A2C Oddbody, Clarence D.

"It comes in mighty handy down here, bub."

When is the last time someone called you bub?

The D is for dumbass.

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I once wrote an alternative screenplay for this, seeing as how it is in the public domain and all, but it had no takers, producers-wise. In my version, Uncle Billy is beaten up severely by a street gang on the way home from the bank and Mr. Potter is ratted out by his wheelchair pusher and spends his last years in prison for grand larceny. In an optional plot twist, he becomes a prison bitch to an Italian immigrant guard.

Clarence ends up with Mary in my version.

Better than snowmen even

More on propaganda

Propaganda doesn't have to be as blatantly overt as a film by Josef Goebbels or Michael Moore.

The dictionary tells us that propaganda is information of a biased or one-sided nature, usually casting some subject in a negative light. It can be outright lies, or it can be lies by omission. But the thesaurus also lists "advertising" as a synonym.

Many advertisements flash by us each day, most having little effect on us. Here is one that flashed by me the other day, but I reached out and grabbed it, analyst that I am.

What is the purpose of the above ad? What is the bank trying to achieve? Is it propaganda? Do you think the bank is truly "committed" to our military and wants to give them a warm and personal banking experience? Do you think the fact that the family in the picture is black is coincidental? Does this ad persuade you that this big bank is really caring and gives individual attention to all their customers? Does it make you want to do business with them? Vomit at their insulting patronizing? What?

I think I'm starting to see a pattern here

Long way home

Many years ago, the Australian government had a policy of trying to "assimilate" - some say it was really persecution of - the native population. Much like the U.S. did to their Native American population. It was common to take young aboriginal children from their households and put them in boarding schools many miles away and make them live under the white culture. They must speak English and not their native tongue in public, dress like white people, learn white religions. I saw a movie about this practice in Australia which took place (the movie) in the 1930s.

The practice of forced reeducation of culture stopped in the U.S. in the early 1960s, I think. I don't know when it stopped in Australia. Anyway, the movie I saw was about three (I think) little girls, sisters, who had been taken from their aboriginal home and family and placed in a "mission" boarding school 1500 miles across the continent. The movie is mainly about how the girls escaped and made their way back home. If I remember right, it took years to get home, across the 1500 miles. Maybe not years, but a long time.

They remembered the rabbit-proof fence that had run by their home. They found it near the mission where they were being kept and just followed the fence home. A touching story.