Who do you trust, Part II

A tale of con men, media hustlers and politicians vs. common sense...

Originally, I planned to post this cartoon without comment because I didn’t think it needed any. But you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men and semi-retired political cartoonists.

This morning I woke up to the news that televangelist Jim Bakker – a guy who went to prison for fraud and has currently been accused of selling a fake coronavirus cure – now has the huevos rancheros to ask his supporters to send him more money so he doesn’t have to file for bankruptcy.

You need to send him cash or checks because apparently the credit card companies want nothing to do with this dude.

My mom is way out there on the Christianity spectrum, so I grew up watching her get taken in by people like Oral Roberts, Leroy Jenkins, Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker, whose ability to survive is only rivaled by cockroaches and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had some DNA in common.

Bakker’s cure for the COVID-19 virus was called the “Silver Solution” but I’m guessing the “30 Pieces of Silver Solution” would have been more accurate.

Bad, Bad Leroy Jenkins

While doing the minimum amount of research possible, I came across information about Leroy Jenkins, an evangelist I especially hate because as a kid I was drug to his circus tent revival meetings on several occasions.

This info comes from the internet, so make of it what you will, but according to what I read:

• Leroy sold his followers “miracle water” drawn from his own well, but the Ohio Department of Agriculture got involved and said his water contained coliform bacteria. Which, now that I think about it, might explain some of the odd flavors my mom was able to produce in our kitchen.

• Leroy was convicted of conspiracy to assault two men and burn down two homes.

• Leroy married a 77-year-old widow who had recently hit the Ohio Lottery for $6 million and if you think he didn’t marry for love, you really don’t understand just how much Leroy loved other people’s money. A judge with no poetry in his soul, but plenty of common sense in his head, annulled the marriage.

Leroy is now dead and I can only hope the Afterlife is treating him with all the respect and attention he deserves.

That takes care of televangelists, what about politicians?

The second news event that caught my eye this AM was Donald Trump asking aides live on camera – because we might not believe it otherwise – whether injecting disinfectant into the lungs of sick patients would wipe out the coronavirus.

He then added:

“Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. Again I say maybe you can, maybe you can’t. I’m not a doctor. I’m like a person who has a good you-know-what” and pointed to his head.

This is our president’s idea of being cagey, so when somebody decides an injection of Purell is just what his lungs need and discovers it wasn’t such a hot idea after all, Trump can point out that he only said “maybe” it would work.

Trump’s speculation led the people who make Lysol to announce that under no circumstance should disinfectant be administered into the human body and Washington’s state emergency management agency to warn that eating Tide pods might make a bad situation worse.

And let me add that you probably shouldn’t drink any leftover Leroy Jenkins miracle water you might find around the house, probably right next to those Bakker Buckets of freeze-dried food that he sold to his followers so they’d have something to munch on in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse.

So where were we?

Now that I’ve worked some childhood issues about con-men evangelists out of my system and taken another literary dump on the moron in the White House, let me leave you with this:

I’ve pointed this out before and no doubt will again, but with all the misinformation being spewed into the atmosphere you need to decide who you trust and what information you listen to.

And I’m not saying trust me; I’m just one more guy trying to make sense of what we’re going through.

But if I’m going to trust anybody it’s not going to be the people who sell miracle cures or say outrageous things on radio and TV for ratings or suggest mainlining Mr. Clean because “maybe” it will work.

I’m much more likely to listen to the people who have some expertise in the subject and are willing to let their position evolve as new information comes in.

And if you disagree with what would seem to be common sense, all I can say is you’re welcome to take a long walk off a short pier.

Maybe you can fly.