"Dead and gone"

kausfiles:

... Sydney Pollack's The Interpreter has one of the worst Get-Up-and-Get-a-Beer-Lines in recent memory. Sean Penn, playing a Secret Service agent, is talking to Nicole Kidman, playing a U.N. interpreter in jeapordy. Kidman's character says

"If dead and gone were the same thing, there wouldn't be a United Nations."

Wow. Heavy! And clever. Sparks are clearly flying! But hmmm ... does she mean that if we could just learn to get rid of people without killing them, we wouldn't have wars and wouldn't need the U.N.? Or does she mean that if everyone somebody wanted "gone" were dead, then there'd be no exiled leaders trying to get back into power, nothing left to fight over (and nobody left to do the fighting)? Or that if everyone who'd been killed in modern wars were merely "gone," then ...

Or it could mean that a dead organization like the UN is not gone and is still hanging around stinking up the place.

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