The Empire Strikes Back?

Recent years have seen the release of a number of Hollywood blockbusters which have falsified history in order to glorify the US whilst patronising the rest of the world. U-571, for instance, attributed the capture of a German Navy enigma code machine in World War Two to the US Navy, when in fact the action was carried out by the British Royal Navy. The latest such movie to provoke outrage outside of the US is Pearl Harbour . There have been allegations that several anti-British sequences had to be cut from the film before its UK release. One of these apparently showed wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (played by Dennis Franz of NYPD Blue fame), concluding a secret deal with the Japanese to attack the US fleet in order to force the peace-loving US into the war. Churchill is seen personally authorising a shipment of gold bullion to Tokyo aboard a Royal Navy submarine as payment for the attack, and agreeing to provide British military assistance. Another deleted sequence is said to show British Spitfires being repainted in Japanese colours - their RAF roundels being painted over with the Japanese rising sun symbol - before flying from secret pacific bases to strafe the US fleet at Pearl Harbour. Whilst the film’s makers have angrily denied that any such sequences were ever filmed - claiming that it was just another internet hoax - there can be little doubt that much recent Hollywood output has shown a distinct anti-British bias. The Patriot showed British soldiers behaving like Nazi storm troopers during the US War of Independence, whilst Braveheart showed English troops doing much the same thing in Scotland during the 13th Century. Whilst some might argue that this is an apt response to theUK inflicting the likes of Phil Collins on the US, the beleaguered Brits are now set to strike back, courtesy of UK producer/director Sid Dukie.

Dukie is planning a series of TV dramas in which he plans to reveal the truth behind some of the US’s best-loved Presidents. He aims to start with George Washington, War of Independence General and first US President, long extolled by the US as an exemplar of truth, honesty and wholesome values. According to Dukie the truth was very different: “He was a broad-chasing booze hound! He lost his teeth in a bar-room brawl with a pimp over his refusal to pay the full rate for a prostitute he claimed had not given full satisfaction!” Washington replaced his lost teeth with a revolutionary set of painted wooden teeth. He quickly found that many women were sexually aroused by these teeth when he kept them in whilst performing oral sex. Consequently, he set up in business supplying wooden teeth as a sex-aid to American men - Benjamin Franklin was a particularly enthusiastic user - later branching out into carved wooden dildos and other sex toys. However, it was this trade which brought him into conflict with the British authorities. “The British Inland Revenue were after him for at least half a million pounds worth of unpaid sales taxes on these dildos”, Dukie claims. “No wonder he was so keen on starting a war - establishing an independent US government was the perfect way for Washington to evade his outstanding tax-bill!” Another target for Dukie’s series will be Thomas Jefferson, third President of the US. “When Jefferson wasn’t busy porking the slaves, he was obsessed with elephants”, reveals Dukie. This strange obsession started when the fossilised remains of prehistoric elephants such as mastodons and mammoths were discovered on the East Coast - Jefferson became convinced that living elephants roamed the hitherto unexplored interior of the continent. He consequently financed, at huge expense to the US tax-payer, several expeditions in search of these mythical beasts. Hundreds of men were lost in this vain quest. Nevertheless, Jefferson remained gripped by elephant-mania and took to performing elephant impressions at every opportunity. “At the drop of a hat he’d do his ‘white eared elephant’ impression by pulling out his trouser pocket linings, whipping out his plonker and trumpeting at the top of his voice - it caused quite a stir at official receptions and at state banquets”, the director claims. “By the end of his term of office he’d managed to train his schlepper to pick up buns, like an elephant’s trunk. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long enough to reach his mouth with them.” Jefferson also insisted on importing several African elephants and allowing them to roam freely around the official Presidential residence. “Contemporary writers thought it was disgusting - elephants pissing and crapping everywhere. Apparently the smell was quite unbearable at the height of summer”, Dukie explained.

Abraham Lincoln, possibly the most revered of all US Presidents, is also exposed in the TV series. The stove-pipe hatted Republican with the silly beard apparently liked nothing better than to drink his own urine - claiming that it had many health-giving properties. In fact, so enamoured of these properties was Abe, that he actually bottled it and frequently presented samples to visiting dignitaries. “He was planning to market it commercially once his term as President ended”, Dukie believes. “Fortunately for the civilised world he was assassinated by a renegade urologist who was horrified by Lincoln’s plans. If Lincoln had lived the Americans might have been drinking urine to this day, instead of coffee!” Lincoln also enjoyed bathing in urine, and often held pool parties at which all of the guests would urinate into a communal bath, before leaping in and enjoying it while it was still warm. Dukie admits that finance and casting for the series has yet to be finalised, but if it goes ahead it will not be the first time that he has courted controversy with his anti-American sentiments. In 1996 his feature film Patton: Lust for a Glory Hole portrayed the celebrated Second World War US general (played by Bob Hoskins) as a closet homosexual and secret cross-dresser, whose rapid drive for Berlin 1944-45 was motivated by his love for a German pole-vaulter he had met at the 1928 Olympics. In the course of the movie Patton is seen bitch-slapping a GI under his command who criticises his shoes and lipstick during the 1943 Sicily campaign.