"Call me Hakoris!"
Those were the spoken words which interrupted my troubled thoughts this morning.
That short sentence was reminiscent of the first line of Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick.
But when I looked to see who had arrived, I saw that the speaker was not attired for
whaling. My little friend, thespian and sometime model, Horatio H. Hamster Esq., had
popped in for a visit, and his costume was more appropriate for an ancient Egyptian
palace, than it was for a vessel like the Pequod. His opening line had eliminated any
question of what the middle "H" in his name stood for, during this visit.
I greeted him warmly and thanked him for stopping by for a little chat. It is always
good to hear the latest, inside news about the events and troubles, here in our little
animal kingdom. He seemed a bit depressed, despite his royal finery, so, as I began
a quick sketch of him, I asked how things were going for him and his friends.
He answered that he was sorry to have to say that his theater company at the troubled
Quadruped Playhouse, was even more sharply divided than ever. Although a majority
of the company had voted to expel Donald J. Skunk from membership, because of his
unrelenting stench, he still has a minority of supporters who want the company to have
a second vote on his membership. The skunk's friends are still the same cast of
characters, including Lindsey Groundhog, Ted Coyote, Kevin McWeasel and that
whole family of nearly deaf and blind foxes. And adding to this turmoil in the company
is the skunk's cousin, Ron deCivet Cat, who would like those supporters of the skunk
to switch their loyalty to him and his particularly unpleasant aroma. He wants to make
a name for himself by directing a new production of Shakespeare's Antony And
Cleopatra, staring himself as Antony, and Julia Rabbit as Cleopatra. He offered
Horatio the role of Ptolemy X111.
"The P in Ptolemy is silent, you know", said Horatio, "and my part in the
production would be equally silent because Ptolemy The Eighth was already
dead before the play begins. When I Ptolled him that, he said that he would
do a rewrite and put in a different pharaoh. So I Ptolled him that it was not
Ptolerable to rewrite Shakespeare, and that adding a different pharaoh was a
Pterrible idea, and that it will end up as a Ptrully Ptragic Ptragedy!"
When I asked Horatio if his words had any effect on the deCivit Cat's plans for the
play, he said that the rewrite was continuing. evidently with the intention of eliminating
the role of Cleopatra as much as possible, because everyone could see that Julia was
far more talented than Ron, and he just didn't like being out shown on stage.
The last information that Horatio had received from the amateur playwright, was
that Horatio would play a Pharaoh by the name of Hakoris, who also lived well
before the time of Antony and Cleopatra. So it seemed that accuracy and logic
were not figuring into the author's version of history.
But it was beginning to look like the play would never get on stage, because
Horatio said that a majority of the company was becoming tired of the Civet stench.
As I was finishing my sketch, and Horatio was preparing to leave, I asked him
how I should say goodbye to an ancient Ptolemaic Pharaoh. And he quickly replied,
"Just lay your Ptributes on my Ptomb!" With that he was gone as silently as he had
arrived.
After Horatio's departure, my thoughts returned to the nation's troubling current
events. The notable, current contenders for presidential nominee of the Republican
Party, have just run a dog and pony show through Iowa and Wisconsin, and it was
mostly dogs. Only one of this group of cowards was willing to say that he would
not vote for a traitor to our democracy, to become president again.
What is the reason for this cowardice? One third or more of the MAGA base
of their party has fully accepted Trump's lies about a stolen election and a politicized
Department of Justice. They are all wallowing in their deliberate ignorance as
happily as hogs in a mud-hole. Any candidate who wants to win the votes of these
fools knows that he, or she, can not contradict the liar-in-chief. They value their
own political ambitions more than they value truth and justice.
And what is the reason for the steady allegiance of the MAGA idiots, to such
an obvious fraud as Donald Trump? I can't help but feel that when a man who
holds the office of the President of United States, is constantly displaying his
hatreds, prejudices, xenophobia, and mistrust of our federal institutions, then his
openly warped behavior makes it seem somehow more comfortable for people
to show the same warped flaws in their own character.
And what about the so-called leading Republican alternative to Trump, Ron
Desantis? Like the good little Nazi that he is, he has been busily taking away
the personal freedoms of the people of Florida: banning books, telling teachers
what they are allowed to teach, telling women that they do not have the right
to determine their own future or the control of their own bodies, and rewriting
history to fit in with his own views. When he stands up and proclaims that the
Africans who arrived here as slaves were here in some kind trade-school, why
wasn't he laughed off the stage. He seems to have forgotten that they were
not here by choice, and that the so-called trade-school lasted their entire lives.
If Desantis is the best presidential candidate that the Republican's can
offer us, then, as my little friend Horatio might say as Ptolemy, ........
that is a Ptruly Ptragic Ptragedy!
Eugene P. McNerney
