It's a pain that never ends -- to be capable of so much but allowed to do so little ...

In a Stalinist regime, government agents would keep me in check with threats of prison, torture and death. In "the land of the free," COINTELPRO wiped out the Black Panthers akin to when Order 66 decimated the Jedi in Revenge of the Sith, but for the most part, America prefers to have its iron fist wear a velvet glove. And all too many within America's gilded cage won't acknowledge, let alone admit, it is in fact a cage.

Here's a newsflash: It takes two things to do anything in life, desire and the means -- if you're lacking in either, you're hosed, period. And no matter anyone else will claim, an overabundance of desire will NOT magically compensate for a lack of means. This is class consciousness -- the acknowledgement that one can't do a thing until one can first AFFORD a thing.

I bring this up because I recently wowed a crowd in Seattle when I described what I'd do if I had a chance to remake The Lone Ranger. The movie would be from Tonto's point of view and it'd be revealed there were several Lone Rangers, each acting as a proxy. Like Bullseye (the hitman from Daredevil), Tonto would possess superhuman aim, and though he'd really be the one bringing down the bad guys from afar, a series of masked white men would publicly take the credit.

It also turns out the reason The Lone Ranger always wore sky blue (and that red ascot) is so he could serve as a target/decoy -- allowing Tonto to continue doing good deeds behind the scenes. And since Tonto would regularly replace fallen Lone Rangers (usually with novices from "back east" who read one too many dime novels or desperate men with nothing to lose who'd welcome martyrdom), the legend of this masked man's invincibility arose amongst the populace -- exactly as Tonto had planned. In real life, liberals constantly goad me into being subtle and putting white sensibilities at ease. In protest, I depict Tonto as someone kept from doing the right thing because he's a red man; only by operating via The Lone Ranger is he able to pursue evildoers without being pursued himself. Sick, ain't it?

Alas, aside from being permitted to film such a story by those who own the rights to The Lone Ranger (and would no doubt be ideologically opposed to what I have in mind), it'd cost TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to cast, direct, distribute and advertise such an enterprise. This is why I'm a commie, because we don't have free speech, we have expensive speech. How did my favorite Republican, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, put it?

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense."

Of course, there IS another way the world can live: Fund a broke-ass storyteller living with his mother at damn near 40, for starters! In 2002, I read the following in USA Today ...

Albuquerque, NM: With all the comic superhero movies on the way, do you know where they are at as far as Wonder Woman is concerned?

(USA Today entertainment reporter) Susan Wloszczyna: DC Comics are waiting for all the Spider-Man inspired Marvel furor to die down before they crank up their movie machine again. But Sandra Bullock is still tied to Wonder Woman. Last I heard they were waiting for a better script.

... "a better script," indeed! Knowing an opportunity when I see one, I called DC and asked for the phone number to whoever's in charge of the Wonder Woman project. I was given a number in L.A., but the woman I talked to (who identified herself as a producer, nothing more) claimed USA Today was full of it and that, "Miss Bullock is quite satisfied with the script," before hanging up on me!

Well, here it is 2008 -- Batman Begins is out ... Superman Returns is out ... has anyone seen a Wonder Woman movie? Hell no! Ask me sometime what I would've done if I'd been hired to write the Wonder Woman script. For now, I gotta get back to looking for a job ...

SOURCES:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower#Presidency
http://www.usatoday.com/community/chat/2002-06-05-wloszczyna.htm