Hollywood,
Move Over! Here Comes Chen Guangcheng!
By Meg Curtis
When Chen Guangcheng escaped house-arrest in China, with a brilliant scenario he
leapt ahead of Hollywood’s Great Escape writers. On April 22, 2012, he managed
his daredevil act while blind. He even broke three bones in his foot—and still outfoxed
every hostile pursuer in a population of 1.3 billion.
Right now, Clint
Eastwood is probably wondering: Why didn’t I think of that storyline? I could
have starred in it, too!
Chen will
surely count among the greats in updates to Steven Novak’s “History’s Ten
Greatest Prison Escapes” (http://blog.koldcast.tv/2010/show-news/historys-ten-greatest-prison-escapes/). Never mind that China considered him a
criminal, while the US lauds him as a hero. That double role lies at the heart
of Novak’s compelling tales from Nazi death-camps, a Confederate prison, and
even Stalin’s gulag.
This
self-taught lawyer’s history as a civil rights activist in China also pushes
him past the tawdry ingenuity of characters like “Bucky” Phillips. That American
escape artist left jail by opening the tin roof of a kitchen with a can opener.
“Bucky” was convicted of committing murder while staking out his former
girlfriend’s residence (http://www.amw.com/fugitives/case.cfm?id
=39219).
By contrast,
Chen managed to produce TWO in-wedlock children in a country which outlaws
excessive fertility, defined as ONE+. His latest adventures are available here:
http://online.
wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230 3630404577387961407270728.html. But
this question lurks in the future: If Chen comes to the US, is America ready
for a creative thinker this successful at outwitting everybody and his
communist brother?
No comments:
Post a Comment