Where We Are

In casting Kenneth Colley (1937 - 2025) as Captain cum Admiral Piett in “The Empire Strikes Back,” director Irvin Kershner apparently indicated he wanted someone who could have terrified the F*hrer of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party for the part. But the role didn’t really appear to be written that way and it was not how Colley played it. Colley played him first as an underling eager to make an impression and then as a superior who realizes only too late that he’s stepped in it. It’s in the third movie (Original Trilogy Division), “Return of the Jedi,” however, where Colley really left a mark, playing his first scene as an Imperial middle manager who has become experienced in having to suck it up whenever Lord Vader gets one of his inklings. It’s quite a feat, essentially turning Piett into the Galactic Empire version of the nameless subservient nodding dude in the scene in Mike Judge’s white collar comedy classic “Office Space” where the arrival of the dreaded consultants is announced, and for a moment, effectively turning the baddest man in the galaxy into an imbecilic CEO. The way Colley says “As you wish, my Lord” translates to “This fuckin’ guy.”

This occurred to me on Monday while watching clips of the White House press conference at which King Big Brain I announced the federal government would be taking control of the District of Columbia police in addition to deploying National Guard troops to regulate the nation’s capital which, at least in the pudding of his brain, may as well be the subway car in “Adventures in Babysitting”  24-7. The whole thing was insulting, made up under phony pretenses, and potentially laying the groundwork for even greater federal abuse, making me want to say to the people who still, even now, a decade into this, spin some version of the “Even I don’t agree with everything the President says or does but...,” in the manner of Jerry on “Seinfeld” consulting with Kramer after the latter has been accused of being The Smog Strangler and doesn’t seem all that bent out of shape: “Do you realize what’s going on here?” But maybe the one moment of the whole grotesque carnival that stood out most was when His Imbecility mentioned all the “bloodthirsty criminals” and “drugged-out maniacs” and “how we’re not going to let it happen anymore.” And then he half-turned to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, whose eyes as always made it look like he was watching “The Parallax View” recruitment test, standing directly behind him and rhetorically asked “Right?” Bondi and Patel sort of snapped to attention as if they had not even been paying attention to Dear Leader’s typical mealy mouthed mumbling and as the shit-fed bootlickers they are, nodded right on cue, improbably manifesting in real life Admiral Piett as Nodding Guy in “Office Space.” 

Ain’t that (present-day) America?