The Big Store (1941) is not vintage Marx Brothers stuff. By that time, the lads had been in the MGM stable for six years. The once zany nihilists had become old routiniers. Nevertheless, it contains one classic verbal gag that I have had cause to quote again and again over the years.
Grouch is applying (never mind why) for the position of floorwalker at the Big Store – a sort of Macy's/Gimbels place – to the manager, the perpetually exasperated Douglas Dumbrille. The room is crowded with onlookers. The manager puts a test question to Groucho:
*
Manager: A woman has fainted on the fourth floor. What do you do?
Groucho (after brief pause): What color is. her hair?
Manager (in amazement): What color is her hair? What difference does that make?
Groucho (turning to the onlookers): There you go. A woman has fainted on the fourth floor, and he says [weary sigh] 'what difference does that make?'
*
You wouldn't think a rhetorical trick this transparent would work on any audience. You'd be wrong. It is worked constantly, on audiences of all types, in a variety of forms. The latest and greatest practitioner of this verbal sleight of hand is Keith Olbermann of MSNBC. Last fall, Sarah Palin in the midst of her campaign, poked fun at the wastefulness of doing fruit fly research in Paris. France, that could presumably be done just as easily in the United States. The project had been noted as classic pork barrel stuff by a number of tax payer organizations. But that evening, there was Olbermann, in his most pontifical voice and face, so pontifical that it is almost meta-papal, backgrounded by a display of notable projects involving fruit flies, denouncing Palin as an anti-science Luddite. Even though there was no face to face encounter between Grou -er, Olberman – and Sarah Palin, I'll translate it into Marxese.
*
Olbermann: So identify some of these pork-barrel boondoggles you're against.
Palin: Well, going to Paris to do ordinary research for one.
Olbermann: Name the research.
Palin (amazed): Experimentation with fruit flies, I believe.
Olbermann (turning to the MSNBC audience): There you go. I ask her to name wasteful projects and she says [weary sigh] 'experimentation with fruit flies'.
*
It's the same device as Groucho's, but not nearly as funny. Maybe that's because Groucho's is a joke, and Olberman's is a con.
If this was merely a sidenote to the recently concluded campaign, it could be relegated to history with no further ado. But Olbermann is still very much with us, and now beating the drums nightly about the treatment of detainees back in 2002-2003. I don't watch these shows, any of them, of any political stripe. The spectacle of the preacher preaching to the converted doesn't do much for me, no matter who the preacher, who the congregation, or what the scripture. But my friends who do watch Olbermann are having a tough time extracting hard facts from the discussion. The rather limited CIA interrogations seem to be associated with the much larger number of field interrogations done in Iraq and Afghanistan which is in turn conflated with the prisoner abuse in Abu Gharib, which weren't interrogations at all. The more you watch Olberman, the less you understand and the more indignant you become, which I suspect is not a coincidence.
(I should say something about the substantive issue before ending this. Back in 2001-2003, I was more than a little scandalized by the open discussion and public acceptance of harsh interrogation techniques of suspected terrorists. I was particularly infuriated by Alan Dershowitz's suggestion of a torture warrant, which was appalling. There is no question that we as a society have got to decide how to deal with these issues in future. The shock of 9/11 sent us reeling into areas in which we would rather not be. John McCain's opinion on the subject seems to me the correct one, and decisive.
However, there is also no question in my mind that these practices were fully aired, subject to much public discussion, disclosed to Congress, etc. It is rather despicable hypocrisy in my view to hide under your desk for six years, tacitly endorse the tactics of the day, then emerge with your finger pointed when you feel safe. If Olbermann can produce any statement in condemnation or denunciation of the CIA in the 2002-4 time frame, I stand corrected. But as I recall he was making funny noises on Fox Sports at the time.)
So there you have the exposure of the Groucho-tactics used rather openly by Keith Olbermann. The difference is that Groucho Marx made himself a legend playing comic and inartful con men. Olbermann is the real thing, and quite artful. Groucho's act was very funny. Olbermann's isn't funny at all.
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