As some of you may recall, Stephen Colbert had a recurring bit on The Late Show in 2016 titled "Road to the White House" (which is where that image comes from), which featured Trump as the Wizard in his Wizard of Oz parody.
But as we get closer to the Inauguration,* and I hear about Trump's various rantings and promises, I keep harking back to that scene from the movie where Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion confront the Wizard....
Tell me if this dialogue seems eerily prescient (or familiar).
DOROTHY: If you were really great and powerful, you'd keep your promises!
WIZARD: Do you presume to criticize the great Oz? You ungrateful creatures! Think yourselves lucky that I'm giving you an audience tomorrow instead of 20 years from now!
[TOTO PULLS BACK THE CURTAIN HIDING OZ]
WIZARD: Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! The Great and Powerful Oz has spoken!
SCARECROW: You humbug!
DOROTHY: You're a very bad man!
WIZARD: No, my dear, I'm a very good man. I'm just a bad wizard.
Now substitute "Press" and/or "Democrats" for "Dorothy" and/or "Scarecrow" and "Trump" for "Wizard" and "Oz" and "president" for "wizard" (in that last sentence) and PRESTO! It's like L. Frank Baum predicted Trump over 100 years ago!
For those of you who didn't slavishly read every Oz book (like I did), the "Wizard" was actually a humbug, "a willfully false, deceptive, or insincere person," who was blown to Oz in a hot air balloon, and falsely worshiped as a great man and made leader of the kingdom,
However, when the Wizard is finally revealed as not a great man but a humbug, he is sent on his way, back to whence he came from -- succeeded, briefly, by the Scarecrow and finally by Ozma of Oz, the rightful ruler of Oz, a benevolent, compassionate leader, adored by her subjects, who refuses to resort to violence.
So maybe there is hope for us yet.
*I think I just threw up a bit typing that.
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4 comments:
The Wizard identifies the key difference: He is a good man, while Trump is not.
@Dave S., the Wizard said, and probably believed, he was a good man. But he was not. No doubt if you asked Trump if he was a good man, he would likewise tell you he was (though would never cop to being a humbug).
I never really paid attention to Trump until this election - he was totally not on my radar. Just got "Yuge!" out of the library, a 30 year compilation of Doonesbury strips on Trump. He's been a humbug since the first. He's so phony I don't think he knows what real is any more. I guess that's the definition of a pathological liar.
I refuse to refer to him as President Trump. Perhaps he's the un-President, like 7-Up is the un-Cola, since he lost the popular vote so yuge-ly.
@Anna, except I liked 7-Up. And while it may have been bad for you, it didn't take away your healthcare, threaten to launch a nuclear war, or get rid of healthy drinks and replace them all with sugary crap that's bad for you.
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