Ravings of a Madman: Robert Murray Blames “Evil Mountain” For Miners’ Deaths
“Had I known that this evil mountain, this alive mountain, would do what it did, I would never have sent the miners in here.”
One of my favorite books and movies of all time is Herman Melville’s classic “Moby Dick.” I just watched the recent remake of it with Patrick Stewart who does a great Captain Ahab. But he doesn’t touch Gregory Peck’s performance as the obsessive, human and Nature-hating lunatic who would just as soon die himself as kill the white whale that ruined his life in an earlier encounter.
Ahab is one of the greatest tragic literary figures: right up there with Oedipus. Now, they are joined in the pantheon of tragic characters by Robert Murray. Murray’s performance has been classic, over-the-top and memorable: outrageous, obsessive, accusatory, deceptive, heavy-handed, insensitive, swerving recklessly from absolute control to total breakdown. Murray capped off his brilliant if unanticipated role today by proclaiming the scene of this man-made disaster “this evil mountain.” Murray’s Moby Dick.
Projecting his own dementia and defective principles onto something incapable of free will. Never comprehending his complicity in the whole disaster, invoking “the Lord” as some kind of divine smoke screen, and denying responsibility to prevent himself too much discomfort. The proverbial train wreck: painful to watch but impossible to look away. I told you he and Lindsay Lohan should get together for lunch. They’d have a lot to discuss. Like demons, persecution and being out-of-touch with reality.
August 23rd, 2007 at 10:12 am
Hey; You guys live in Utah, aren’t you used to yet?
Oh sorry, Ken, you wrote this post and are still a Newbie in Utah. Don’t ever lose your incredulity, it’s good for Utah.
August 23rd, 2007 at 11:59 am
I’ve lived all over the country. But this is the easiest place to figure out of the bunch. When you have a pervasively-accepted dogma, a monolithic political and social imperative, everything becomes predictable. It’s just a matter of pushing the same buttons every time. Uniformity, conformity, acquiescence. It’s like, well, a church. But I’m crazy about it. Utah is fascinating. This whole Murray thing is captivating. He’s so symbolic. It’s as if when the cave-in happened, the coal industry cast the person who best represented who they are. No one could’ve played it better.
August 23rd, 2007 at 9:27 pm
The mountain isn’t evil Bob, its pissed off. You have paid millions of dollars to prevent mine safety improvements. You have pushed the envelope of safety to increase your profit margin over and over again. You hate unions.
The best thing that could happen to you Bob is for your other mines to organize.
August 24th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Just think, Joe and Brigham are a real and known piece of Vermont history. We keep track of our own. Needless to say the tack of Joe’s story from a Vermont Presbyterian perspective is markedly different from that of current and pat, oops past, day mormonism.
You are so right, it is fascinating. The reality stunned my east coast sensibilities. I dated and lived with a beautiful girl from a polygamous Utah family from West Jordan. She was the only child of 10, 33 total, 3 wives, one man, so they say. She was the only child that had even a remote chance of shaking the brainwashing. Loved her dearly, she made it. We didn’t.
Can’t ever forget her dear Mum inviting me to pop off 1o,ooo rounds of automatic weapons ammo, in order to make room for fresh ammo. She said she had to be “ready” for armegeddon. She had 10 kids, their Dad a prof at BYU, History. I humored her, and learned how to work a machine gun for FREE! After all. She liked me, I was loving her daughter. Shes was soo sweet, her Mum and her daughter.