road?
Tell us about Soapy's land. What made
you give it back to the Indians?
Again, as I said,
I'm not much for interviews.
I never was very good at public speaking,
so maybe we could...
- What's this?
- A quote from Soapy's favourite book.
Sums up his feelings about the land
he gave you. Why don't you read it?
Oh. Uh, OK, sure.
Apparently, this is a quote
from Chief Seattle, dated 1852.
Go? OK.
"The President in Washington sends word
that he wishes to buy our land."
"But how can you buy or sell
the sky, the land?"
"The Earth does not belong to man,
man belongs to the Earth."
"All things are connected,
like the blood that unites us all."
"Man did not weave the web of life,
he is merely a strand of it."
"Whatever he does to the web,
he does to himself."
"Your destiny
is a mystery to us."
"What will happen
when the buffalo are all slaughtered?"
Or will some materialistic,
money-grubbing, short-sighted subhuman
sell it to other materialistic,
money-grubbing subhumans,
so they can ravish the land and cover it
with concrete so they can pay less tax?
I know all about your reasons,
all 50,000 of them.
Half of which is mine, by the way.
Not that I'd touch it.
I can't believe I thought
there was hope for you.
Because you are the most vile, odious,
waste of corpuscles I have ever seen!
Maggie.
Maggie, wait!
That was great!
Did you get all that?
Maggie, Maggie!
Maggie, wait.
It's not just your lying
and your cheating that bothers me.
It's your whole... everything.
You wanna talk about
"whole everything", huh?
You do not care about
people's feelings.
All you care about is you and New York
and your precious career!
I did not get off the plane
and say that I am Marcus Welby,
kindly physician
and all-around swell guy.
I was fully prepared
to do my time in Anchorage,
but I am contractually manacled to
this tundra under false pretences.
So if I resort to some unscrupulous
practices to right a greater wrong...
Look! Where's Amnesty International
when it comes to me?
So you're an amoral cretin
and you admit it upfront.
Well, let me tell you something, buster.
That does not excuse you!
Soapy was wrong!
Wrong about what?
What the...?
Oh, good.
Great, wonderful.
Thanks, O'Connell.
This is delightful.
Holling,
tell us about the real Alaska.
Um...
I'm not sure what you mean.
Can you turn your right hand over
so we can see the calluses?
Good eye.
Can you think of some incident that
depicts what Soapy loved about Alaska?
There was the time that
he raced the dogs in the Iditarod.
Did he see it as a metaphor
for the hero's journey
into the wilderness to face himself?
Um...
He thought it was fun.
Soapy used to say that Alaska wasn't
just a state, but... a state of mind.
Hogwash
is a state of mind.
You might as well get rid of those
cute visions that Soapy put into
your idealistic college heads.
Alaska is not a place to run away from
the worid. Alaska is the worid.
You got warm weather resorts
and cold weather resorts.
We've got restaurants.
We've got hotels. We've got shopping.
You've got camping,
boating, ice fishing.
And that is just a drop in the bucket
to what we will have in a couple of years.
Now, people don't want rugged.
People want clean towels.
And people like Soapy Sanderson,
who give the whole worid the idea that
Alaska's full of rednecks livin' in shacks,
make my butt tired!
- Ed?
- Oh.
Sorry.
I'm sorry, Mr Minnifield.
Can you say that all again?
Well, sure. Uh...
Where was I?
Your butt was tired.
Continuing with the Soapy Sanderson
tribute, here's a favourite of Soapy's.
I like it myself. Little Jimmy Dickens,
"Take an Old Cold Tater ".
All right.
Well, the way I see it,
if you're here for four more years or
four more weeks, you're here right now.
And when you're somewhere
you ought to be there because...
it's not about how long you stay in a
place, but what you do while you're there,
and, when you go, is