Beware the Ides of March

We just got home from the movie, “The Ides of March.” For those of you who didn’t take Latin somewhere along the line, the “Ides” is the 15th of the month. When Julius Ceaser was out walking around Rome, a soothsayer (or sightseer) said to him, “Beware the Ides of March.”

And beware he should have, because on the Ides of March he got stabbed 23 times, led by an esteemed group of his colleagues and his good friend Brutus to whom he said these famous words, “E tu Brute?” which, roughly translated, means, “What the %$*@?”

George Clooney decided to make a film about this for modern times – about political betrayal and so forth – and by giving it this old Latin name he was evoking the similarities between ancient Rome and modern America.
Or maybe he was just trying to make a buck with a movie he hoped would draw in ticket buyers such as myself. You never know about the motivations of Hollywood. The movie seemed like an obvious remake of Bill Clinton’s dalliance with an intern and how he had such noble ideas but he let his little head do the thinking and ended up committing political suicide.

I, for one, didn’t need to watch a fake politician do all the sordid stuff these people do to get elected. I think everyone on earth, even bush people in Africa, knows that politics turns people into back scratching, blackmailing extortionists. I don’t know why I have to spend my Saturday night watching a predictable movie play out the same old story.

Every leading character in this movie either compromised their integrity, blackmailed someone, played dirty tricks, lied, betrayed their friends, or had sex with someone they shouldn’t have. It was business as usual for stereotypical politicians cynically depicted as visionaries without the backbone to do the right thing if it means they will lose the election.

Not much different that what old Julius Caesar was up to a couple thousand years ago. He should have stayed home, and I should have too.