Pleased To Meet You, Hope You Guessed My Name [historical personages section]

[Amaurote]

My face is very familiar to you, and, in some ways, you may even feel that we're related. I've worked in oilfields, sung in choirs and served time in prison. I've been exiled more times than anyone you're liable to meet. I know when to sit still and when to move.

Who am I?


http://www.nochicktrix.com/fun/oth/vb/am/555.jpg

[Diva]

Mick Jagger?

[Amaurote]

Mick Jagger's good, but it's not right, Di. I'm a politician.

I like to embalm my heroes, of which I have very few. In fact, none. I have no real friends. Indeed, the only things I have fewer of than friends are enemies. This is of little consequence to me because I'm quite a controlling person.

[berly]

Am, I have not the slightest clue!

Are you positive it's not Mick?

Would you please continue to post some of these even if I have no chance of getting any of them right? I learn so much from you. *no, no people - I DID NOT forget my medication today* I am asking you to be my personal amusement source. *cough*

[Amaurote]

Aussie: no, it isn't Elton John, though he is similarly dictatorial in a non-sausage-jockey manner.

Berly: I'm absolutely positive that it isn't Mick Jagger, though the person I'm describing was nearly as intolerably evil as Mick Jagger's performance in Freejack.

Another set of clues: I smoke a pipe, I hail from the same place as Usantic -at least I would if I was as geographically-illiterate as Amaurote - and I'm responsible for the deaths of several million people.

I am loved by everyone, particularly those whose families I hold hostage in prison camps. My name has become synonymous with political terror, and yet I was suddenly, conveniently exculpated for the latter part of World War Two.

[berly]

Ok, I'm feeling like quite the knob right now because I'm fairly certain that you have given away the answer...and I still don't know it. I keep thinking Dolly Madison and only because I think Zingers could be used as a wepon against humanity. Maybe I have forgotten my medication? =)

How 'bout we try a little hangman for the answer?

How many letters and are there any os?

[Amaurote]

Berly: You're getting warmer. There's one "s" in my most famous surname; but no, it isn't Dolly Madison.

I'll give you another clue:

I'm known by many different pseudonyms, but my most famous was a reference to a particularly resilent type of metal.

[The_Roach]

Are you still alive?

[berly]

Well, Mr. Trebek - What is Steel?

Can't be Danielle Steele, although she would strike terror in my library if I ever found one of her books in it.

C'mon, Am...help the clueless girlie out some more, please.

[The_Roach]

I am loved by everyone, particularly those whose families I hold hostage in prison camps.
Was this intended to be present tense?

[Amaurote]

Roach: I've been dead for 48 years, and the rumour is that some of my close personal friends assassinated me. I'm speaking in present tense purely for the purposes of this description: I'm dead, and the people I imprisoned or took hostage are themselves either dead or at liberty.

Berly: You're absolutely spot on. Steel is the metal I partly named myself after.

[The_Roach]

Are you Joseph Stalin?

[Amaurote]

You cunning capitalist lickspittle Trotskyite running dog of the revolution, Roach: I knew you'd get me in the end!

http://www.nochicktrix.com/fun/oth/vb/am/koba.jpg

[The_Roach]

I've never been a fan of Trotsky. I've always (in a sick kind of way) admired Stalin as a politician. He knew how to spin propaganda, and he knew how to rule by fear, yet still be loved.

A true Machiavellian.

[berly]

*whew* Now that the weekend has landed ("Human Traffic"), and Roach got Am "in the end" (wait 'til Diva reads that), I'm going to go out and see what kind of trouble I can find.

Am, do another one sometime.

[Amaurote]

Good point, Roach: That's partly what fascinates me so much about Baggydog at the moment - I can see why an intellectual like Baggydog might admire an organizational genius like Trotsky, but not why anyone would think of distinguishing between the use of revolutionary Terror by Trotsky and the use of revolutionary Terror by Stalin. Both are equally culpable; the only difference is that Stalin was more sincerely cynical, and more temperamentally disposed towards its use than an intellectual like Trotsky.

I'm personally an admirer of Kerensky and the February Revolution, of course, so I don't particularly admire either Trotsky or Stalin as "revolutionaries", their personal talents aside. Having said that, there is one Stalin quote that constantly cracks me up:

(To Krupskaya) "If you don't stop creating splits in the Party we'll have to find Lenin a new widow."

I know I shouldn't laugh at that, but I can never control myself when I hear it...

[Diva]

So, Amaurote... Have anymore 'Who Am I' up your sleeve?

[Amaurote]

I seem happy enough, don't I? Well, that's exactly what I'd expect you to say, you goddamn pinko faggot commie bastards! I hate you - I hate every single goddamn one of you. You always hated me, just like the scum-sucking whoreson American press - always. Always. Always hating me, stabbing me in the back, undermining my hard work, stopping me doing what I had to do to make this country great again- accusing me of beating my wife, abusing drugs, authorizing the assassination of foreign leaders, ordering nuclear strikes in the middle of drug-induced stupors. Fucking lying pinkoes, just like Hiss. My old friend Joe McCarthy was right about you - rotten, rotten to the core, always ready to sell out the American dream to the nearest goddamn Marxist-Leninist. Bastards.

Well, I'm in charge now. It took me a long time to get here, but I succeeded in the end. You can't keep a good man down, not one who works as hard as me. I don't come from a privileged background like those effete, cocktail-quaffing rad-lib bastards - the same ones who always try and undermine me, to slander my good name - but I'm going to do it ten times better, bigger, larger than life. I'll show you. I'll show you all, every single goddamn hateful ungrateful bastard sonofabitch one of you. They're going to put my fucking name on the moon. What do you think of that, you bastards?

Who am I?

http://www.nochicktrix.com/fun/oth/vb/am/01.gif

[berly]

Nevermind...I thought I had a decent guess but I don't...

*nagging thought*
This is you, isn't it Am?

[Amaurote]

No, Berly: that photograph is of me, and I deeply resent the insinuation that I have anything in common with that limey greaseball crypto-communist sonofabitch. I hate him.

I liked McArthur, and I liked Ike (though he didn't like me), too- they were patriots, honest Joes like the best of 'em, not like these goddamn left-leaning wiseass traitorous peaceniks the people elect now - but I really meant Joe McCarthy, my old drinking buddy and political soul-mate. He was a true patriot. When the press turned on him, I alone defended him. Well, they got their goddamn wish - they won't have him to kick around any more, nor me neither.

Give me the codes, Henry. Good night, Ho Chi Minh, you Marxist-Leninist gook sonofabitch: I'm gonna wipe you out, Hanoi and every single cowardly bastard Red one of you. I'll nuke you! I'll exterminate you! I'll kill you all, you commie bastards!

I am an internationally recognized peacemaker.

[berly]

And photographs, for that matter...

Don't laugh at me... is it that Winter Chambers guy?


No, Berly: that photograph is of me,

Lookie! Am made a typo! I can die happy now.

[Diva]

I love it!!! Ami, not the mystery man. I'm gonna guess... It was on the tip of my nose, which sadly enough is what I'm using to identify him. Nixon?

[Amaurote]

No, Berly: I'm not the Winter Chambers guy. I'll get to the point, because I have to order the Teamsters to beat up some peacenik longhairs - I used to work in a grocery store, but I soon made good as a lawyer after WWII, before some helpful oil barons helped turn me into Eisenhower's political ally. A notoriously effective political campaigner, I reportedly received the second largest electoral vote in US history. I beat JFK on the radio, but not on the televisual media, and I've hated him ever since. Still, I'll get him - and the rest of those privileged Mick bastards, with their oh-so-fashionable liberal views. You just see if I don't.

I'll show you. I'll show you all. I know how to win in a bar-fight.

I'm tricky like that.

[Amaurote]

Diva is victorious...well done that woman!

http://www.nochicktrix.com/fun/oth/vb/am/nixon.jpg

[berly]

My bad, for like the 985th time. Am didn't make a typo...*duh* I get it now.....

*berly looks for someone to sell her a clue*

[Amaurote]

Sinister, shadowy figures are whispering conspiratorially in a corner. It is Ehrlichman, Nixon and Amaurote. Amaurote is whimpering like a girl, or possibly some kind of malfunctioning Cabbage Patch Doll, circa 1986.

Nixon: (Sneering) I saved your ass that time, Amaurote, you worthless piece of limey crypto-communist rotten-toothed no-backboned slimy sonofabitch shit - you misplaced your goddamn prepositions like the pinko bastard you always were, but I took the blame anyway, just to throw Berly off the scent. In return, I'm calling in the favour.

Ehrlichman:Very good, Mr President.

Nixon: (Sneering) Thanks, Thug #1. Yes, Amaurote, as a quid pro quo for me saving your ass from embarrassment, I now want you to say what a great President I was, how very noble, how I was a master of realpolitik, and, in particular, how I had nothing whatsoever to do with the subversion of the LBJ-sponsored Vietnamese Peace Deal, even though I did.

Amaurote: (Terrified) Duh....muh...uh...okay, Boss.

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Richard Nixon was a great President. He was a noble, pragmatic statesman of great integrity, a master of realpolitik, and, in particular, he had nothing whatsoever to do with the subversion of the LBJ-sponsored 1968 Vietnamese Peace Deal. I thank you for your attention.
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Nixon: (To Ehrlichman) Very well done. Now beat him up, denounce him as a Communist and throw him in the nearest lake.

And they all lived happily ever after.

[The_Roach]

Curses! I didn't even get to read it before the answer was revealed. Good job, Diva!