Let�s try this:

They conjured an advertising campaign to SELL a war.

They had equivocal intelligence � lemons. They whipped it up into what they called lemonade, and we bought it as lemonade. In retrospect we are coming to see it as more like lemon flavored Jonestown Kool Aid. One way they have tried to wiggle out of this is to say:

�You bought it as lemonade. Don�t look at us!�

Unfortunately (for them) we aren�t likely to be persuaded. What the American people are likely to conclude is:

�It was your JOB to know it was more like lemon flavored Jonestown Kool Aid than lemonade. It was War and Peace. We don�t pay you to get things like this wrong, we pay you to get them right. We don�t care whether you were taken in by your own ad campaign, or who else you persuaded to buy it (quote them as you will!); your job was to discover the difference between the what was weak and what was strong in the intelligence, and report the truth to us. It was NOT your job to sell something to us, it was your job to get it right and direct us wisely. YOU FAILED! We are paying the price, and we DON�T like it.�

No one so far writing about the new Pink Panther movie seems to have a clue as to the true genius of the original. Or, to be more specific, the genius of the first two Blake Edwards’ films. After that things went largely off the rails.

Clouseau wants to be Cary Grant, and is utterly incapable of it. Bumbling is his essence, his soul. All of the small acts of aplomb, of polish, of savoir faire, of suave sophistication, that were second nature to a Cary Grant, Clouseau will attempt, and he will fail - every time. It isn’t that he will run afoul of some vast, complicated piece of machinery – a mistake made so often in the later films - he can’t bring off opening a door (or a drawer), reaching for a cigarette, or, memorably, spinning a globe. He longs to do the simplest of things with the assured grace of a Cary Grant, and fails at every turn, often with glorious comic results. Quintessential Clouseau: in A Shot in the Dark he is wrestled to the ground by a rack of pool cues.

The longing to look good in the many minor, but constant, endeavors of our lives is something we all live with and hope to survive with at least some measure of accomplishment. They say comedy is someone else’s pain. Clouseau does not need to suffer the spectacular thump of a great prat fall; he suffers instead the thousand humiliations of small acts gone amuck, and so helps exorcise our own anxieties about these passages of daily life. Again and again, he sails out with eager confidence, only to have his face rubbed in it once more. The Don Quixote of trivial quests.