The New York ticket website ZEALnyc has compared the new film Whiskey Tango Foxtrot to Waugh’s novel Scoop. The film is based on the memoir Taliban Shuffle by foreign correspondent Kim Baker and stars TV actress Tina Fey. I must tell you that the comparison is not a favorable one.
What really aches is that this female-driven comedy, written and directed for the screen by men, is part of the tradition perfected by the great Evelyn Waugh in his 1938 novel Scoop. In that, in a clever plot twist, a mild-mannered country garden columnist, William Boot, gets kicked to Africa as a war reporter. In the fictional East African state of Ishmaelia, Boot encounters the war correspondent crazy culture and trips over the conflict’s biggest scoop. What’s the difference between Waugh’s fish out of water novel and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? The former is hysterically funny and enduring; the latter delivers an occasional chuckle before disappearing to video.
Scoop is also cited in posting on a British football weblog where the blogger compares the owner and former manager of the Chelsea FC to Lord Copper of the Daily Beast because their employees seem to provide them advice only “up to a point.” The case in question is their failure to reach a settlement with the medical doctor Eva Carneiro who is seeking wrongful dismissal compensation arising from the incident where she went onto a live football pitch to aid an injured player:
It was Evelyn Waugh who caught the situation perfectly in the novel Scoop! in which the insanely rich and powerful Lord Copper (part Lord Northcliffe, part Lord Beaverbrook) runs the Daily Beast in order to fulfil his political and egomaniac dreams. Working as his underling is Mr Salter, who cannot ever disagree with anything his boss says, and Lord Copper is thus immune to the realities of the world…I rather saw Chelsea like this, only doubly so, because it has often struck me that both Mourinho and Abramovich, were completely beyond reality and surrounded by people who say “yes” or “up to a point.”
It should not go unmentioned that the blogger is an Arsenal supporter.
