Mao: You know we'll meet with your confrere
The Democratic candidate
If he should win. Nixon: That is a fate
We hope you won't have to endure.
I'd like to make another tour
As President. Mao: You've got my vote.
I back the man who's on the right. Kissinger: Who's in the right you mean. Mao: No, no. Nixon: What they put forward we put through. Mao: I like right-wingers: Nixon, Heath -- Nixon: De Gaulle. Mao: No, not De Gaulle. I'm loath
To file him in that pigeonhole. Kissinger: But Germany's another tale. Mao: We've more than once led the right wing
Forward while text-book cadres swung
Back into goose-step, home at last.
How your most rigid theorist
Revises as he goes along! Nixon: Now you're referring to Wang Ming,
Chiang, Chang Kuo-tao and Li Li-san. Mao: I spoke generally. The line
We take now is a paradox.
Among the followers of Marx
The extreme left, the doctrinaire,
Tend to be fascist. Nixon: And the far
Right? Mao: True Marxism is called that by
The extreme left. Occasionally
The true left calls a spad a spade
And tells the left it's right.
...
Founders come first, then profiteers....
Fiction, you could say, but the librettist, Alice Goodman, has said it was very faithful to the actual dialogue. Anyone know more about this?
Doug