Monty Python on Reality

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I remember a Monty Python piece . . .

A grubby industrial city in the north (Leeds, as I recall) had hired a magician to help put up new public housing.  One Python, dressed as a magician, was standing in front of a screen on which a film-clip of an apartment-building demolition was played backwards.  As the magician waved his wand, a pile of rubble lying on the ground leaped into the air, and formed itself into a tall apartment-building.

In the skit that followed, a resident was being interviewed in his apartment.  He extolled the amenities of the magical building, and how much he enjoyed living in Leeds.

The interviewer asked (quoting from memory), "Where did you live before ?"

The resident mentions off-handedly that he formerly lived in the manor-house at his estate in Devon.

"But", says the puzzled interviewer,  "Wasn't that much nicer than a one-bedroom apartment in a public-housing block ?"

A quizzical look crosses the resident's face, and the light of thought begins to show in his visage.

"Well, yes," he says, as he seems to suddenly awaken, "Yes, that was ever so much nicer."

Camera-work makes the walls of the apartment seem to slowly lean to the right, slightly out-of-plumb at first, but at a greater and greater angle as the resident comes to his realization, and an ominous loud creaking grows.

The resident and interviewer both rush to the opposite wall, and throw their weight against it.

"NO, NO !" cries the resident, "I like it here much better !"  The wall begins to reverse itself toward plumb.

"It's much nicer here !  Much nicer."  And the wall returns to vertical.

It's a pointed parable for our time.  Reality stands by itself.  False realities, peddled by all varieties of con-men, collapse when the victim wakes up and stops believing in them.

The con-man's guiding adage was always that "you can't cheat an honest man."

Today's political landscape of "alternative realities" probably says a lot about the honesty of most people's political thinking.