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Problèmes d’actualité ( 2 )     In the cartoon by Arnold Roth about the GOP leadership choosing a new mascot, if one looks carefully, one of the options is a turkey. Well, lo and behold, a French political satirist had the same idea in the journal La Caricature in 1833, during the “July Monarchy” of Louis Philippe I, and it applies very well to today’s situation with the pro-Trump faction of the Republicans.

Ouverture d’une séance Dindonnelle « Mes amis, mes succulen[t]s amis, je vous ai assemblé[s] pour vous demander à quelle sauce vous voulez que je vous mange . » Les députés dindons : « Vous nous ferez, Saigneur, en nous croquant beaucoup d’honneur . » « Vive le roâ ! » « Vive le rot-ah ! » Opening of the Turkey caucus “My friends, my succulent friends, I have brought you together to ask you, with what sauce would you like me to eat you?” Dindon deputies : “You honor us gweatly, Sir, by cwunching us up.” “Vive le roâ !” “Vive le rot-ah !”           (Auguste Bouquet)

Louis Philippe professed to be for the common man but he and his henchmen looked after the interests of the elites, and the cartoon calls out the folly of his supporters in the parliament. Sound familiar? Le dindon is “turkey” in French and I think it sounds just right for Trump’s ding-dong boosters, cronies, and enablers (and like an insult to turkeys, which are very smart). The worshipful, clucking députés dindons mispronounce “seigneur” to sound like “blood” (sang) and “roi” to sound like “roast” (rôti; not sure what “roâ” is supposed to sound like, other than a lisp).

Another cartoon in the same volume of La Caricature that also criticizes Louis-Philippe’s Orléanists puts me in mind of the newly installed right-wing majority of our Supreme Court:

Le Renard et les Masques

« Belle tête, dit-il ; mais de cervelle point. » (La Fontaine)

The fox and the masks

“Nice heads, but no brains at all.” (La Fontaine)

          (attributed to Charles Joseph Traviès de Villers)

You could just replace the masks of Louis-Philippe and his ministers with ones of Trump, Mitch McConnell, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito. It goes without saying which groups correspond to the dumb ass and to the clever fox of La Fontaine’s tale.

OK, OK, that’s enough venting . . . let’s end with an appreciation of La Caricature, which had a truly stellar stable of contributors (Philipon, Daumier, Grandville . . .):

Of Pears and Kings