Once It Was Farce, Today It's History

Doing a little channel-surfing, I caught five minutes from the final reel of the best Marx Brothers comedy, Duck Soup. As war rages between Fredonia and neighboring Sylvania, a bomb flies through the headquarters of Fredonian President Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho). In a rage he grabs a machine gun and starts firing out the window. He's delighted to see the soldiers in the street below falling like flies until his aide, played by brother Zeppo, runs in with bad news:

Zeppo: Your Excellency, you're shooting your own men!

Groucho: (pauses, non-plussed; then) Here's five dollars, keep it under your hat.

Now we know where Donald Rumsfeld learned his strategy for handling cases of "friendly fire."