Benny Hill is gone. Yes, gone—maybe forever. Goodbye, Benny. America loved you from the day it first set eyes on you. You gave us more laughs than Andy Capp, Lord Haw-Haw and Monty Python combined; more laughs than Bernard Montgomery trying to explain how he single-handedly won the Second World War; more laughs than tea and strumpets with James Bond—well, almost more. And he did it in a virile sort of way—not that there’s anything wrong with that, Benny was always doing things in a virile sort of way. Goodbye, Benny, if Americans want slapstick they can watch The View.

No more chasing after gaggles of lusty wenches, no more Hill’s Angels, no more Yakety Sax, no more sexist jokes, no more shocking exposes of England’s notorious national health care system, no more bustenhalters, no more twenty-gallon hats, no more Jackie Wright to kick around. You’re through, Benny…you are kaput…you are finished; you will never work in this town again. And you know why? You do not reflect modern Britain. That’s right! Only an out-and-out Colonial could possibly think you are funny—someone like, say, George W. Bush…yeah, George W. Bush and Rooster Cogburn.

BBC has been broadcasting Benny Hill across America for nine years and they are going to pull the plug. Amy Mulcair, publicity director for BBC America, said, “I am afraid Benny Hill reflects old Britain and our job is to reflect contemporary Britain and all the cool shows coming out.”

Contemporary Britain? Cool shows? Cool? She must be kidding. Cool? Cool was contemporary in America with Joanie and Chachi forty years ago. Haven’t they got something contemporary and un-cool? Sure, there is a lot about England that is un-cool in the 21^st Century—actually, almost everything. Here’s an idea for a situation comedy that is so un-cool it is positively sickening. It may never be made into a series but if it were it would be a hit. It’s easy to imagine and it’s as contemporary as Hell. The plot goes like this:

Learning Teaching Scotland, an educational think tank, has instructed teachers and students not to stare at Muslims for fear of causing offense. Gawking at a Muslim woman in a headscarf or a Muslim man in a skullcap could be considered Islmaophobic. Better to go down to the Zoo, open the cage door and glare at the gorillas. It would be safer—maybe un-cool, but safer. Really—who in their right mind would rather stare at a woman in a headscarf than ogle Benny’s lusty wenches scampering after Jackie Wright? Eyestrain, sure, but it’s better than worrying about what might be ready to go bang underneath a burqa. Life imitating comedy!

The ultra-cool Mulcair says US viewers have never been so hungry for British comedy. And it’s not just Prince Chuckles and the Royal Family. England is the land of relentless satire. Every life is a situation comedy. Take Omar Bakri Muhammed. A TV series based on Omar would make the Partridge Family look sick—in a virile sort of way. Omar lived on welfare in England for 18 years. He raised seven children. He barely kept his family fed. He struggled and struggled. And then came 9/11 and 7/7. Did it get him down? Naw, he retained his sense of humor right to the end. “I believe,” he said, “that preachers and scholars of Islamic movements in the United Kingdom are the country’s safety valve, in contrary to what foolish people think. However, endorsing laws to combat terrorism in 2002, the United Kingdom is no longer safe.”

That’s the kind of humor only an Englishman could understand—knee slapping and bloodcurdling at the same time. No wonder Jack the Ripper was an Englishman.

Heading the list of BBC America’s new programs is Whistleblowers. It’s about the brave folks who risk their careers to expose dangerous secrets—greedy bankers, crooked bailiffs, lazy security guards; dishonest real estate agents. That sounds well and good but John Stossel and Sixty Minutes have been doing that for years. They covered Enron like mustard on a hotdog at a Little Rascal’s reunion. Americans are more interested in tracking down judges who let child molesters and rapists off with light sentences.

But here’s another idea that merits consideration. Why not a comedy series about the brave men and women who serve their country in uniform? America is ready for a British version of Gomer Pyle. With the war in Iraq, the troubles in Afghanistan, the surrender of Leading Seaman Faye Turney and her friends in the Strait of Hormuz, it would not only be un-cool cool it would be contemporaneous—especially the surrender part. They could import Paris Hilton to play Gomer—or better yet, have Faye play Gomer. If they could teach her how to say Shazam nobody would know she wasn’t Jim Nabors.

Maybe it’s too late. Cousin Jonathon is still young, vibrant. The Old Country is a long ways off, more in time and attitude than in distance. The chances are Benny Hill will still be showing in America long after England has gone down the Islamic drain.

Benny Hill was England’s Red Skelton. He might have operated at 120 rpms to Red’s one, but he was Skelton. When Clem Kadiddlehopper went to New York and took a look at the skyscrapers he said, “Say! Did they ever get the monkey off that building?” If Benny were alive today he would say, “ Did they ever get the Mad Mullahs off the Towers of London?” Sure, no one would mistake Benny Hill for Red Skelton or Trafalgar Square for Times Square, but there’s not much difference between Mad Mullahs and hairy anthropoids. Take a look at these guys and see if you can tell the difference.

Want a reality show and a reality check at the same time? Think Gilligan’s Island and the British Isles and Bob Denver and Tony Blair. It’s frightening. Gilligan was better off; he had the Skipper and the Professor, Blair has Red Ken Livngstone and Tariq Ramadan—and there’s no Benny Hill, he doesn’t reflect modern England. The Grinch stole Christmas; Islam is stealing England.

Alas, poor Benny, we knew him well

Beslan? Beslan? It sounds familiar. It had something to do with schools, didn’t it? Of course—Beslan in North Ossetia, an autonomous republic in the Caucasus region of what is now Russia, where Muslim terrorists took an entire school hostage, killed 344 civilians, 186 of them children. Sure, that Beslan, made Harris and Klebold look like amateurs. It rang the schoolhouse bell all across the world. Everybody heard it—well, not everybody. Walt Corder, public safety director for the Burlington Township Police, New Jersey, didn’t. Maybe he was listening to another bell.

Beslan? Beslan? That’s in the Okefenokees, isn’t it? Sure.

It was Corder’s job to arrange a public safety drill at Burlington County High School. He would need a scenario—nothing special, something to assuage that other bell he was hearing. There were plenty of good scripts available—something from Rod Serling would be fine, or maybe he consulted the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) before sitting down to pen his masterpiece. Rosie O’Donnell would have been impressed. The précis goes like this: two right-wing fundamentalists have invaded the school and were shooting everybody in sight. Was it Burlington or Beslan? It’s easy to mistake one for the other. Observers were told the gunmen “didn’t believe in the separation of church and state” and that the daughter of one of the gunslingers had been suspended for praying before class. Can’t allow that nonsense—next thing one knew she would be wearing a T-shirt saying. ‘Jesus saves.’ Maybe she was praying for Corder. He seems to be need of guidance.

The written scenario described the intruders as “members of a right-wing fundamentalist group called the New Crusaders. Crusaders? Richard the Lion-Heart…Barbarrosa…horrible people! The intruders also had a “strong commitment in their right to bear arms.” Corder said, “I did not envision any religious group when I drew this scenario up. This could have been any religion.”

Any religion? Uh-huh. How about Columbine? That’s another name that strikes a bell. Harris and Klebold? Why couldn’t Corder have done Harris and Klebold? Columbine didn’t have anything to do with religion—a lack of religion perhaps. Harris and Klebold were more like storm troopers breaking into the Warsaw ghetto than choirboys. They knew more about Dungeons and Dragons than about God and were almost as close to the devil as Osama bin Laden.

“There was no mention of any religion, no mention of Christians,” said Corder. Uh-huh. Now all Corder has to do is convince CAIR Christians aren’t Crusaders. That won’t be easy.

Three years ago, in Muskegon, Michigan, it was homeschoolers who were terrorizing the kids. The Muskegon County Emergency Services and the Muskegon Area Intermediate School District conducted a mock terrorism exercise. What they mocked was homeschoolers—the new despised minority in the mentally and morally blighted world of the politically correct school administrator. About 25 students participated in the exercise. Terrorists had exploded a bomb in front of a school bus. There were multiple injuries. Daniel Stout, chief deputy for the Muskegon County Sheriff’s Department Emergency Services wrote the script. “A radical group, Wackos Against Schools and Education, was formed in California several years ago. This group is against anybody being educated in a school setting. They believe that everyone should be home-schooled. They are very frustrated…the group has fought with law enforcement officers in Florida and California…Members of the group are suspected of blowing up a school bus in Tennessee…killed 27 students and school staff…A flier was found after the explosion with the group taking credit for the damage.” Wackos? It was a dark and stormy night in the literary world of Daniel Stout.

Beslan…Columbine…sure, it makes sense; if one wants to be safe from the Frankenstein monster, one doesn’t say his name out loud. Ignore him and he will go away. Frighten the kids with the people who live next door, the homeschoolers and the fundamentalist Christians who listen to Jerry Falwell. It’s easier and the friends of the terrorists won’t accuse cops or school officials of Islamophobia.

There were other scenarios Corder and Stout could have explored that would have been scarier and would have offended fewer people. These are offered here for what they are worth and will not cost any law enforcement agency or school district a cent. Number One: Animal Rights Activists have exploded a bomb in a biology lab after freeing the hamsters. By the time the cops arrive the students have been herded into the School Cafeteria and are being forced to eat soybean burgers and sing the Chipmunk Song. Number Two: Seeing as almost as many people believe in Flying Saucers as in God, this one should be handled carefully. Little Green Men from the Red Planet, wearing George W. Bush masks, are holding the entire student body of Ridgemont High hostage. Dozens of student have been cryogenetically prepared for transport to the Red Planet. A Martian spokesman is demanding the corpse of Edgar Rice Burroughs be exhumed and sent to Mars to stand trial for War Crimes. Number Three: The Gloria Steinem branch of Hell’s Angels has taken over a school parking lot. They are riding down football players with their Hogs, whipping cheerleaders with pom-poms and have decorated the principal’s office with pictures of Hoagy Carmichael. Number Four: Gays Angry at Ann Coulter, not to be confused with Gays Angry at Michael Savage, have taken over the school auditorium at Peewee Herman Junior High. The students are being forced to wear tutus and to redecorate the school lobby. Three born-again Christians have committed suicide.

Now be honest—what upstanding citizen and all-around fool wouldn’t want to participate in any of the foregoing drills? There would be a waiting list three-years long.

Beslan…Columbine…it is not surprising those scenarios were ignored. It’s what’s happening, but the perps don’t fit the approved villains list. The heavy hand of political correctness lays across the American educational system like the shroud that covered Socrates’ cold, dead mind. If one wants to get ahead, one obeys the PC rules—they are not guidelines. The same is true at the top levels of law enforcement—or at least among those who come under the influence of school administrators. The Joe Arpaios are forced out, the Corders and Stouts are promoted. Are they biased against Christians? It would seem so. The radical left controls the educational system and public safety officers give them what they want. Left on their own, the Corders and Stouts would serve ably, if not magnificently and without insulting the people who will be most likely to support them when the crunch comes.

The Burlington Township School District said, “The main goal…was to practice our lockdown and evacuation procedures, and test out abilities to an emergency situation.” Fair enough. Next drill—to show they harbor no grudges or animosities toward the Christianized—they could use Rosie O’Donnell, Charlie Sheen and Woody Harrelson for the bad guys. One could name others. While Rosie and Charlie and Woody are certainly less violent than Muslim terrorists, they are more dangerous and destructive to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness than the religious right.

Meanwhile, in Tiverton Middle School, Tiverton, Rhode Island, the Easter Bunny has been renamed. He is now Peter Rabbit. The road to Beslan is through Burlington and Tiverton and the dozens of other schools that have fallen victim to political correctness, the Black Death of the 20^th and 21^st Centuries.

“In the absence of a competent or brave Congress, of a mobilized citizenry, that level of power lies in your hands, it is you who have misused it to become our country’s and constitution’s most devastating enemy.” Who said that? Was it Jefferson Davis as Mississippi withdrew from the Union in 1861or was it George B. McClellan attacking the Lincoln administration during the Presidential election three-and-a-half years later? Was it Davis or McClellan? Give up? It was neither. The correct answer is Sean Penn, Hollywood’s foremost Constitutional Lawyer! Penn was delivering an open address to George W. Bush, Richard Cheney and Condoleeza Rice.

“Well, you and the smarmy pundits in your pocket, those who bathe in the moisture of your soiled and bloodstained underwear, can take the noise and shove it!” Who said that? Was is Rosie O’Donnell or was it Henry David Thoreau after wolfing down a quart of wild strawberries and a gallon of tainted water from Walden Pond? Neither! It was too literate for Rosie and even though Thoreau was Green, he wasn’t that green. The correct answer is that man again—Oscar-winning Environmentalist Sean Penn!

“And I got a question for your daughters…They’re not children anymore…Do they support your policy? If they do, how dare they not be in uniform?” Who said that? Was it an enemy of the Fighting McCooks or was it Abe Lincoln asking Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet why their daughters were not marching under the Stars and Bars? It wasn’t Old Abe, and the McCooks—fathers, sons, brothers, cousins and uncles, fifteen of them in all—fought on the side of the North in the Civil War. That should have been enough. The correct answer is that noted Tinsel Town Social Critic Sean Penn!

“These children (Iraqis) have now suffered minimally, a rainstorm of civilian death around and among them totaling, the equivalent of two hundred September 11ths in just four years of war.” Who said that? The questions are getting easier. It was renowned Hollywood Statistician Emeritus and Mathematician Extraordinaire Sean Penn!

“Let me tell you something about Iran, because I’ve been there and you haven’t.” Who said that? This is too easy! It was that master of Celluloid Dialectics, World Traveler Sean Penn!

“They are a country of human beings (the Iraqis) whose lives, while once oppressed by Saddam, are now lived in Dante’s Inferno!” Obviously, that was California Historian Sean Penn!

Isn’t that guy something? He’s a Constitutional Lawyer, an Environmentalist, a Social Critic, a Statistician, a Mathematician, a World Traveler and a Historian! And he’s a movie start too! How does he manage? Where does he find the time? It took Noam Chomsky years and years of unremitting study to reach Penn’s level of absurdity and it took Ward Churchill almost half that long to turn himself into an incompetent jackass. Sure, Penn studied auto mechanics and speech at Santa Monica College in Santa Monica, California, but he never graduated. He probably doesn’t know anymore about cars than Michael Moore who once pretended to work for General Motors. Could he give a Stutz Bearcat a decent lube job? Does he know where the left ventricle bicuspid goes on an Essex? Could he replace the sprocket on an Schwinn? Did he learn anything useful at Santa Monica College? Not so as one would notice. Why does he hate America—and particularly, George W. Bush? Oh, he would deny he hates America, but he does. He claims he is as patriotic as the next guy, more patriotic than the Bush girls—those horrid shirkers—but he isn’t.

Penn inherited his position in Hollywood’s Sovietized economic and political nomenklatura. (There’s more nepotism in Tinsel Town than there was in the Adams’s Family—that’s Morticia and Gomez not John and John Quincy) Penn’s dad, Leo, was an actor and a TV director. His credits included Star Trek, Kojak, and Trapper John, M.D. He was an ardent Stalinist—he supported neutrality during World War Two until, of course, Germany invaded Russia. He was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee after the war and was blacklisted for refusing to testify. He was not an Elia Kazan; he knew how to bite the Capitalist hand that fed him. It’s a lesson Sean learned well. It makes Sean’s hatred of America and Bush easier to understand but no less grotesque and repulsive.

Sean does hate America—he hates America because the America he and the Bellefontes and O’Donnells profess to love does not exist; it’s the America Penn wants America to become that he loves, where a sexualized serendipity oozes from every rock, rill and alms house, where a Marxist horn of plenty dumps endless loads of goodies equally on Rockefellers, child molesters, single moms, pornographers, ne’er-do-wells and anybody who may be thinking of crossing the border in the next hundred years. Penn and Bill Maher and Gwyneth Paltrow, among others, want America to become more like Europe because Europe is—they mistakenly believe—on the cutting edge of civilization. Poor fools! Bush and Cheney and Condi Rice stand in their way. That is hard to take—and so is the collective remembrance of millions of Americans who prefer Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, George Patton and Rooster Cogburn to Norman Thomas and the Chicago Seven. In their miasma, Penn—and especially Maher—have failed to grasp what is going on in Europe. The cutting edge of civilization on the Continent is decidedly Islamic. Mohammed is wielding the sword and it is biting deeply.

If Penn and Maher and the dolts, rubes and yokels among their Hollywood friends had spent a few moments pondering the fate of Theo van Gogh and that of Salman Rushdie, and less time with their heads in the ground looking for the Socialist Nirvana they might have noticed the guy with the bomb in his turban chasing the Europeans out of Europe. As it is, Penn is no worse than Rosie O’Donnell on an average day and a bit worse than Clem Kaddilehopper on one of his worst. That is not enough. And he wants to play Einstein!

Sean should go back to school and finish his associate’s degree in auto mechanics. Maxi Muffler is hiring and there’s an opening in Amsterdam—maybe he could lay a flower on the spot where Theo van Gogh felt the cutting edge of civilization.

“Ve haf vays to make you talk.”

That was not Bela Lugosi applying a cigarette lighter to Harpo Marx’s big toe. Not even Groucho could get much out of Harpo but there are people who need little or no encouragement to spill the beans or to say what is necessary when captured by the enemy. Others will not talk no matter what. Take Senator John McCain (R-AZ). The Senator was shot down over Hanoi and held POW by the North Vietnamese Army for five-and-a-half years and mum was the word; he didn’t talk—at least not for a long time. It was name, rank and serial number and nothing else, no confessions, no apologies. Five-and-a-half-years is a long time—a litany of excruciating pain and broken limbs. Leading Seaman Faye Turney didn’t last a week.

McCain was kept in solitary confinement for a while and then shared a cell with fellow POW Mike Christian. A concrete slab in the middle of the room served as a bed. They were abused, beaten and fed small amounts of food. It wasn’t Andersonville but it wasn’t much better; it was the Hanoi Hilton. One of McCain’s interrogators thought highly of American writer Ernest Hemingway. McCain told him Hemingway was violently anti-Communist. Leading Seaman Faye Turney didn’t last a week.

Turney was one of the15 British Sailors and Marines ‘detained’ in Iran after ‘illegally’ entering Iranian waters last week. Maybe it was the Crescent Carpet treatment she received. She certainly fared better than McCain. She was fed, provided with the best of everything, even given a headscarf to protect her hair from the stiff salt breezes blowing off the Strait of Hormuz. And they gave her a pen and some paper so she could notify the folks back home that she was safe and sound—better cared for, in fact, by her new friends than she had been under the misguided fools inhabiting the White House and Number Ten Downing Street.

See? Interrogators don’t need cigarette lighters and bamboo splinters. If the Vietnamese had given McCain a franking privilege and access to the world’s media he might have been more cooperative. And a Big Mac and some pork rinds wouldn’t have hurt either. The chances are though it wouldn’t have had much of an effect on McCain. He can be one stubborn hombre. His grandfather commanded the naval air wing at the Battle of Okinawa in 1945 and his dad was Commander of American forces in Vietnam while John was lodged in the Hanoi Hilton. McCain broke both arms and one leg while landing so he might have found it difficult to write a letter home if given the opportunity. He wasn’t. He gave his name, rank and serial number. And even though Ramsey Clark was in the neighborhood he wasn’t offered legal counsel.

In less than a week Faye Turney has written three letters—allegedly. (The Iranian Guards are more noted for practicing taqiyya than for honesty so they might have written those letters for Faye) Turney’s supposed third letter—just released by the Iranian embassy in London—was addressed To British People, not to the Corinthians, not to the Crusaders, To British People. “A am writing to you as a British service person,” the letter says, “who has been sent to Iraq, sacrificed due to the intervening policies of the Bush and Blair governments. We were arrested after entering Iranian waters…for this I am deeply sorry…The Iranian people have treated me well…I have written a letter to the people of Iran apologizing for our actions. Whereas we hear and see on the news the way prisoners were treated in Abu Ghrayb and other Iraqi jails by the British and American personnel, I have received total respect and faced no harm. It is now our time to ask our government to make a change to its oppressive behavior towards other people.”

Why couldn’t it have been Rosie O’Donnell instead of Faye Turney? Rosie would have given them a piece of her mind—a small piece perhaps, she doesn’t have much to spare, but even a small piece would have been more than Turney offered. Rosie would have told Mahmoud Ahmadinejad where to stuff that old headscarf. She outweighs him by at least fifty pounds Pair Rosie with Joy Behar and they could take Ahmadinejad and Ali Khamenei in a tag-team match two out of three. How come there aren’t any Rosie O’Donnells in the British Navy? They need a new recruiting program.

There are those who say Faye Turney should have been home with her little girl; that women have no place in the military. It could be. A BBC reporter interviewed Faye last week on board HMS Cornwall—a few hours later Faye was captured by the Iranian Guards. “I am the only mom on board,” she said. “My little girl is growing up every day. I’m missing that. A lot of people find it hard to understand why and how I can do the job I do, but I have always wanted to join the forces…You can’t sit back just because you’re a girl.” And now she is sitting back—and wearing a headscarf. Isn’t that against regulations—a headscarf today, a burqa tomorrow? This is not Lord Nelson’s Navy.

Experts believe the 15 hostages—that’s right, they are hostages—are being held in a barracks in the foothills of the Alborz Mountains. Alire-za Nourizadeh, a senior researcher at the Center for Arab-Iranian Studies in London, says, “They will be scared. They will feel under pressure because they will hear chants of ‘Death to America, death to the U.K.’ (from the barracks). They will see men with guns. They will see all sorts of threatening gestures from the guards and the people around them will look at them with hate in their eyes.”

Sure, but seven of the captives are Royal Marines, they have undergone extensive survival training. They know how to react in these situations—how to cope with being captured. They should be able to keep a stiff upper lip. It’s not surprising that one of the eight sailors caved. They weren’t put through the same blood and guts routine as the Royal Marines. The Marines are made of sterner stuff. Of course, it’s been a long time since the British Navy produced a Chesty Puller or an Ollie North—apparently too long. One of the Royal Marines caved. Maybe they threatened him with a headscarf. Anyway, Royal Marine rifleman Nathan Thomas Summers appeared on Iranian TV to apologize to the Iranian people. “We illegally trespassed on Iran’s territory and were arrested by the Iranian Border Guard,” he said. “I would like to deeply apologize to the Iranian people for the issue.” No black eyes, no broken bones; how many times did Summers bounce a baseball against the wall of his cell before he came to the decision to confess ‘his’ crime?

When the North Vietnamese realized they were holding the son of the Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Command as a POW they offered to send him home. McCain refused. He would not go home unless all the men captured before him went home first. McCain spent an extra five years in captivity because of his decision—it was the right one, the only one he could have made as an officer and a gentleman, and an exceedingly difficult and courageous one but he made it.

No matter how this hostage crises plays out neither the Royal Navy nor the Royal Marines are going to gain any glory. McCain suffered incredible abuse and privation for five-and-a-half-years—for Turney and Summers it may as well have been five-and-a-half-minutes.

Wherever he is, Lord Louis Mountbatten is turning restlessly in his sleep.