Give Scooter Libby credit for something, the man is at heart an artist with a firm grip on irony and probably has inked a deal with Danny DeVito to play him when this tawdry event becomes a movie. How else to account for his July 7, 2003 chat with White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. Fleischer testified in court today that during a lunch with Libby, Scooter told Ari that Valerie Plame worked at the CIA in CPD (a division in the Directorate of Operations) and that this info was, “hush, hush and on the QT“.
Paging Danny DeVito. Mr. DeVito please. Yep cineophiles, Scooter was quoting Danny Devito from L.A. Confidential. As described by Clark Kimball of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Danny DeVito:
was the slimeball publisher of a tabloid
tattler that outed celebs and civic insiders, helped in no small part
by “moles” inside the Police Department, in particular Kevin Spacey as
the “technical adviser”, a detective who found a synergistic partner in
DeVito. Their careers were mutually boosted by high-profile arrests and
tawdry exposes. Of course, both characters paid a huge price for their
methods.
DeVito answers the phone throughout the movie with this stock phrase, “HUSH, HUSH, and on the QT”.
Damn! It don’t get any better than this. Talk about art imitating life. Danny DeVito played a scumbag, but Scooter Libby really is one. DeVito outed fictional celebs while Libby helped expose a CIA undercover officer. And Danny DeVito’s character gets beaten to death. Ahh, we can only dream.
I am sure you did not mean to do this, Larry…but you diminish Danny DeVito by the comparison.
AND the characters that he has played.
Somehow Mr. DeVito has inbued even his most despicable roles with a magical sort of sympathy.
I am at a loss as to who could adequately protray a sniveling gofer to mass murderers like Scooter Libby.
Tim Roth is the only American actor who comes to mind with the range to play a bootlicking criminal servant on this level.
AG
Come now Arther. Scooter has the soul of a poet. Remember his paean of longing written to Judy Miller about the turning of the Aspen trees?
AG
Bad poetry too, lol.
Larry, I suspect you meant that life imitates art rather than vice versa.
I’m glad that somebody else picked up on the LA Confidential tagline.
But what message did Libby, in quoting Sid Hudgeons, the character DeVito was playing, intend to convey? My take:
And what dirt would that be, one asks? It would be irresponsible not to speculate….