In Hans Christian Andersen’s THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES, a little boy is finally able to say what no one else would: the emperor had no clothes! The key element which Andersen left out of the fable was this: access!
Everywhere you turn today you can find people frothing at the mouth for the chance to say “the president has no clothes!” But no one can hear it. Television reporters can look at you with a cynical smile, even offer their agreement, but the message goes no further than their camera lens.
People with access to those in power don’t seem up to making a peep. What about their friends? Doesn’t anyone chide whoever is above them on the food chain for not stating the obvious? What do White House minions say to their relatives over the holidays? Do they fear something from speaking out about which we don’t?
Would a danger to their persons or livelihood be relevant? Many of those people are our elected representatives. Wouldn’t it be their job to cry out? And what about our cultural heroes? They owe their popularity to the largess of the people. Where are they to speak out?
Lance Armstrong can beat seven seasons of Frenchmen, he can beat cancer, but he doesn’t dare face off our little emperor in his skivvies?
This president has no clothes! Before we get caught up arguing with those who would take the accusation literally, let’s say that by no clothes we mean no brain, and he absolutely has no heart. Both of these observations are unimpeachable. We see it everyday on TV. The president is a moron. And we see what he is doing. Heartless.
Or do you stand among those in Andersen’s fable who would have said “nonsense, little boy, your heart is simply not pure enough for you to be able to see his clothes.” Any child reading along with you would put you in your place. Unless he was resigned already that you were deceiving him for some reason, he’d call you a fool.
And he’d be right, because this emperor does not have a stitch of anything on!
I have nothing against naked loony psychopaths, but it’s fairly accepted that they are best kept in institutions where they will not harm the rest of us. Those who would prop a rampaging mentally disabled lunatic into the president’s office, declining to comment on his quite visible impairments, instead declaring him “the best man for the job” so they might continue to line their own pockets, those people must be put into prison.
This emperor’s courtiers: the influence peddlers, opportunists, crooks and stooges are the true danger. They maintain the barricade over which the little boy’s voice cannot be heard.
But on our side of the barricade, in the free speech zone, we hear him.
