Charlatans and how to catch 'em

When I was a youngster, I was quite sick with bronchial asthma. My mother tried all sorts of doctors to try and cure me. One doctor she tried, was this new doctor everyone was talking about. "She's amazing!" claimed her friends.

So, off we trotted, to check this new doctor out. I remember she being in the Indonesian consulate building or near that. I remember those wonderful teak carvings of their shadow puppets on the side of the building.

Well, the good doctor saw us, after like a 2 hour wait. The waiting room was full of sick people and my mother was disgusted by the "local people." See, my mother is pretty much a snob. We went to private doctors in Singapore cause she didn't trust the "local people."

The doctor prescribed medicine, then told my mother "She (me) will probably have some ill effects from the medicine at first. Don't worry. Just keep feeding her the medicine and after a few times of seeing me, she will get much better."

Well, I don't remember much (I think I was 8) but apparently, my reaction to the medicine petrified my mother. So much so, she wouldn't go back to that doctor after another visit or two. I remember thinking as a child, that it was more a reaction to the "local people" than to my reaction (especially since I had no memory of my reactions).

Well, months later, my mother looked up triumphantly from reading the Straits Times, and declared to me, "See! I was right to take you away from that doctor!" In the newspaper, was an article about how that doctor was hauled away for fraud. Apparently, she was poisoning her patients, then removing that poison and voila! Instant cure.

Of course, she never told her patients she had been poisoning them in the first place.

WHICH brings us in a totally roundabout way to today's topic: the Charlatan in the White House.

Here's our Idjit-in-Chief trying to explain on Estonian TV why terrorism has risen in the past two years.

"Q Latest surveys show that the numbers of terrorism are increasing, not decreasing.

"THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

"Q Why is that?

"THE PRESIDENT: Well --

"Q You have made a lot of efforts.

"THE PRESIDENT: Yes, that's why. If we weren't trying to find the enemy and bring him to justice, the world would look relatively peaceful. But we're on the offense. And so when you engage the enemy, when you try to bring them to justice, they don't like to be brought to justice."

Hmmm, anyone smell a Charlatan?

Filed under Politics & B.S..