"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more."

So said soon-to-be-fired, ultimately assassinated news anchor Howard Beale in the 1976 movie, Network.

I tivo'ed the movie last week, and have now watched it at least 10 times since. It just gets better and better, thanks to Paddy Chayevsky's Academy Award winning script, with biting, literate, savage dialogue, that makes current movies seem just sodden and heavy-handed.

Everyone knows the line, "I'm mad as hell and not going to take it any more." But what about these gems? Some seems quite appropriate to our current state of depression, isolation, desperation and exasperation.

Diana Christensen: "Hi. I'm Diana Christensen, a racist lackey of the imperialist ruling circles.
Laureen Hobbs: I'm Laureen Hobbs, a badass commie nigger.
Diana Christensen: Sounds like the basis of a firm friendship."

"Howard Beale: [on the air] I just ran out of bullshit."

"The American people are turning sullen. They've been clobbered on all sides by Vietnam, Watergate, the inflation, the depression. They've turned off, shot up, and they've fucked themselves limp, and nothing helps."

"The American people want somebody to articulate their rage for them."

"The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime."

"I will not be an accessory in your life."

"This is not a psychotic breakdown; it's a cleansing moment of clarity."

Are we having a cleansing moment of clarity now, after a decade of mass psychosis?