Bulworth (1998) In a despondent moment, Democratic Senator Bulworth (Warren Beatty) makes a deal with the Insurance Lobby for a ten million dollar policy and then hires an assassin to kill himself. Along the way, from lack of sleep and food, he become delirious and begins to tell large crowds the truth about the way government is bought and sold by large corporations. Suddenly his popularity rises and he is re-elected for being so brutally honest. Halle Berry shows up as a would-be assassin, and there’s a cameo by the poet Amiri Baraka, but what makes this film still relevant and effective are its “white raps” about the Democratic Party’s betrayal of black society.
You’ve met these candidates before: high school
Goody Two-Shoes, teachers’ pet, know-it-all;
And the high-school bully, mouth a cesspool
Of insults and boasts, preening to stonewall.
Before Trump, Jay Billington Bulworth bawled
Truth to power, with bad white rapper puns
In church assemblies and convention halls,
Giving ice cream to the street kids with guns.
Bullworth wins votes with outrageous candor.
To keep the poor ill and broke, set tax rates
So health care may gauge them in a price war.
Who owns the airwaves controls the debates.
The system’s rigged for the highest bidders —
The Hollywood Jews, the Saudi oil sheiks.
Bullworth asks, “Why are there no black leaders?”
“Be spirit, not ghost,” Baraka speaks.
All Americans relish a good con —
Ask Herman Mellville who saw the devil
In a business deal offering two for one:
Democrat or Republican, same pill.
The only solution Bulworth can pun
Before he gets shot in Technicolor,
“Everybody just gotta keep fuckin’ everybody,
Till they’re all the same color!”
[Disposable Poem November 26, 2016]
Dr. Mike
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