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What’s Wrong with America? It’s the Shortage of Poker-Playing Dogs
What’s wrong with America?
Well, as Tevye the Dairyman didn’t say, I’ll tell you – everything went wrong when we got rid of the pictures of those poker-playing dogs.
The other day I visited to the salon of the nice lady who cuts my hair every two weeks, and realized that an essential facet of Americana was missing – pictures of dogs playing pokers, especially that great American classic, “A Friend in Need.”
Oh, sure, the licenses and health certificates are amusing reading (unless Texas laws have been changed recently, acquiring a balloon pilot’s license to take people up into the air and then drop them to their deaths is easier to acquire than a beautician’s license). Last month’s copy of Texas Monthly, fine, fine. It’s not Field and Stream, of course. Flowers, fine. Smelly candle-thingies, okay.
But what’s really missing is an uplifting picture of dogs playing poker.
Early in the twentieth century, Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, aka “Cash,” was a jack-of-all-trades but a master of painting anthropomorphic dogs for an advertising firm. His most famous series is known as Dogs Playing Poker (although his dogs were also known to play football and practice law), and they became a staple artistic statement in saloons, waiting rooms, and, most especially, barber shops.
It was poker-playing dogs that made America great.
As Keats would have said were he an American, where are the poker-playing dogs of yesteryear; aye, where are they?
When we had poker-playing dogs we still had a good ten-cent cigar.
When we had poker-playing dogs all our children were good, did their homework, helped out on the farm, and went to Sunday school.
When we had poker-playing dogs we had real battleships, by golly.
When we had poker-playing dogs our airplanes had propellers just as Wilbur and Orville intended, and not those funny-looking jet things.
But now that we’ve gotten rid of the poker-playing dogs, where are we? Hah?
We need those pictures of poker-playing dogs back, yes, sir. I think we should place them next to pictures of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in the classrooms of America.
When children pledge Allegiance to the Flag every morning they should be able also to see those poker-playing dogs, and be proud of what this great nation has accomplished in art.
Every barber shop and every hair salon in the Land of the Free should display poker-playing dogs as an inspiration to our fine young men and women.
Restore the poker-playing dogs, and make America unselfconsciously proletarian again!
Shave and a haircut – six bits!
-30-
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