by Pino Corrias
Time Passes, Servants Remain. The Republican delegates who today wear an ear bandage like their beloved Trump do not know what happened over three centuries ago in Paris. The passage of time leaves the servants unchanged. These Republican delegates, emulating Trump with their ear bandages, are unaware of a similar (and grotesque) event that took place more than three centuries ago in Paris. On November 18, 1686, King Louis XIV, the Sun King, underwent surgery for an anal fistula. This curious incident was recounted by the renowned French scholar Daria Galateria in her introduction to The Tales of Charles Perrault (Marsilio, 2002).
That morning, the surgeon operated on the King’s posterior in front of four French dignitaries. The operation was so successful that the news spread throughout the kingdom. Zealous nobles went so far as to have their own buttocks incised, if only slightly, to display the same bandage as the King, as a mark of homage and loyalty. It became an epidemic of bandages, as French history tells us. The other day in Milwaukee, it happened again—everyone sporting ear bandages, demonstrating the same fervor of subservience to their leader, with the unintended detail of swapping French noblemen’s buttocks for the bourgeois faces of American servants.
Il Fatto Quotidiano, July 21, 2024
