Ah, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. A movie about the American Spirit. The importance of Truth, Justice & the American Way. A look at politics from the perspective of a nine year old boy living with upper middle class parents and who never watch anything but propaganda films financed by anti-Rooseveltians.  The film begins with...

A bumbling governor with sixteen children, most of whom look like the next door neighbor, must fill a spot in the U.S. Senate due to the death of one of its senators. The sons of the governor are all boy scouts who are enamored by a young man by the name of Jefferson Smith who is head of the Boy's Rangers. By the flip of a coin, the bald pot bellied cuckold governor names Mr. Smith as the interim Senator.
                
Now Mr. Smith spends all his time with young boys in the woods. He is single and always has been so. We know he is at least thirty years old and evidently has never gone out with a real girl on a date. Nowadays of course, the powers that be would have enough probable cause just based upon these flimsy facts to procure a warrant (actually are not warrants passe now or did somebody fix that problem?) to check Mr. Smith's computer for kiddy porn. But we will leave that analysis for another day.

Ooooh Mr. Smith gets to Washington and does a tour and sees the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument and sees all these great portraits of slave owners in short pants and silk stockings and wigs. And gosh, his breath is taken away because he has always held such a patriotic view of his country.  During his tour he evidently skips the segregated areas of DC and we are not sure whether or not he thinks the Negro should have really gotten the vote but that is another story also.

The senior Senator from his state, Claude Raines (who was the first Invisible Man) takes the boy-man under his wing (but I think in a good way because I think Senator Raines liked girls) and will keep Mr. Smith out of the loop so to speak so that he can bribe union leaders or some such and undermine our democratic system by seeing that workers are paid liveable wages.

Mr. Smith does not really know what senators do all day so he decides to read some pamphlets and a real girl played by Jean Arthur is assigned the task to make him think he is doing something of value. So Mr. Smith works on a bill to help boys stay in the woods. Now everyone knows that Jimmy Stewart was rather conservative in his political leanings. Well in the movie, all the boys who wish to stay in the woods will send him nickels.  That way the government will not be out any monies in keeping the babes in the woods so to speak.  So everybody wins.

"Donations pour in immediately. However, the proposed campsite (that would keep the babes in the woods) is already part of a dam-building graft scheme included in a Public Works bill framed by the Taylor political machine and supported by Senator Paine." (Wiki)

Well, everybody knows that dam building is always associated with graft schemes but Mr. Smith is kept in the dark. Senator Raines, in order to reel the lad in, so to speak, pins a bum rap on Mr. Smith that makes him look like Blago or Burris or w for that matter. 

So in order to demonstrate that he has done nothing wrong and that he would not make a lot of money from nickels sent in by young boys, Mr. Smith has to show heroism because he evidently does not know much about public relations or how to investigate and find evidence of his innocence. Now you must remember that this all occurs in 1939 so there have been no real wars since 1919 except when we had to shoot our own soldiers for protesting once in DC. So how can Mr. Smith show that he is a hero?

Well Jimmy Stewart comes up with this great plan. He will stand in the Senate and give great speeches.  Actually he is not too good at that either so he reads famous writings from other people like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and he does not even mention dam building or real property ownership once. And then he stands so long that he faints and Senator Claude Raines cries and recants and democracy is restored in D.C. for everyone except Negroes, evidently.

The End. But I think this was one of w's favorite films because, evidently our first attempts at torture made bad people stand for long periods of time. But Rumsfeld who never sat at his desk but always stood during his work hours was upset when he found out that we were attempting to torture bad people by making them do what he had to do all day anyway. And I think that Rummy came up with his idea for water torture at this time.

Now The Farmer's Daughter was a much better film about naivite and Washington DC, in my humble opinion.  Loretta Young, one of my dream girls when I was about eight, is the daughter of a farmer with four or five fine young boys who look like him. And Loretta washes clothes being careful to get rid of skid marks, and washes dishes, and cooks all day and feeds the pigs-the ones outside-and the chickens and milks the cows.  Later she becomes the mode for Supergirl Comic Books, but that is another story.

So she had saved up money (selling pork loins?) so that she could go to the big city and get a job and become the American Dream, or whatever the American Dream was for young farm girls in the early forties. And so her family drives her to the bus depot and leaves her there for some reason that is not made clear. And Loretta finds out the bus has already left so she gets a ride from a drunk driver with an open bottle violation and ends up in a motel room. Now she is a good girl and evidently never had any boy friends but she does not stay in the motel room with the drunk driver.

She ends up losing all her money and gets to the city and happens by a sign that says she should go to a rich persons house and be a house keeper.  And so she goes to the place advertised and Ethel Barrymore likes farms girls with Swedish accents and hires her on the spot because she makes very good coffee.

Joseph Cotton is the congressman in this film, evidently he did not have enough pull to get in the senate.  But even though he lives with his mumsy, he has a real girl friend and everything looks on the up and up but it appears he is a republican-but at least he is a moderate one who thinks that Negroes should be able to vote after all.

Well it turns out, that unlike Mr. Smith, Loretta has read an awful lot about politics and she thinks minorities should be able to vote and that women and men should be paid liveable wages and that educational opportunities should be made available to everyone.  Basically, Loretta would fit in at TPM just fine.

So Loretta decides that she is going to run for Congress and help working Americans of all colors and accents and Ethel makes her quit her job because Ethel is backing the candidacy of someone who does not like Negroes or other minorities and drinks a lot.  A lot of messages here about the problems associated with alcoholism but not as blatant as that movie about Ray Milland losing weekends and everything.

The drunk who drove Loretta to the motel room ends up getting paid by the drunk running for Congress to lie about how he and Loretta slept in motel rooms together.  But it turns out ok because James Arness from Gunsmoke beats up the drunken driver lying guy. And after the drunken driver guy is beaten up he goes on the radio and tells the truth.

And Loretta becomes a Congressperson and marries (at least I hope she does) her lover Joseph Cotton and everybody lives happily ever after and they pass laws that help minorities and working people.  And that is why The Farmers Daughter rocks and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington stinks.

Now the real purpose of this well researched essay is to promote the candidacy of one of our own at TPM Café. Markg8. is attempting to run for office and his blog is running right now. And I told Mark I want to help him because he does not drive drunk with open bottles and because he is really well read and he does his homework concerning the issues of the day like Loretta Young and not like stupid Mr. Smith.

And if you have ten dollars you can send it to him at the proper links provided and he can get rid of entrenched repubs who really do not think minorities should vote and who are not for livable wages for working peoples.I should note that Markg8 has never called the entrenched repubs racists or drunk drivers.  But it appears that there are some inconsistencies with regard to their accountings.

The End.