Mr. Smith Goes Postal: A Satire

In the 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Jimmy Stewart plays a naive Boy Scout leader who is appointed to serve out the remaining term of a deceased senator. He arrives in Washington full of optimism, only to be disillusioned by corruption. When he threatens to blow the whistle on some shady dealing in his home state he is set up to take the fall. Instead he puts up a fight and holds a filibuster while the Boy Scouts get a petition together to send to the Senate to rescue their hero. All of this takes place because Mr. Smith uncovers a little bribery.

I wonder what would happen in a modern remake where Mr. Smith arrives in Washington, all rosy cheeks and full of fantasies about how American government works? How would he respond to the institutional corruption of PACs and lobbyists, corporate payola in the form of campaign contributions and enough pork-barrelling to feed the world’s poor (if it were real pork barrels)? Would he stand by? Would he blow the whistle? Would he join in the orgy of greed? I think we all know what Jimmy Stewart would have done. It would have been the whistle heard round the world.

But this is 2008, not 1939. The meagre tools of political smear campaigns in the past have been replaced by CNN, FOXNews, talk radio, the blogosphere and PhotoShop. I can picture it. Ann Coulter publishes Sedition: The Lies of Mr. Smith. Rush and the gang spew their venom 24/7. The tabloids publish pictures of "Mr. Smith" in S&M attire whipping some naked Boy Scouts. Canoe-Boat Veterans for Truth puts videos on YouTube of crying boys talking of how they were denied merit badges by the unscrupulous Mr. Smith who actually expected them to earn them ... not to mention stories of nocturnal semi-pagan ceremonies around campfires replete with hot cocoa and s’mores.

What does Mr. Smith do? Suicide is not an option for Jimmy Stewart. A filibuster, a time honoured democratic tool, is out – the Republicans have changed the rules and smeared them as undemocratic and unpatriotic. Larry King won’t go near him with a 10-foot pole and the op-ed pages of the Times and the Post won’t publish his response.

Beaten down, silenced, facing 20 to life as a prison-bitch he falls back on his final bastion: the constitution. Off he goes to avail himself of his uniquely American right to bear assault weapons. Loaded down with enough weaponry to make Charlton Heston have wet dreams, dressed like Rambo in a Boy Scout uniform, he makes Neo’s rescue of Morpheus in The Matrix look like a kindergarten field trip. Nobody has been this pissed off in an official setting since Jesus trashed the Temple.

The dust clears. The sounds of gunfire fade. The lobbyists and other agents of corruption lie wasted in the aisles of Congress, briefcases full of money blowing in the wind. Out steps Mr. Smith, this uniquely American hero (let’s face it, it couldn’t happen anywhere else), bloodied but unbowed, American flag flapping in the background to the strains of America the Beautiful as the screen fades to black. After all, this is fiction, the real world doesn’t work that way.