Magpie Tales: Duck Soup

Photo supplied as prompt by Magpie Tales

If I’m going to write this, I’d better hurry before someone else (Roger O. Green, where are you?) does it first.

This is my submission to

Magpie Tales 87,

hosted every week by Willow of Willow Manor.

IS IT TIME FOR

DUCK SOUP AGAIN?

The last movie to star four of the Marx Brothers (Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo) became a classic achieving almost cult status in the 1960s but was a failure when it first appeared in 1933.

Mussolini banned it in Italy, and is it any wonder? It lampooned dictators, authoritarian government, and Fascism.

In the US, the satiric film’s blatant anti-war message antagonized a nation suffering through the Depression, and its irreverent treatment of government of all kinds annoyed everyone from Roosevelt to the neighborhood dogcatcher.

I don’t know much about US politics, although I’ll admit I still harbor high hopes for Barack Obama, a brave young man who deliberately walked into the fiery furnace in an effort to save his country, and who is now being blamed for his apparent failure to right the untenable situation left him by the outgoing Bushies.

However, here in Canada, I’m thinking it might be time to roll out the old movie again. What we now have in Ottawa is the next best thing to a fascist (far-to-the-right-of-right) dictator leading an authoritarian (bash the protestors) government after declaring he isn’t interested in what the people of Canada want (to be heard).

Who better to poke holes in his ego than Harpo Marx and his bombastic brother Groucho? Harpo, like Stephen Harper, didn’t like to speak, so, after trying it onstage once, he simply refused to do it again.

Just ask any reporter, after a Parliament Hill press conference, what the Prime Minister had to say for himself.

“Who? Harpie?” the reporter will reply. “He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even whistle, blow a horn, or play a harp to express his emotions, so I’m beginning to suspect he doesn't have any.”