Three Cheers for Queeg

From Barney Greenwald’s classic soliloquy after the court martial in The Caine Mutiny:

See, while I was studying law ‘n old Keefer here was writing his play for the Theatre Guild, and Willie here was on the playing fields of Prinshton, all that time these birds we call regulars–these stuffy, stupid Prussians, in the Navy and the Army -were manning guns. Course they weren’t doing it to save my mom from Hitler, they’re doing it for dough, like everybody else does what they do. Question is, in the last analysis–last analysis–what do you do for dough? Old Yellowstain, for dough, was standing guard on this fat dumb and happy country of ours. Meantime me, I was advancing little free non-Prussian life for dough. Of course, we figured in those days, only fools go into armed service. Bad pay, no millionaire future, and You can’t call your mind or body your own. Not for sensitive intellectuals. So when all hell broke loose and the Germans started running out of soap and figured, well it’s time to come over and melt down old Mrs. Greenwald–who’s gonna stop them? Not her boy Barney. Can’t stop a Nazi with a lawbook. So I dropped the lawbooks and ran to learn how to fly. Stout fellow. Meantime, and it took a year and a half before I was any good, who was keeping Mama out of the soap dish? Captain Queeg.

I thought about that when I read this.  Medea “Code Pink” Benjamin before, defending Berkeley’s assault on the Marines:

“If it weren’t for people like the people in Berkeley, standing up for what they believe, we’d be living under Hitler.”

Medea Benjamin yesterday:

“While we were at the protest in Berkeley from 12 to 4 PM a white volvo drove by and a man spat upon code pink. They chased him down the street and got into a verbal altercation. The police were NO WHERE in sight. That’s not the best part, ready for this? Medea Benjamin yelled and I quote “Marines!” she actually yelled for our help because this man had stepped out of his car.

Perhaps a mistake?  Something lost in translation from human to Code-Pink-ese?

I even asked her if she was yelling Police and she told me “I said Marines” then put her arm around my friend Allen (the Marine vet) Ironic?

Paging Alanis Morissette.  And Jose Ferrer.
(Via Malkin)

17 thoughts on “Three Cheers for Queeg

  1. So Medea Benjamin is Queeg? Her insane ranting suggests so, but then why the three cheers for her? Or is she Fred MacMurray? Perhaps the Marines in your post are Queeg, but they don’t seem obsessively crazy. Maybe they’re Jose Ferrer, but that would upend the entire film. Anyway, three cheers for fictional lunatic naval officers!!

  2. What’s even more ironic…

    Mitch, the point of that speech, and ‘The Cane Mutiny’ is one of my all-time favorites, is hardly that you ‘should be grateful’ to the military.

    It was:

    a. While a screw-up, the military during peacetime isn’t glamorous – and it’s staffed by those who perhaps aren’t the ‘golden child’, but they did what you wouldn’t, so if they’re a screw-up, have a little bit of respect and heart.

    b. The much more important point of that speech, which you left off to everyone’s loss, was that the actions of the ‘more competent’ in fact really WERE mutinous, that the job Barney did was great lawyering, but he was ashamed of beating up a fool, when he had respect for the work-a-day man who had found himself over his head, standing the line against Hitler’s Kriegsmarine or Tojo’s IJN. It wasn’t, as you’ve misenterpreted it imho, about an homage to the gratitude we should pay/show to the military, the listeners were the MORE competent members of the military – and it was reminding them that when they weren’t there, the dog-faced captains of peacetime, like Queeg, were, and you ought to cut them a freaking break as well as be grateful they WERE there while you trained up.

    So the irony is, to me, that you missed the point.

  3. BTW, extreme kudos to you on your use of media/literary example. Caine Mutiny recall deserves some real props.

  4. I’m sorry, I read my resopnse and realized I should have been more clear about one thing.

    Greenwald’s point was that Queeg was a coward perhaps/probably/no question, but he was the only coward we had, so cut him a freakin break he may have panicked, you mutinied and were therefore hardly any better.

    Were you trying to make the point that we should be grateful to scared, peacetime cowards who find themselves over their heads and panicked?

  5. Tim,

    So Medea Benjamin is Queeg?

    No. You missed it completely.

    Peev – Welcome back!

    Were you trying to make the point that we should be grateful to scared, peacetime cowards who find themselves over their heads and panicked?

    And you missed it, too.

  6. Yup; he did. The speech isn’t subtle; Wouk never was subtle when he was hammering home a point, which is exactly what that speech does. It might was well have been — and really was — him coming on stage (I mean, sheesh, is it an accident that Greenwald’s a Jew? What the hell more would Wouk have to do to make it clear who Greenwald’s speaking on behalf of? Put a thought balloon over his head that says Here’s what the author is thinking.

    Wouk is clear: the folks who stand guard over our lazy asses — his included; look at the dig at the writer in the full version — are, even in the cases they are as seriously flawed as Queeg — worthy of our respect because what they do is important to us.

  7. Send a cigar to the Rosenberg table!

    And by the way, I’m not saying the Greenwald/Wouk soliloquy are perfectly analogous.

    Merely that I think of it whenever I hear stories like this – like Medea “The Military Are War Criminals” Benjamin calling for help from the Marines she’s spent her entire public career vilifying.

  8. Yup, it’s ironic. But it’s also appropriate, I think. Not in a technical, legal sense — the Marines aren’t in Berkeley to act as cops.

    But an American citizen, in danger, calling for the Marines? And not going through some political vetting before they help? (I mean, read between the lines — Kelly and his friend were there, not walking away washing their hands.)

  9. Good point, Mitch, also made in a later film . . .

    “Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. . . my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you WANT me on that wall, you NEED me on that wall.”

    .

  10. I haven’t seen the movie in years, but I have seen it a number of times and I would love to see it on stage some day. Maybe I don’t remember it correctly, but wasn’t the point that the captain was not a coward or a lesser man, but just a man beaten down by constant war and with the support of his crew (which he didn’t get) he could have made it thru that rough patch. My impression was he was shell shocked and never recovered. The Fred MacMurry character looked down on him and eventually swayed the rest of the officers to his position. The Greenwald speech pointed out that while the rest of them were enjoying their peacetime lives and pursuits, the captain was on the tip of the spear and the officers owed him respect and support.

    I never came away from the movie thinking the captain was a coward.

  11. SPOILERS BELOW:

    He wasn’t a coward, in the book OR the movie. He was a martinet with terrible “people” skills; he had some odd emotional tix (the ball bearings he rolled in his hands constantly); he had some moral ambiguities about him (the scene where the Caine steered over a target tow rope while he was dressing down a sailor for having an untucked shirt, and Queeg covered it up); during the infamous hurricane, he had a moment where he froze up on the bridge, which led to Lt. Marek’s mutiny. He was a career navy officer, albeit an undistinguished one (hence he was commanding a rusty, 1918-vintage “Flush-Deck” destroyer-minesweeper, portrayed in the movie by a much newer ship).

    He was neither likeable, nor was his character black-and-white as re morals OR the performance of his duty.

    Which is what made the character, and the story, interesting.

  12. He wasn’t a coward,

    What about when he abandoned the landing craft too early and dropped the yellow dye. (I read that book about 30 years ago).

  13. Doh. Forgot that scene. And I read it like 25 years ago. Blah.

    Like I said – a very ambiguous character.

  14. He’s ambiguous/complicated. Coward is ‘way too simple for Queeg, although he does things that appear cowardly. Is he afraid of getting hurt, personally, afraid of getting in trouble if his ship gets damaged, afraid of not proving himself to his father, afraid of being criticized again? I dunno, and I do know that Wouk doesn’t make it easy for us, because after Greenwald gives that defense — that Queeg must be crazy, because no coward could ever be given a command by the USNavy — he comes out and tells us that it was just a cheap trick.

    Terrific book.

  15. b. The much more important point of that speech, which you left off to everyone’s loss, was that the actions of the ‘more competent’ in fact really WERE mutinous, that the job Barney did was great lawyering, but he was ashamed of beating up a fool, when he had respect for the work-a-day man who had found himself over his head, standing the line against Hitler’s Kriegsmarine or Tojo’s IJN.

    While it is, in fact, more important as a part of the book/play/movie, it’s less important in making the point of this post – which is aimed at the Medea Benjamin/Lt. Keefer types. There really is no situation analogous to the Mutiny going on in Berkeley.

    BTW, extreme kudos to you on your use of media/literary example. Caine Mutiny recall deserves some real props.

    Well, we English majors eventually find our element.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.