4531 The Piltdown President

Prehistoric man swings more modern caveman’s club.

Maybe Piltdown man wasn’t a hoax, after all.  Back in the era when PT Barnum was considered non-fiction, someone claimed to unearth the skull of the missing link -- what supposedly came b

just before humans.  The “discoverer” was an archeology hobbyist named Charles Dawson.  And he said he made the discovery in Piltdown, which is near Sussex which is in England.

This happened in 1912 which itself is often considered pre-historic.

It took actual archeologists and a bevy of other scientific types to conclusively “prove” that Piltdown Man was a hoax.  That happened in 1953.  It took 41 years to figure out that Dawson might have made the whole thing up.  Apparently, the bone fragments smelling of hide glue didn’t set off any alarms.

Piltdown man was said to be half a million years in England’s past.  But current thinking has changed.  Put an underdeveloped brain into a critter with a big, loud mouth and what do you get?

That could be the answer about this guy as a throwback and how he set off the reappearance of throwbacks hiding in the closets of their caves.  Those described by the scientists as “fully developed but small-brained.”

The Piltdown skull seems to have been cobbled together with spare parts.  The so-called hoaxers used a handy British skull fragment and some bones from ancient animals and made it look like something half man and half ape.

The only remaining question is how did Piltdown stay out of sight for so long. We’d know more if we had a skull with an open mouth and orange hair.

You have to credit this guy Dawson.  He pulled a fast one on practically everyone.  And those everyones spent longer than the average lifetime of a Piltdowner proving there was no such thing.

But what if they were wrong?  What if there really was a Piltdown Man?  Well, it’s starting to look like there may have been. When we see bones, we don’t also see body fat or development. 

The original skull is still around. Maybe we should dress it up in a fatsuit. Hang a too-long red tie around his neck and compare this with you-know-who.

SHRAPNEL:

--Boeing fired its CEO because of planes that crashed and killed people. But that’s not enough. CEOs are essentially “idea people” and paper pushers.  There’s a whole string of lackeys standing on the line behind the top guy and executing the screwups for him.

--Figurehead Chief Justice Roberts says he will consult with his “inner umpire” in conducting the Senate trial of the impeached president. Who’s he kidding?  The fix is already in.

The staff and management of Wessays™ wish you a happy holiday filled with joy and well-aged fruitcake.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Comments:  Please send to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019

4530 Capone Speaks from the Grave

don and Al, brothers who never met.  That we know of.

Al Capone was the most famous gangster of the prohibition era.  He was a ruthless murdering crime boss whose downfall came from a small and insignificant breaking of the law.  If Al had had the inept Rudy Giuliani for a lawyer, he would never have been brought down by the likes of the Federal Prosecutors on the small charge. Eliot Ness got lucky.

But that was a different era.  They got “Al Brown” of the Bronx borough of New York on income tax evasion. He died after serving time, his syphilis did him in, not his criminal empire that had gripped Chicago and much of the rest of the nation.

And now, we have a different kind of gangster.  A con man, a deceiver of a magnitude Capone could never have conceived of and we’re treating him the same way we treated the anti-hero, Capone.

Throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks. Plenty. But the “cops” who “got him” are amateurs.  They have no idea how to bring down a Mobster-Mastermind, which precisely what trump is. (Neither did Giuliani, if you check his record as US Attorney.  Good thing he went into politics, because he had no future as a lawyer as his current client shows.)

Yes, the Democratic majority in the house of representatives impeached trump on two of a potential 11,356 possible counts.  And maybe there’s more to come.  Now, the totally nonpartisan United States Senate will deliberate his fate for ten seconds and declare him “not guilty.” After all, that phone call with the Ukraine president was … perfect.

And Chief Justice Roberts will have no choice to pronounce the President as such.  Delaying the start of the trial sounds delicious. Let that hang over his head for a while.

To be fair, trump is more John Gotti than Capone. He doesn’t observe the kind of silence and grit that Capone represented when questioned about his “associates,” as lawyers and prosecutors call his groupies and lackeys. 

Did you watch any of that eight hour “debate” in the House on Wednesday? Screaming Republican kindergarteners vs. boring self-righteous Democratic know it all frat boys and girls.  

New York Times columnist Gail Collins worries in print that the crazy president will get even crazier and do still more damage before he leaves office, which at some point he will have to.

But what about Capone? What would Al say to trump?  Impossible to tell for sure, of course.  But most likely it would be along the lines of “Cancel the twitter account.  Try to look more like a President.  Hit a bucket or two of golf balls on a driving range each morning. Don’t worry, pally, Americans have a collective short term memory problem. If they can resuscitate my image, they can resuscitate yours.” 

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Comments? Please send to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019