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Thursday, Jul 9, 2009
Monty Python's Terry Jones talks about becoming a political writer, the decline of the British press and how Bush and Blair have erased the line between absurdity and horror.
Jan 21, 2005 | Americans may know Terry Jones best as a naked organist and a purveyor of crunchy frog-filled chocolates and "being hit on the head" lessons, but the founding member of the British comedy troupe Monty Python's Flying Circus has plenty of other talents. He directed the films "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," "The Life of Brian" and "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life," among others, and he's written several books on the Middle Ages, with a particular focus on the poet Geoffrey Chaucer (the latest is "Who Murdered Chaucer?: A Medieval Mystery"). And early in 2003, English-language readers worldwide were reminded of just how funny Jones can be when an Op-Ed he wrote for the Observer in London, titled "I'm Losing Patience With My Neighbors, Mr. Bush," was quickly disseminated across the Internet.
In the essay, Jones explains that a couple of his neighbors -- Mr. Johnson and "Mr. Patel, who runs the health food shop" -- have been giving him "funny looks." "As for Mr. Patel," he wrote, "don't ask me how I know, I just know -- from very good sources -- that he is, in reality, a mass murderer." Exasperated with friends and authorities who demand evidence of these crimes "while Mr. Johnson will be finalizing his plans to do terrible things to me, while Mr. Patel will be secretly murdering people," he resolves, using the example of President Bush, to take preemptive action, "since I'm the only one on the street with a decent range of automatic firearms."
"I'm Losing Patience" and other Op-Eds Jones wrote for the Observer and the Guardian have been collected in a new book, "Terry Jones' War on the War on Terror." In them he subjects the logic of the current war on terror to subtle twists that expose its nonsensical aspects. Contemplating the likelihood of significant civilian casualties just before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he writes, "Mr. Bush says that one of the reasons he wants to kill a lot of Iraqis is because Saddam Hussein has also been killing them. Is there some rivalry here?" Nevertheless, "you can bet that if George W. Bush is going for the record he's going to beat Saddam Hussein hands down."
Salon reached Terry Jones at his home in London, where he talked about the bizarre rationales and twisted vocabulary of the war on terror, the difficulty of satirizing Thatcherism and the similarities between the politics of Chaucer's day and our own.
How did you first come to write these Op-Ed pieces?
"Who Murdered Chaucer?: A Medieval Mystery"
By Terry Jones
Thomas Dunne Books
416 pages
Nonfiction
It was incredulity that kicked it off. I just couldn't believe how our leaders responded to the events of 9/11. It seemed to me that at every stage they decided to take action that would quite clearly produce the opposite effect from what they declared they wanted. For example, after 9/11 George Bush said exactly the right things. He said we have to catch the evil perpetrators of this evil crime. But if you're going to catch the perpetrators of a crime, I would have thought that what you need is speed and secrecy. What you don't do is announce where you're going to look. [Shouts across the room] "We're going to look in Afghanistan, all right?" You don't say when you're going to do it. [Shouts]: "We're going to do it in two months' time. Two months' time, OK?" And you don't say what you're going to do. [Shouts]: "We're going to bomb you!" I would have thought any evil perpetrators would have got out of Afghanistan by then. I certainly would have done, if I were an evil perpetrator.
Then Tony Blair says, "We're going to make the world safe from terrorism. We're going to protect the U.K. from terrorist attacks, so what we're going to do is go and bomb ... let's see ... Iraq, yes, let's bomb that. That'll make the world safer." It's like the emperor's new clothes. People are making such stark, staring mad decisions and eventually other people just go along with it.
Do you think people go along with it because the government just keeps repeating the mad rationale so forcefully over and over again?
Yes, but it's also the power of words. Words do eventually have an effect. If you keep repeating, "Security forces are putting down insurgents in Iraq," rather than saying "Our illegally occupying army is killing the freedom fighters in Iraq," people will actually start believing it. If we were in France in the Second World War, we'd be talking about brave resistance fighters stopping the illegal occupation of France. We would call the Vichy government quislings and collaborators. Whereas we're talking now about the great [Iyad] Allawi, who's just doing what the Americans want him to do.
Another one is the four "civilian contractors" whose murders prompted the attacks on Fallujah. They were mercenaries. They work for Blackwater, and if you go to Blackwater's Web site, it's really quite interesting. They offer two courses on sniping.
