Hedgehogs and Whackjobs: A Serious Note of Sorts

Calvin Trillin once wrote about the “(Harry) Golden Rule,” which he summarized as follows: “In modern America, anyone who writes satirically about the events of the day finds it difficult to concoct a situation so bizarre that it may not actually come to pass while his article is still on the presses.” *

I think it’s safe to say that the (Harry) Golden Rule has by now, 20-plus years after its publication, picked up an offshoot or two, one of which might be called the Monty Python Corollary: As fatuous bullshit becomes more and more entrenched, as opposed to being merely part of wacky political satire, the more Pythonesque real-world news will inevitably become.

I have, here in front of me, if not proof of this corollary, then pretty strong empirical evidence for it: “Hedgehogs,” opens this Reuters article, “have finally humbled burger giant McDonald’s after years of campaigning, forcing the company to redesign its killer McFlurry ice-cream containers.”

The article goes on to say that hedgehogs: (A) really, really like sugar; (B) have died in “untold numbers” as a result of climbing into McFlurry containers and being then unable to extricate themselves; and (C) are apparently represented by something called the “British Hedgehog Preservation Society.”

I admit that the late 70s, pretty much (thank God) all of the 80s and a fair chunk of the 90s are, well, something of a blur to me, but I distinctly remember sitting in a seedy bar in Baltimore—run by graduate students of the Philosophy Department at the Johns Hopkins University (honest) and featuring the world’s nastiest double “cheeseburgers” and 50-cent Budweiser® longnecks—, watching Monty Python and seeing sketches featuring the Ministry of Silly Walks and, I'm fairly certain, the British Hedgehog Preservation Society....

For those who have never seen the old Python television shows, they were masterpieces of very silly satire indeed, sending up outdated social values and government foolishness in a way that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would no doubt consider seditious. Incidentally, am I the only one who thinks that Mr. Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney are secret gay lovers? I mean, c’mon: Nobody acts that butch unless, like Rob Halford, they’re keeping up appearances for an audience of he-man, groin-scratching angry posers.

Anyway: I’m beginning to think, 30 years after Python started airing in the US, that their silliness, inspired as it was even then, was actually prescient. Take, for instance, the character of “The Colonel,” as portrayed by the late, great and gay Graham Chapman.

[Ed. Note: Lest you PC types start getting all bent out of shape, there is a reason for mentioning “gay” specifically; it’s called “foreshadowing” and is a subtle literary technique used by all your finer writers, like, well, Iggy.]

The Colonel would come on at (in-) opportune moments during the show and announce that he had been offended by this jab at the government, that poke the Royal Family, or the other stab at the Army; these segments were, needless to say, rife with hilarity. Except that they’ve come true. I mean, isn’t that pretty much what Rumsfeld and Cheney do anymore? And let’s refresh: Chapman was gay. QED, eh?

It occurs to me that the United States may jump a notch or two in world opinion if those two would just come the hell out of the closet. Rumsfeld could perhaps institute, by way of celebration, “Casual Bondage Wednesdays” (‘Hump Day’; get it?) there at the DOD and God alone knows what kind of action Cheney might finally get, especially with all that extra pocket change he’ll be jingling after his cut of the Halliburton/Iraq boondoggle starts rolling in.

For one thing, it would tell our allies that maybe we’ve lightened up a little, which is never a bad thing. And lest you think—as the Rumsfelds and Cheneys who sit in well-protected offices harrumphing hypocritically about the “moral and intellectual confusion” of the very people they work for (that would be us, remember?) would like you to—that lightening up sends our enemies a message of weakness in the “war” on terror, don’t worry: It’s their job to make you afraid. That’s how they stay in business—at least ‘til they come out of the closet anyhow: By making you think that the world is a horrible and mean-spirited place with people out to get you in all sorts of ways you can’t even begin to imagine. Well, yeah, but we’re used to that anymore: This is America, the home of Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, PETA and so-called “right-to-life” groups who somehow think that their calling makes it okay to kill a doctor or two.

Python understood, even savored, the essential absurdity-in-truth that tends to flavor current events the way anchovy paste might flavor a banana split. They saw that absurdity is, especially given the goobers we keep putting in office, a government’s stock-in-trade and that it can be an ugly thing indeed. And what they mostly understood—what Messrs. Cheney and Rumsfeld (long may their forbidden love wave) never will—is that if the absurdity is not aired, not brought to light, then stomped on and poked at and tickled, it will become truth.

Just ask Harry Golden.

*(From the introduction to Uncivil Liberties, 1982.)