Of Politics and Parrots
Regardless of where you stand politically, it can be frustrating to disagree on reality itself. Yet in today’s current climate, where consumers buy their news bespoke, reality itself is in doubt. Up can be down, black can be white, and a dead parrot can indeed be pining.
Monty Python saw this coming.
In 1960s Great Britain, garage mechanics were early adopters of alternate reality. If you said “My brakes don’t work,” they would reply “Well, that’s standard for this model, isn’t it?” or “They’re not supposed to work going downhill.” This is what inspired Cleese to write the famous Dead Parrot sketch.
For those of you unfamiliar with this bit of brilliance, Cleese plays a disgruntled and very articulate customer trying to return a dead parrot to the store he just purchased it from. Palin, the shopkeeper, goes to great lengths to deny that the dead bird is dead. After much back and forth, Cleese delivers a monologue outlining all the different adjectives for dead, and the now contrite clerk offers him a replacement pet — a slug.
Cleese (and co-writer Chapman) saw this as a customer service issue. As he finished the sketch on Monty Python’s Flying Circus, “If you want to get anything done in this country, you’ve got to complain until you’re blue in the mouth.” But here in the U.S., we’ve adopted this reality denial into our politics, using many of the same tactics that Palin uses in the sketch.
- ) “No, he’s resting.”
Bad behavior is often reframed as innocence that merely resembles bad behavior. Georgia Congressman Andrew Clyde, for instance, insisted that the January 6 insurrection (in which the Capitol was breached, feces was smeared on the wall and Capitol police officers were attacked and killed) was just “a normal tourist visit.” When Palin claimed the dead parrot was just resting, little did he know that he was laying out Mr. Clyde’s political strategy. - ) “Pining for the fjords?!”
Once Cleese makes it clear that the parrot could not possibly be resting, Palin claims that it’s “probably pining for the fjords.” (The Parrot is, after all, a Norwegian Blue.) If you can’t call bad behavior good, Palin shows us the next step is to rationalize. A huge swath of our electorate is actively calling for a military coup to overthrow the current government, a move that can safely be described as unconstitutional. Yet these same voters claim to be patriots. To rationalize that one must destroy the country in order to save it is a move pulled straight out of Palin’s book. - “He’s stunned!”
Cleese proves the Parrot is not resting by screaming into its ear and tossing it about. “You stunned him just as he was waking up!” screams Palin. Many are the politicians who are caught in the web of a conspiracy, and instead of admitting their error, they accuse their accusers of lying. This is especially hilarious when, two days later, they resign. Still, you have to admire the outrageous testicular fortitude of the counter attack. - “There! He moved!”
Let us not forget the outright scam. Creating false documents or drawing on weather maps to convince people that something untrue is true has become very presidential in recent years. How reminiscent of Palin’s lame attempt to prove life of Parrot by giving the cage a sneaky shove.
But there’s one thing that Cleese got wrong. No amount of speechifying, however eloquent or thesaurus driven, will change the minds of these politicians. They will insist to the end that the parrot is alive, even as the feathers fall off and only some bones and a beak remain.
It would be nice to expect more from our leaders than a shifty clerk in a comedy sketch. But sadly, we can expect less. We won’t even get a slimy slug for our efforts.
