All The President's Men Redux

A friend of mine came up with this hysterical fictional scene for “All The President’s Men,” wherein Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) has one last underground parking lot meeting with his deep background source, aka “Deep Throat” (Hal Holbrook).

WOODWARD: Just how high does this conspiracy go?

DEEP THROAT: Higher than you can imagine.

WOODWARD: We’ve already linked it to Haldeman so we’re inside the White House. And Haldeman is Nixon’s Chief of Staff.

DEEP THROAT: Higher, I’m telling you.

WOODWARD: How can it go higher than the White House?

Deep Throat peers left, right, takes a drag from his cigarette, then tosses it to the pavement floor, snubbing it out beneath his shoe. He frees a final gust of cigarette smoke.

DEEP THROAT: Martians.

WOODWARD: Excuse me—what… did you say?

DEEP THROAT: Martians, I tell you!

Woodward, standing beside a column, slowly begins sliding back down against it until he is fully slumped along the cold concrete. He puts his head in his hands, vanquished and humiliated.


(Now the point of this is to show how Woodward realizes that, with a single utterance, everything else Deep Throat has told him now comes into serious, serious question. This is pretty much how I feel about the bible, of which I will quote just once. Exodus 35: 2: “Six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death.” I could, of course, have picked from dozens of such lunatic quotations but I chose this one. Akin to the aforementioned “Martians” example, this leads to the question: Why would anyone put any stock whatsoever into a book that commands you to kill people for working on Sunday? (A coarser variation on this sentiment comes from Bill Maher: “If you see one turd in the pool do you jump in?”)

BILL