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Tuesday, June 14, 2011

"Bulworth" in Real Life

It's not new, but in going through my old emails the other day I ran across this incredible piece in the New Yorker about Rodrigo Rosenberg of Guatemala, and his decision to arrange a hired killing--of himself:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/04/110404fa_fact_grann?currentPage=all

The article, by Curtis Grann, is very well written and suspenseful, so I won't spoil it any more. The upper class of Guatemalan society is extreme in its no-holds-barred, rough-and-tumble battle for power and all it brings. Rosenberg comes off as someone who was too credulous for full-tilt Machiavellianism.

"Bulworth", of course, was the movie starring Warren Beatty from the '90's in which the Senator pays hit men to kill him off, then he falls in love (with a character played by Halle Berry), and changes his mind and tries--unsuccessfully--to call it off. It's quite amusing, particularly when Beatty/Bulworth, with nothing to lose, starts telling the truth--in rhymes, white-man hip-hop style. Rosenberg's story is not at all humorous, but it is fascinating in its own way.

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