Dear readers,
Where will it end?
Recently, classified documents were found in former President Donald Trump’s rumpus room at Mar-a-Lago. It was historic. Never had anyone been so careless with government secrets. Or so we thought.
As it turns out, way back when Donald Trump was an actor playing himself on the TV show, “The Apprentice,” Senator Joe Biden was storing government secrets in his garage next to his vintage 1967 Corvette.
On a side note, I think Trump might go down in TV show history for having the best catchphrase, “You’re Fired.”
It is in my top three along with Clara Peller’s “Where’s the Beef” and J.J. Walker’s “Dyn-O-Mite.”
Now where was I?
Oh yeah, now some classified documents have been discovered in former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana home. It is beginning to look like having a few classified documents laying around is something former vice presidents and presidents have in common.
I predict it won’t be long until Jimmy Carter will report finding some old classified documents in his toolbox when hammering nails for Habitat for Humanity. After that, one by one, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Al Gore, and Dan Quayle will all turn over classified documents after looking under furniture and in the nooks and crannies of their houses.
The fact that these old guys forgot to put a few classified documents away shouldn’t come as a surprise. It certainly isn’t a surprise to the women reading this column. They are used to hearing the old guys in their house asking, “Where are my glasses?” of “Where did I put my keys?”
Old guys even misplace larger items, “Where did I park the car?”
So, should we be worried that maybe the Russians sent a spy to their house dressed in a meter reader’s costume to photograph the classified documents?
I doubt it, for two reasons.
The documents probably don’t contain any important information. Millions and millions of documents are marked classified. On a slow day, bored government employees entertain themselves by getting out the old-school rubber stamp and red ink pad. It is fun stamping documents with a rubber stamp. If you don’t believe me, give a rubber stamp and paper to your grandchildren. Just watch. These documents weren’t typed on a Remington typewriter by a confidential secretary wearing her hair in a bun and glasses shaped like a cat’s eye. The documents were typed on a computer. Nothing prepared on a computer is safe from the Russian or Chinese hackers.Besides, real spies all use computers these days. It is much more efficient than taking a photo of each page of a document with one of those tiny spy cameras like Jim Phelps used in the Mission Impossible TV show.
Army Private Bradley Manning, with a few clicks on his keyboard, sent 750,000 documents to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Private Manning was caught, convicted, and sent to prison. On the way to Federal Prison, Bradley took to heart the words of Lou Reed’s hit record from 1973, “Walk on The Wild Side.”
“Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she”
Now known as Chelsea Manning, her prison sentence was commuted by President Obama.
As Paul Harvey would say, “Now you know the rest of the story.”
See you all next week, same Schwinn time, same Schwinn channel.
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