Nancy Pelosi, queen of the carnival, Pelosi’sdefinition of entrepreneur: Quit your job, government will pay for your health care. I’m not laughing.
Aristotle said, “To invest the law then with authority is, it seems, to invest God and reason only; to invest a man (or Pelosi) is to introduce a beast, as desire is something bestial, and even the best of men in authority are liable to corrupted by passion.
The name Gargantua (and Pelosi), associated with an enormous gorilla, came from Garguntua and Pantagruel, a series of five novels written by Francois Rabelias in the 16th century. It’s the story of two giants, the father Gargantua, and his son, Pantagruel. It’s a satire, including much cruelty, vulgar insults, violence, and humor, with “a certain gaiety of mind pickled in the scorn of fortuitous things,” I’m informed. Sound familiar? “Put your prejudice aside,” says the author in his introduction. “All you’ll find is laughter. . .Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you, I’d rather write about laughing than crying. For laughter makes men human and courageous.” Right! Is it any wonder that Gargantua is the name given to an enormous beast?
Rabelias and Aristotle were prophets. Twenty-first century America, on the one hand, laughing—life is a carnival—on the other hand, crying—life is grotesque realism—the individual part of the socioeconomic and political organization crowd in vogue, it’s carnival time, folks, a mask on the face of grotesque reality.
There is nothing new about eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die, or laugh and the world laughs with you; cry and you cry alone. So what do we get? Gargantua. The time is approaching when the mask comes off.
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