"You Know Nothing Of My Work"

One of the great moments in film comes in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall", when the character played by Woody Allen is in a movie line and forced to listen to a loud analysis of the effect of TV on culture from a pompous man nearby in line. When the man refers to the work of media theorist Marshall McLuhan, Allen's character challenges him:

MAN: It's the influence of television. Now, now Marshall McLuhan deals with it in terms of it being a, a high-- high intensity, you understand? A hot medium--

WOODY ALLEN: What I wouldn't give for a large sock with horse manure in it.

MAN: -- as opposed to the truth which he [sees as the] media or--

WOODY ALLEN: What can you do when you get stuck on a movie line with a guy like this behind you?

MAN: Now, Marshall McLuhan--

WOODY ALLEN: You don't know anything about Marshall McLuhan's work--

MAN: Really? Really? I happen to teach a class at Columbia called TV, Media and Culture, so I think that my insights into Mr. McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity.

WOODY ALLEN: Oh, do you?

MAN: Yeah.

WOODY ALLEN: Oh, that's funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here. Come over here for a second?

MAN: Oh--

WOODY ALLEN: Tell him.

MARSHALL McLUHAN: -- I heard, I heard what you were saying. You, you know nothing of my work. How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing.

WOODY ALLEN: Boy, if life were only like this.

Well, life isn't quite like that, but we did hear today from a historian of the post-war occupation of Japan, who Mr. Bush quoted in his speech to the VFW.

A historian quoted by President Bush to help argue that critics of the administration’s Iraq policy echo those who questioned the U.S. effort to bring democracy to Japan after World War II angrily distanced himself from the president’s remarks Thursday.

“They [war supporters] keep on doing this,” said MIT professor John Dower. “They keep on hitting it and hitting it and hitting it and it’s always more and more implausible, strange and in a fantasy world. They’re desperately groping for a historical analogy, and their uses of history are really perverse.”

Dower was interviewed on MSNBC's Countdown program and had even more choice words. He feels there is no comparison between Iraq and post-war Japan, and detailed among the differences the extensive way we planned for Japan in advance, and hit the ground ready. Most of the reforms were accomplished in the first two-and-a-half years, whereas in Iraq, we're four plus years in, and it's still, in his word "chaos."

With any luck, video of the interview will be posted to the web soon. Update: And here it is.

It wasn't quite as good as the scene in Annie Hall, but it was still something.