Pine Nuts with McAvoy Layne: Run Harry Run
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Sun, 01/15/2023 - 6:15pm
Dateline, September, 2022: “Seventy-three-year-old Man Lands First Job - King of England.”
So, what do kings do, anyways? Well, we get an idea about what kings do in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, when Huck and Jim are floating down the Mississippi on their raft.
Jim asks, “What do kings got to do, Huck?”
“Well, when things is dull, they fuss with the parlyment; and if everybody don’t go just so, he whacks their heads off. But mostly they hang round the harem.”
Times have changed since we came to this country to escape King George and declare our independence. But not that much has changed for Prince Harry. He recently came to this country with his American wife Meghan to escape monarchy and claim independence.
In case you haven’ heard, our American guest, the Duke of Sussex, has written a memoir, called, “Spare.” Apparently, when Harry was born, Charles allegedly told Diana: "Wonderful! Now you've given me an heir and a spare.”
In his memoir, Harry claims to have killed 25 Taliban fighters while serving in Afghanistan as a soldier, and the way in which he characterizes those killings is rather telling, “You can’t kill people if you see them as people. They trained me to ‘other-ize’ them, and they trained me well.” This speaks to a larger malaise, where Vladimir Putin, arguably the world’s most powerful reigning monarch, said to Ukraine a year ago, “If you won’t marry me, I will kill you.”
Moving right along, while we are about to provide Ukraine with American M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles (don’t call them tanks), we risk the chance of tripping over an escalation tripwire. While Iran is supplying Russia with drones, Germany is supplying Ukraine with Marders, and we shall soon have munitions enough in Ukraine to more than double the damage already done. Sadly, as Ukraine’s foreign minister, Kuleba, put it in a recent Facebook post, “The time of weapons taboo has passed.”
Just as preparation for war begets war, escalation of war begets desolation. Mister Putin, withdraw your troops and negotiate a cease-fire. I will thank you, God will thank you, and it will do the world a world of good…
As for Harry, now our Duke of Sussex, I wish him and his wife every happiness here in the Land of the Free. Should they visit our Lake of the Sky, I invite them to dine here at Twain Haven, and lift a pint with me to eventual peace across the world.
I shall leave the last word, as it relates to our present political climate, to our mutual friend, Mark Twain: “The atrocious doctrine of allegiance to party, plays directly into the hands of politicians of the baser sort, and doubtless it was borrowed, or stolen, from the monarchial system. I wish I might live fifty years longer; I believe I should see the end of what is surely the grotesquest of all the swindles ever invented by man — monarchy.”
— Go here to listen to this and other McAvoy Layne columns.For more than 30 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American."
