Broken Hallelujah

"All right, Mr. DeMille," Desmond says, thinking she's making a movie, "I'm ready for my closeup." Ralph Nader is having his Norma Desmond moment. Desmond, you'll remember, is the faded Hollywood star of "Sunset Boulevard." Unable to accept that her fans have moved on, she descends into madness and murder. In the last, great scene, with lights and cameras trained on her, she dramatically moves down the staircase into the hands of the police.



"I am big," Norma Desmond says. "It's the pictures that got small."



Had Nader uttered the same words on "Meet the Press" substituting "politics" for "pictures," no one would have been surprised. Some people just can't make a dignified exit.

[by: Froma Harrop, a Providence Journalcolumnist]