We all remember that classic scene from The Godfather where the movie producer Jack Woltz wakes up with a horse’s head in his bed. You’ll recall that he’d been holding out on casting the Godfather’s favored actor in a plum role, and - basically - thought these Mafioso guys were only playing around.
Reader TT has been reading the novel lately and thinks Mario Puzo’s description of Woltz’s ensuing panic oddly parallels that of the Democratic debt negotiators when they realized the Tea Party idealogues really were willing to risk default. The passage is below the fold.
“Despite all his wealth, despite all his contacts with the President of the United States, despite all his claims of friendship with the director of the FBI, an obscure importer of Italian olive oil would have him killed. Would actually have him killed! Because he wouldn’t give Johnny Fontane a movie part he wanted. It was incredible. People didn’t have any right to act that way. There couldn’t be any kind of world if people acted that way. It was insane… Six hours later Johnny Fontane received a phone call from the executive producer of the film telling him to report for work the following Monday.”
Thomas Lane
Thomas Lane is an associate editor at Talking Points Memo. He previously produced and reported for the BBC from its UN Bureau in New York. He is a dual citizen of the US and the UK.