden, multiple shots ring out. Bob goes down to the ground, and a couple of the campaign workers are around him. All of the other campaign workers, however, immediately swarm the journalist bugs and knock him to the ground. And they're like, this was you. This was you. And even though the campaign workers have gotten bob on the ground and they're screaming, somebody call an ambulance, they very quickly pick him up and carry him out the door. People are screaming, and there's all of this hustling, but there's not blood anywhere. You don't actually see at this point in the movie, any blood anywhere on Bob, on his body or on his clothing. However, a few minutes later, when he is taken to the emergency room, entrance at the hospital, there's blood all over his torso and his shirt. The hospital staff does not allow the documentary film crew to go inside, so instead they start interviewing bystanders outside the hospital to try to get their perspective on what happened. One of the witnesses claimed that he was standing in front of Bob seven or eight shots rang out. He saw multiple Arabic men and tackled one of them to the ground in the middle of these man on the street, style interviews, a policeman shows up, flashes a badge, covers the camera lens partially with his hand, and he's like, I understand that you're filming a documentary. You may have footage that would be useful to our police investigation, and I demand to see it. Jack Black and his brothers, who are the sons of the mayor that look like crazy in cell. Guys are outside the hospital like, oh my god, I swear to Christ. I swear to fuck. I just, oh my god, if he dies, I'm just gonna lose it. I'm gonna go after that guy that got him. Oh my god. There's another man that's walking around with a crucifix that's like, Please, Jesus, please, Jesus. Almost like chanting, automatic, automatic chanting, please, Jesus, please, Jesus, please, Jesus. So it's a crazy scene outside the hospital. We cut to a press conference where we're told by officials that the senatorial candidate Bob Roberts was popped he was on his way out of this studio, when he was popped twice at close range with a 22 caliber boom stick, his condition is listed as critical. Is there a suspect? The media asks, yes, we have a suspect, and he's in custody. We're interrogating him, but I cannot reveal more at this time, bugs is their suspect. There are mobs around the police car, and he is obviously in fear for his life. Meanwhile, the vigils outside the hospital continue. People are singing songs and lighting candles. One of the campaign workers comes out and gives the documentary crew an update, saying he's probably going to pull through, but he will probably also be paralyzed. He may not ever walk again. After this, they hold another press conference as people are wondering exactly what happened, and we see some medical diagrams that are put up on the screen, and they do a great job of making it look very official, very real. So his personal physician says that he's flown in from Philadelphia. He says that he's still in critical condition. One of the bullets has entered the spinal column at the l5 vertebrae. Paralysis has occurred in both of his legs. The media is like, Is there any truth to the rumor that this pop pop attempt was filmed? At that point, the doctor steps aside, and the cops are like, yes, a documentary filmmaker was present at the scene of the crime, and we now have possession of the film of his Pop Pop they ask, does the film identify the pop popper? Well, I don't have any question at this point in time. We're just analyzing it frame by frame. And we'll, we'll let you know. However, there are people involved with the campaign that are like, I was standing right by bugs. And there's no question that it was him. We saw him. I was standing right there. But now these are people involved in the campaign, and, oh yeah, oh yeah. It was in no doubt. In my mind, Lucas Hart gives an impassioned interview saying that this is what happens when you have a liberal agenda in the country. You pump people full of drugs and pipe dreams, and then what happens is that they come after people like Bob Roberts in a pretty hilarious. Serious moment, an absolute fantastic delivery from Alan Rickman. He's like, Well, you can't keep a good man down, and you you can't squash the truth. Bob Roberts is going to bounce back from this, and he's headed straight to Washington. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go pray. It's just the way he does it, knowing what we know is the viewers about his corruption and the stuff that he's into. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go pray perfect bugs is able to find an attorney. The attorney speaks to the press and says that bugs believes that it was all a setup and that the boom stick was planted on him at the time of the pop pop the journalists asked the attorney, and rightfully so. You know, this is not necessarily a terrible question to ask somebody's attorney. They're like, well, if bugs didn't do it, then who did? And he says, well, that's not my responsibility. I'm his defense attorney. It's the cops job to figure out who did it. If somebody planted the boom stick on him. They need to figure out who it was. They also need to figure out who the person was that actually did the pop popping after the Pop Pop attempt. Bob Roberts face is everywhere, including on left leaning periodicals that you would think would be totally against somebody like that. Suddenly, he's a national hero. I'll be back. You can't count me out. I'm gonna bounce back from this. And he's like all over the media and all over TV, conveniently, one week after the Pop Pop attempt, which is also the day before the election, he's going to be released from the hospital and he's going to take a medevac flight to get back to Pennsylvania so that he can be there for Election Day. The documentarians interview his personal physician, and they're like, what's the possibility of his making a recovery? And the doctor says, if he has extensive surgery and keeps up with physical therapy in a couple of years, he might be able to wiggle his toes in four or five, he might be able to walk again. And I'm bringing that up because it's going to be highly relevant. He feels that it would be an absolute miracle if Bob ever walked again. It's not impossible, but it would really be a miracle if it happened. We flash forward now, and the documentarian is sitting with bugs as attorney. He's like because he's in confinement. He can't speak to you himself, but he sent me in his place, and he wants to assert his absolute innocence. Moreover, there's no way that he could have fired the boom stick because he has a restrictive palsy in his right hand. It's just not physically possible that he could have held the boom stick and fired it, let alone fired it multiple times. It's just not possible. Another moment is that bug's attorney says that, let's not forget he was a witness. He was standing there. He says that he saw a boom stick fired twice into the ground, never at Bob Roberts. We learn that any investigation against Lucas Hart has been dropped. At the same time, Bob Roberts is ahead in the polls. We see a little newspaper snippet that Roberts is ahead 51% Senator pace, the incumbent is at 49% the same news broadcast tells us that Saddam Hussein is very close to having nuclear weapons and could have one within a matter of months. On election day, a new album drops called Bob on Bob, and he has a single ironically titled, I want to live. And the video was filmed before the Pop Pop attempt, and it goes to number one on the music charts. As you can probably guess, Bob wins the election, not in a landslide, but he gets enough of the vote to overcome Senator paste, and he becomes the new senator from Pennsylvania. Lucas Hart gets in front of everybody at the rally and is like, we need to just all take a moment bow our heads and pray for the recovery of Senator Bob Roberts, six weeks after the election, Bob's campaign calls the documentarian and says, We want to see the footage of the Pop Pop attempt. And so they transfer the footage to videotape, and they're going to go out there and show it to him at his palatial estate somewhere in a Pennsylvania suburb. And he gets this card from a little girl who's like six or seven years old, and she says it's done in like a heart, like a little homespun thing that a little girl would make. And she says in this card, like, I know it's not Valentine's Day yet, but I hope you be my Valentine. I hope you get better. And he's like, oh, so he's kind of hamming for the cameras, you know? Oh, how sweet. We need to send her a letter back. Say thank you very much. You. Your kind words or helping with my recovery, stay in school, be a good girl and don't do crack because it's a ghetto drug. Here's another moment where you know it is a bit of dialog that goes so fast that if you're not really paying attention, or maybe if you don't have the closed captioning on, you might miss it. I'm just at the age. I know that there are some people that think that it's only millennials and Gen Zers that want to watch everything with the subtitles on I'm an X or and I just cannot fucking help it. We get to a point. I don't know if it's like the aging process or what it is, but it's like, I want to see the shit on the screen. I can't always hear things that are on the TV. And there's times where the actual show will be on like, volume 20, and then the commercials will be on volume 60, and you're like, Ah, I don't need all that, man, but one of the campaign workers is sitting with Bob in the living room, and as they're watching a replay of the Pop Pop attempt, they're continuing to read fan mail, and one of the fan letters says, Make America Great for Christian people and walk again. Make America Great for Christian people and walk again. He also gets plenty of well wishes from companies. One of them is a fortune 500 company that specializes in waste management and genetic engineering. At this little get together, one of the campaign members, Dolores has been drinking quite a lot of champagne. She's slurring her words, and she reads some very odd mail that Bob has received about I hope they get the guy that did it, and I hope he burns in hell, and she's just like laughing, but then it almost looks like she's about to cry, and she runs out of the room. Meanwhile, Bob swears that as he's looking at the replay of the Pop Pop attempt, he swears that he sees a boom stick in bugs. His hand bugs. His attorney reiterates to the media now he's making this information public, that because of the restrictive palsy in bugs's right hand, he couldn't have fired the boom stick. He believes that somebody not only planted the boom stick, but also put bugs' fingerprints on it, because he can't even pick up a fork or a spoon with that hand, let alone handle a boom stick and then fire it. Furthermore, there were no powder burns. There's no residue of any kind on his clothing, on his on his person, or on his clothing, either one. The filmmaker follows Dolores and is like, is it true that you've quit the campaign? Is it true that you're no longer working for him? She says that is true, but it was a mutual decision. We just mutually parted ways. And he says there's been evidence now that bugs did not fire the boom stick. He couldn't have been the Pop Pop. Or do you have anything to say? She gets in her car, burns rubber and leaves bugs is released because there's just not enough evidence to hold him anymore, which that part I feel like is Hollywood magic, because we know that in real life, it wouldn't work that way, that they would never finger a pop popper and then say, Oh well, there was enough exculpatory evidence that we don't even need to do this anymore. Not a chance, absolutely not a chance that that part is is a plot device, really, for the rest of what's going to happen in the movie. Because we know, in reality, once a patsy has been selected, the facts are manipulated to make sure that it seems the Patsy is guilty, no matter what the documentary filmmaker catches up with bugs now that he's back at his apartment, and it's a bit like what Gore Vidal was saying earlier in the movie. It's one of these moments where you really want to pay attention to what he's saying, because there's a lot of depth there. And if you're just casually watching, you may miss some of what he says, But he comments. The truth of this is that the American taxpayers have been paying for covert wars, illegal covert wars waged in countries that we haven't even heard of. In places like Central America, 1000s have died, Chile, Indonesia, Africa. Up until now, Americans paid for these wars every time they did cocaine or crack or heroin or any other illegal drug that was smuggled in by these self proclaimed patriots. But now we have a situation where all Americans will soon pay for the smuggling of drugs in the form of taxes to bail out failed savings and loans companies, snls, that misuse people's funds and provided money to illegal, covert drug smuggling operations. And surprise, we find ourselves with a seemingly insurmountable drug problem. Imagine that

Bob is getting settled in in Washington Lucas. Is pushing his wheelchair. He's like, Oh, it's going to be a new town now, because Bob Roberts is here, and they asked him about bugs being released. And he's like, Well, that's just because we're too soft on crime. But I'm going to make sure, as a senator, that we quit with that nonsense. These criminals are going to get their due, believe me, we cut back now to the documentary documentarian talking to bugs, and bugs is like the reason I ran contra happened is because nobody did anything substantial about Watergate. And the reason Watergate happened is because there were no consequences from the Bay of Pigs. They're all the same operatives. Didn't you notice the foot soldiers in the Bay of Pigs, the plumbers that got busted at Watergate, the Boomstick runners and Iran Contra, they're all the same people. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the connection here, a secret government beyond the control of the people and accountable to no one. The closer we get to discovering that connection, the more Congress turns a blind eye to it. They'll say that they can't talk about it for national security reasons, but the truth lies dormant. They stay blind out of choice, and there becomes a conspiracy of silence. We also cut to Senator paste, or the former senator pace, who has lost the election to Bob Roberts, and he's sitting in his office, waxing philosophical, and he says that he thinks the entire Congress is quite aware of the National Security Council and its powers and its functions and the fact that this is a national security state. It's less and less of a representative one. But you know the story of the frog and the boiling pan. You put the frog into a pot of cold water, because if you throw the frog into boiling water straight away, it'll jump out. But if you put the frog in a pan of cold water and then you slowly heat it to the boiling point, the frog doesn't stir. He doesn't notice it in time. By the end, by the time that he notices what's going on, it's too late and he's dead. And the senator likens that to what's happening to America. It's gradual. It's incremental. By the time that you notice what's happening, it's too late, and there are no Mr. Smith's in Washington. I mean, you have to laugh to not cry, because that's it. Bug says that there's nobody that really cares about the poor, nobody that cares about the average citizen or the disenfranchised. It's just a secret state. It's a secret state slash business liaison that's out of control, and it's so out of control that they're willing to send American soldiers to war to protect their business interests, their money and their business interests, and they don't give a shit. Nearing the end of the movie, Bob holds this kind of banquet luncheon thing as like a Yay, I'm back, and I'm a Senator now, type deal, and he sings a song on stage, and it was really the moment where I started to feel sick, to be honest with you. It kind of gave me a bit of PTSD. I've thought before about doing an episode about the documentary Jesus Camp, because that also gave me severe PTSD, some childhood flashbacks to some shit that I never should have been subjected to. I just don't get into religion very much on this podcast, other than talking about the Satanic Panic, which was something that, if you were alive and well in the 80s, you remember it true crime and Satanic Panic, that kind of thing. But you know, my goal is not to rag on anybody's religion. And the the minute that you start making any episode about religion, you're going to upset your audience. You're going to upset somebody who may very well be sincere. It's not that they're doing anything weird or crazy. They're just practicing their faith, and that's not my goal. I do want to say, for the purposes of this episode, that this was the moment in the film, where I just even now kind of going back through my show notes and thinking about it, it makes my stomach turn, because I was like, oh shit. You know, it's the moment in a satire where it gets too real and it's like a gut punch, like you've been laughing, and you're like, yep, that's totally how it is. That's it. That's it. And then all of a sudden it's like, fuck, like, here's here's where it's going. And this is super creepy to me. So he gets up on stage and he starts singing this song, this world turns its back on God, we must fight to protect him. This world turns its back on God, we must die to join him. And I'm like, Oh, fuck. This is cult shit, man. This is, this is like, Jim Jones drinking the Kool Aid. This is some fucked up shit. We must die to join him. And it reminded me of the documentary Jesus Camp, because there's a lot of apocalyptic stuff that was going. On at that camp where it was like, you know, we're all Christian soldiers. We all have to fight for God. You need to be prepared in your generation to die. You need to be prepared for Armageddon. And these kids are like, crying, and you just think about, like, is that the appropriate thing to be telling a small child, like a young kid that doesn't quite have the mental capacity, they don't they don't know what you're really telling them, yet, they don't know how to cope with that information. They don't have all of the critical thinking that they need about that like That's fucking scary to me. I know how it made me feel as a kid and just thinking back on it as an adult, and then seeing in this film, you know, this political leader saying, the world has turned its back on God, and we must die to join him. It's like, Wait a minute. Now, you can drink that fucking kool aid if you want to, but I will pass that's not the kind of relationship that I have with God, and I'm not interested in in dying to join him right now. No, thank you. There's a subtle moment when Bob is on stage singing this incredibly creepy song. The way that he's positioned is right in front of him. There's a speaker, so he's sitting in his wheelchair, and he has his feet flat on the ground, and there's a speaker in front of him, however, Terry and the film crew, they're able to get a tight shot of his feet, and he's tapping his feet, so the doctor has said it'll be a miracle if he walks again. It will probably take two years for him to even be able to wiggle his toes, and after major surgeries and physical therapy. After four or five years, maybe he could walk, and he's sitting there jamming out to this creepy fucking song, moving his feet, which is our obvious cue that bugs was telling the truth. He wasn't actually popped that day. The whole thing is a ruse.

This song also continues to get creepier and creepier because he starts singing, this world turns its back on God, we must kill to join him. And I'm like, Man, I want to get shit. Like, at that point, it was hard to even finish the movie. I thought wanted to just like, chuck it in the nearest lake and run. I don't like that shit, man. And it really doesn't matter to me if it's political extremism, religious extremism, whatever it is, once you start talking about we need to all die, we need to kill. No, you can miss me with that. No, I'm already late for the door. I don't even want to go there. We cut back now to the documentarian talking to bugs, and he's like, no poll will tell you the truth. Corporations and the big businesses that own the major networks and the newspapers, they're not going to tell you the truth, because it's not in their interest to tell you the truth. It's too dangerous to them. If you want the truth in America, you have to seek it out for yourself. You have to be willing to go looking for it. You have to be vigilant, unrelenting, because they're not just going to give it to you. And He vows that he is still going to get Bob Roberts and expose him. He's not going to use a boom stick. There's not going to be any violence. He's going to do it through exposing Bob and telling the truth about him. Jack Black's character has turned into almost like a Manson follower, like he has in crude letters, B, O, B for Bob, scrawled across his forehead and and he looks maniacal in this interview, and he's with at least one of his brothers, and they are hanging out with a small group of people that have made an encampment outside of the hotel where Bob is staying, and they've pinpointed his room, so they're just outside in the parking lot and on The grass, watching the window of the hotel room and talking to the documentarian, one of the brothers runs up to the other brothers that are hanging out, camped out outside this hotel room, and he's screaming like he's dead. They got him. And Terry Manchester, the documentarian, is like, Who are you talking about? They, they got who? And he's talking about how someone has killed bugs the journalist. Now for me, it becomes believable again, because where it wasn't believable to me that they would allow for exculpatory evidence to really let bugs out of jail, I don't think he would have, if this had happened in real life, he would have never been let out of jail. But where it picks up some steam again, for me is that somebody murders bugs because of, like the Ruby Oswald situation. Like, if they want to make damn sure that a problem is eliminated, that's how they do it. They're not going. Leave anybody who can talk about it that might squeal about this time in Bob's hotel room, you see the silhouette of a man walking, not in a wheelchair, but you see the silhouette of a tall man walking across the room turning the light off. His followers that are camped out, outside or undeterred. They don't care. You hear a radio report that bugs was killed by the member of a right wing group who says that he is just one of many coming to bring a new form of justice to the country. The film ends with Terry, the documentarian, standing inside the Jefferson Memorial. He reads the words I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. And then he stares up at the statue of Thomas Jefferson, and the film ends. I do hope that you will check out Bob Roberts. It takes a little bit of doing to find a copy of it, but it's worth it. It has echoes of things that have happened before and after. I think some of them should be really obvious to you, so there's no need for me to belabor the point. One thing I will bring up is that on July 30 of 2024 I published a blog post on the conserracy theories blog titled, no one is thinking about Nasser because there was something else that happened that same month of that same year. And I was like, this has a familiar refrain to it. I feel like I've heard of this movie before. On October 26 of 1954 there was a Muslim Brotherhood member named Mahmoud Abdel Latif who attempted to pop pop Nasser while he was giving a radio broadcasted speech in Alexandria. So there's panic that's breaking out, but Nasser keeps his cool, and he's like, Well, even if they kill me, as long as I have gotten pride and honor and freedom for you, then it's worth it, and it winds up galvanizing support for him, and it really puts his rivals to the wayside, and then he becomes the undisputed leader of Egypt. So he takes this pop, pop attempt and really uses it to his own benefit. And it's a bit like things that make you say, Hmm, I wonder if that tactic has been applied at other points in time in other countries and with other people, just a little point for you to ponder. I would also add that I think the words of Gore Vidal, and then also the character bugs in this film. It's just another example where you're you're being openly told the way that the system works. And then if you try to say, Well, yeah, that's it. Well, that was just in a film, that was a movie that was a satire, that's not real. That's not how it really works, right? Of course, sure on that note, stay a little bit crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast and share it with others.