The Cobra Commander Dialogues: III.II.9

Originally posted on Atlas Shrugged: Screw You, Shakespeare.

Dagny Taggart: Why this play was wonderful! I’ve never seen anything like it!
Kay Ludlow: Indeed, I thank you for appreciating the play, vague though your praise may be.
Dagny Taggart: Well, not being a great playwright myself of course if I were to try and describe the greatest play ever written it would surely fall short of all expectations. But that is why I can simply use every word that is even passingly positive I know to describe it, including seemingly contradictory ones, though that is simply to highlight how masterfully written and performed it was!
Kay Ludlow: Oh naturally, but wasn’t I beautiful in it?
Dagny Taggart: Certainly the most beautiful performance and person I have ever seen. Which is how I know it was a good play, as nothing dark or gritty or anything different than beautiful would certainly be less than beautiful and thus worse.
Kay Ludlow: It’s rather terrible that, for reasons that shall have to remain unexplored, the outside world would never allow for the most brilliant playwrights of our generation to write their most brilliant plays while I, the most perfect actress of our generation, be allowed to act in them.
Dagny Taggart: Yes that is rather both entirely sensible and terrible all in the same breath. One would think that if you were so truly as amazing an actress and they were all truly as great a writers who understood the tenets of free market capitalism you would have corroborated to create a masterpiece that could be sold to the masses for untold quantities of money and thus be satisfied in having provided a good that was wanted.
Kay Ludlow: Indeed! But of course we actually care more about producing high art, which is art that instead of pandering to the masses to make the most amo unt of money possible instead talks about how pandering to the masses to make the most amount of money possible is a virtuous and noble thing, and then by collecting a set of like minded individuals we could sell that idea to them in the form of a play to make vast amounts of money!
Dagny Taggart: Recursively brilliant and definitely the highest form of theater I’ve ever seen.
Cobra Commander: I didn’t care for it.
Dagny Taggart: Why you! Where have you been?
Cobra Commander: Shockingly enough I have a life beyond the trivial nonsense of your prattling about. And I don’t particularly owe you an explanation on the matter either.
Kay Ludlow: Well forget about all that, how could you have not liked my play!?
Cobra Commander: Listen, I know quite a lot about producing hack entertainment for the masses. I ran the Cobra Television Network after all.
Dagny Taggart: That play was hardly ‘hack’ entertainment! It was the most brilliant work of art I or anyone who has ever or will ever lived has ever seen!
Cobra Commander: It was propaganda! Your little cult commune here all have the same views on everything, it was easy for those insipid writers of yours to just regurgitate those ideas for you and make you think it’s high art.
Kay Ludlow: How dare you! Did you even see how beautiful I was!? Did you see how the play was written to talk about how amazing a beautiful woman is!?
Cobra Commander: You’ve no competition! There’s no other playhouses, no radio, no film… just… whatever garbage that all was. Were there even any other characters in the play?
Dagny Taggart: If there were I certainly didn’t notice them and I for one cannot wait to see the next play.
Cobra Commander: Oh and what is that one going to be about?
Kay Ludlow: Same themes and the same morals and messages, again all played through by me.
Cobra Commander: Oh I’m sure that won’t get incredibly boring for everyone involved.
Dagny Taggart: It won’t for me! I can promise you that once we all agreed on the perfect course for society, there was at that point no need to innovate or do anything new or fascinating, as all had already achieved a place of proper order.
Kay Ludlow: Hey, you’re sounding a lot more like one of us already!
Cobra Commander: Well this has all been a truly atrocious way to waste 3 hours, I shall have to put conquering this little playhouse and bringing in my production staff to create a theatrical version of ‘Father’s no Beast’ right at the top of my priority list. If the lot of these simpletons thought that was good entertainment brainwashing them into loyal Cobra followers should be exceedingly simple.
Dagny Taggart: You won’t be ruining anything around here anymore! John Galt has your number, he’s already gotten ahold of your superior and he’s coming to set you straight!
Cobra Commander: Oh no… you wouldn’t…
Kay Ludlow: I’m sure he’ll be marvelously thrilled at the repeat performance of my play tomorrow! Or maybe it’s a new play… or a repeat of a previous one… it’s kind of hard to tell since they are all exactly the same.
Cobra Commander: Silence fools! You have no idea what you’re bringing down on me here!
Dagny Taggart: Mr. Galt is going to be setting you straight, is what. Then likely going out to enjoy a good play if it doesn’t interfere with his more important duties as a man because, as we know, women here are actresses and house keepers while all the important men do the actual important things even though we’ve said they aren’t really more important even though we all acknowledge that they are.
Cobra Commander: Quiet! I have even less time for your foolish prattle than usual! If he’s actually on his way here… oh no… I just realized why I may hate you all as much as I do.
Dagny Taggart: Because we’re better than you?
Kay Ludlow: Certainly more beautiful. Did I mention I was beautiful? I really don’t feel like I say it enough sometimes. It’s terrible how little people acknowledge how beautiful I am and act like me constantly whining about it makes me seem like a bad person.
Cobra Commander: Again, and I can’t stress this enough, I really need you people to shut up. All of your misplaced self pride. Your single minded obsessive believe in your own rightness… your egotistical pretension to perfection… if there’s one person who will fit in far too well here it’s that jerk.
Dagny Taggart: Well I have no idea why a villain like you would be working for such a great sounding hero, but now I’m looking even more forward to his arrival.
Kay Ludlow: Why yes, he must be exceedingly handsome as well of course. I couldn’t imagine anyone fitting in here who wasn’t breathtakingly handsome.
Cobra Commander: Well he’s… got a unique look about him, at any rate. But I have to go find Destro, you two can keep patting one another on the back till you develop hunches for all I care!
Kay Ludlow: Well he’s certainly not going to be getting a job around here as the theater critic.
Dagny Taggart: Oh do we have one of those?
Kay Ludlow: Of course! He just says that our plays were amazing and perfect and that I was beautiful in them, as that is, of course, the objectively correct answer.
Dagny Taggart: What a wonderful society we live in!