4528 The President and the Hershey Bar

This used to cost a nickel.  And it was bigger.

What do you think of when you hear the name “Hershey?” Chances are it’s a candy bar, the chocolate of peasants and kings the world over.

Or maybe you think of the small, unincorporated company hamlet in Pennsylvania with the chocolate factory, museums, a large and well-attended amusement park where people don’t fall off rides. 

There’s also a pretty decent hospital, some charity offices and a couple of dozen saloons, none of which is called “The Hershey Bar,” where people can retire while their friends and families are busy not falling off rides, having their hearts transplanted or getting contact chocolate highs from the factory smokestacks.

And you can’t swing a dead cat in certain areas of the state without hitting someone named Hershey.

it’s also a place where people gather to hear tall tales told by America’s Storyteller, donald trump, currently pretending to be president and always on tour.

And there he was, earlier this week, with a sputtering 90 minute extravaganza of a tall tale, delivered to an allegedly unpaid cheering crowd. And showman that he is, he followed an important rule of vaudeville, never turn your back on the audience.  We’ll see why that’s important at the end of this tale, which is roughly five times shorter than the Great Man’s speech.

Selling his usual snake oil concoction of lies, brags, racism, sexism, antisemitism; salting it with seeds of victimization, and manufacturing fake enemies for you to devour along with him, trump zigged and zagged through his ever-expanding repertoire of disconnected insults.

--The FBI is corrupt, he says.  Then there are the usual cast of countries and characters:

-Hillary

-Russia

-Ukraine

-Any and every Democratic officeholder, former officeholder, potential officeholder… But especially

-Schiff

-Nadler

-Pelosi

-Obama

-Jews

-Nazis

-Socialists

The usual gang of people and things he’s either for or against.

An hour and a half of that is poison. Tell him that and he’ll give you the cure: more poison, more venom.

To use a trumpestuous form of the language: “I don’t know whether or not this is true.  But what I heard is that our teller of tales has a tail. Also, Doctor Bone spurs removed the horns.

The scars that may be on his head are why he wears his hair that way. And the tail is why he never turns his back.

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

Comments: please send to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019

1422 You're Nobody 'til Somebody Hacks You

Let’s face it: you’re not Sony.  You’re not Target. You’re not Home Despot.   

While identity theft is rampant, major hackings go only to the majors.  

The only exception is the NSA which knows which side of the bed you sleep on and your blood pressure, but won’t sell or publish your social security or bank account numbers unless it’s in a bad mood.

No, the true malice is reserved for the mighty.  Usually, it’s a collective mighty.  Like Sony or Target or Home Despot. Or some gigunda bank.

But there is a sense of status about a hack.  You ARE someone.

Do we really care about the email exchanges at Sony? Nah. It’s just gossip.  We love to peek.  And the hacking helped us.  

The retail hackers are more significant because of the potential harm they can do to customers.  And being part of a hacked group is trouble, not status.

If you’d like to join the upper ranks of the hacked, just announce that you’ve become a victim of some vicious nerd in Bulgaria or Belarus or Beijing.

Offshore hacks are far more exotic sounding than a vicious nerd operating out of an attic in Shawnee Mission, Kansas.

But if it’s status you want, self hacking is the way to go.   Copy and paste a love email on Facebook.  Then claim that someone has stolen both your email and your facebook accounts.

We love to know about extraordinary events in the lives of ordinary people, good and bad:  the in-flight birth of a baby… a rapper who hires a hit man to shoot at him because it’s street cred… a lone sailor lost at sea who makes a radio antenna out of a coathanger and is thereby found and then rescued.  And hacking -- real or fake -- still is an extraordinary event.

So self-hack away.  But don’t make it too outrageous or no one will believe your lie.  Tell your Facebook friends you lost some of -- but not all of -- your life savings.  Be credible:  say someone stole your identity and maxed out your MasterCard.  Then, max out your MasterCard.

Post a Youtube video telling your tale of woe.  Chances are it’ll go viral.  Everything “goes viral” and you’ll be a star.  Like Ebola, only probably less deadly.

In our celebrity crazed culture, everyone wants to be famous.  Well, here’s your chance.

But you’d better act fast.  Others who hadn’t thought of this path to stardom will be nipping at your heels.

Grapeshot:

--Question for Jeff Bezos: When Amazon doesn’t make a profit, which is pretty much all the time, how did you get so rich?

--Question for Al Sharpton, Hillary Clinton, Lush Rimbaugh and Ted Cruz: Would you please step out of the limelight?

--Question for the entire cast of “Shark Tank:” Will you give us advance notice when all of you jump into a real one?

--Question for Aaron Sorkin: Why do all of your characters have to speak like Paddy Chayefsky-esque college professors?

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

Will someone please talk to Google about allowing macros in “Drive?”

© WJR 2014