National Affairs: Facts & Feathers

• Share

Once upon a time, Chicken-lichen went into the woods to look for meat, and an acorn fell upon her poor head, so she cried: "The sky is falling down!" She told Hen-len who told Cock-lock, who told Duck-luck, who told Drake-lake, who told Goose-loose, who told Gander-lander, who told Turkey-lurkey. And on their way to tell the King, they met Fox-lox, who offered to take them to the Palace. Instead, he ate them all up. Moral: Use Your Head, Else a Fox May Pluck Your Feathers.

Once upon another time, Estes-lestes went into the woods in search of an issue, and the idea hit him in the head like a mighty H-bomb, so he naturally decided to tell everybody about it. As he stood before reporters, he told them: "The force from the explosion from a large hydrogen bomb is getting so stupendous and so dangerous that the maximum force available to us right now from a concussion of hydrogen bombs is ... sufficient to blow the earth off its axis by 16 degrees, which would affect the seasons." The reporters asked him how was this so, and Estes-lestes told them that as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Armed Services, he had learned that very fact. The reporters thought that this was just horsefeathers, so they told the people, and the people asked the scientists, and the scientists doubted this "very seriously," and said it is "incredible" and that there is nothing "within the realm of scientific fact that would substantiate such a statement." Moral: Use Your Head for the People Are Foxy and Know the Difference Between Facts and Feathers.