"What we have here is a failure to communicate..."
In Cool Hand Luke , Paul Newman, in the title role, is serving a jail sentence for chopping the heads off of parking meters (foreshadowing the rage felt today in Chicago for the parking meter mess .) Luke is a rebel, fond of questioning authority and, as seen in the scene posted above, the authorities don't want to be questioned; they want to be blindly obeyed. "What we have here is a failure to communicate," says the chain gang captain, after beating Luke to the ground. The American consumer is feeling a little beaten up these days, what with the crushing collapse of their portfolios and job prospects. There are grumblings 'round the fact that Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, BoA and Citigroup are having such fabulous success at a time when the rest of the nation remains paralyzed by the crash of the economy. We're puzzled, those of us outside of the Wall Street / Washington, D.C. corridor, by the extreme diversity in luck. All those "too-big-to-...