The Speed of a Lie
Pop Quiz, Hotshot
Whenever I see Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) or Andrew Clyde (R-Georgia) or Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) or Laura Ingraham (Asshole-Fox), I naturally think of Keanu Reeves.
Not because he’s a reactionary MAGA dipshit or anything; Reeves is one Hollywood actor who hasn’t tipped his hand about his political beliefs. So I have no idea who or what he supports, just as I have no idea how he ever got cast in a movie. (If you ask me, he has the screen presence of a Jersey barrier. But I digress. Also, I liked him in Something’s Gotta Give.)
No, Keanu comes to mind because of his 1994 blockbuster hit Speed, co-starring Sandra Bullock, Dennis Hopper, Jeff Daniels, Joe Morton and a large cast of anxiously seated individuals. The premise was that a vengeful psychopath (Hopper) had wired a bomb to a city bus that would explode if the speedometer dipped below 50 mph. Reeves plays a bomb-squad cop who must heroically save the day. It’s a thriller, for sure, most remembered for Reeves calling a beefy bus passenger (actor Carlos Carrasco) “Gigantor,” and his pronunciation of the word cans.
But this notion of never being able to take your foot off the gas is suddenly, tragically relevant. You may have noticed that Donald Trump and his many moronic and/or evil cultists have built an entire political party and an ever-growing parallel reality by simply telling lies. “Very fine” brownshirts in Charlottesville. Stop the Steal. Saving coal jobs. QAnon. Covid cures. Covid conspiracies. Mexico paying for the wall. The “perfect call” to Ukraine’s president. Stormy Daniels. Michigan “Man of the Year.” Sunny inaugural skies. There have been more than 30,000.