Judgement for the Lone Ranger
(US, 1956)
Lone Ranger - Clayton Moore
Tonto - Jay Silverheels
Big Jim Chisholm - Lee J. Cobb
Laughing Boy Campbell - Boris Karloff
Slim Prescott - Victor McLaglen
Widow Parker - Mary Sweet
Little Billy - Rusty Tamblyn
Mr. Gregory - Hank Cooper
Doc Warner - Thomas Mitchell
Mayor Jim Chisholm and his henchman 'Laughing Boy' Campbell run the town of Shithole Gulch as their own private fiefdom, forging deeds to ranches and intimidating the local newspaper editor. When the town doctor exposes their schemes they arrange for him to be lynched. The Lone Ranger investigates and exonerates the Mayor's gang, although he says that the Mayor may have had a subconscious influence on the forgeries and that they should have warned the doctor they were about to have him lynched. He castrates the newspaper editor for impugning the integrity of public figures and rides off into the sunset. Surprising late addition to the series which pleased few.
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I consider that the possibility cannot be completely ruled out that the desire of the Prime Minister to have a dossier which, whilst consistent with the available intelligence, was as strong as possible in relation to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's WMD, may have subconsciously influenced Mr Scarlett and the other members of the Joint Intelligence Committee to make the wording of the dossier somewhat stronger than it would have been if it had been contained in a normal JIC assessment.
I contacted Josh Stiles of the Wank-Pomo-Wank Media Agency, an expert on subconscious influence, to comment on this.
'The average layman really has no idea how much we're all at the mercy of subconscious influences,' he said. 'Here at wank/Pomo*W[an]K we're getting to a point where we can sell a product without even naming it, just through actors' body language or the font chosen for a print ad. But I have to say, it was really state-of-the-art subconscious influence that was used on Scarlett. I mean, take this e-mail from Alastair Campbell:
Scarlett, you blithering wee fuck, beef up the Weapons dossier or I'll put the heid on ye
'To the untutored eye this is a completely innocuous, even cryptic line; it seems to mean nothing at all. But there's a subliminal message there - that innocent phrase 'beef up the weapons dossier' acts as a trigger on a completely subconscious level. I have to say I'm impressed that No. 10 are ahead of the curve on this; we're only just getting hip to this stuff in ad-land. This is all based on psychological research the Pentagon did in the 60s, where they discovered that if you give an instruction to a subordinate whose career depends on you they tend to obey you.'
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Funniest bit of the debacle so far:
Mr. Campbell returned to the attack on Wednesday just hours after the Hutton report was published, demanding resignations from the corporation. Yesterday, he accepted the affair was over, but revealed just how personal his campaign had been by insisting that all he had wanted was to remove the stain 'on my character.'
(Daily Mail, January 30th)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. A stain on Alastair Campbell's character. A stain on Alastair Campbell's character. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Well, it was worth it then, wasn't it? Alastair Campbell is now restored to his previous reputation for spotless integrity, beloved by all. Ha ha ha ha ha. Hitler sues over wife-beating claim. Ha ha ha ha ha.
Index
Jan 29th 04