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| P.T. Barnum |
It’s still possible to speak freely in the United States, provided you do not rub the wrong way the feathers of Twitter or the grizzly-like spiked fur of Facebook.
Both Twitter and Facebook denied use of their platform some
time ago to former President Donald Trump on dubious grounds. Facebook has
graciously decided to reopen its platform to Trump after its two year sentence
has expired, provided Trump minds his tongue. It may be impossible, Trump
critics might agree, to expect the ex-President to mind his manners.
Trump supporters, pointing to the questionable
rationalizations of both Facebook and Twitter, almost immediately drew from
their rhetorical scabbards an adage sometimes attributed to circus impresario
and son of Bridgeport P.T. Barnum – “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
Most Americans know when they are being suckered and,
despite the admonition that in the land of the free and the home of the brave a
sucker is born every minute, no one can reasonably be expected to appreciate
the suckering. News people are especially aggrieved by it when they think they
are being suckered by Republicans.
Before proceeding, it should be said that the phrase
“There’s a sucker born every minute” may have been misattributed to P.T.
Barnum.
However, an early 1883 reference to the phrase appeared in a
New Haven, Connecticut paper. Referring to gamblers, now legal in Connecticut only in venues acceptable to tax hungry politicians, the paper noted that most
gamblers call everyone outside their narrow circle suckers. They say “There is a sucker
born every minute, and New York is the best place in the
world to catch them.”
Barnum entered the circus business late in life, at age 60.
He was a newspaper editor in his hometown, Bethel, Connecticut. He served two
terms in the legislature as a representative of Fairfield, and spoke early in favor
of the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. "A human soul, that God has created and
Christ died for, Barnum said, “is not to be trifled with. It may tenant the
body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab, or a Hottentot—it is still an immortal
spirit.” Mayor of Bridgeport in 1875, Barnum improved the water supply, brought
gas lighting to the streets, and vigorously enforced liquor and prostitution
laws. He was instrumental in starting Bridgeport Hospital in 1878 and served as
its first president.
There are statues of Barnum in both Bridgeport and Bethel,
neither of which have yet been set upon by statue beheaders and desecrators.
Connecticut, following a monopoly on gambling given by
former Governor of Connecticut Lowell Weicker to remnants of the Pequot Indian
tribe in the state, has been pretty adept in making "gambling suckers" of us all, provided a portion of the take ends up in Connecticut’s treasury. Recently,
Connecticut Democrats have made pot growing and distribution legal, although in
seeking to encourage urban pot enterprises through licensing preferment, the
authors of the pot legislation, an unwieldy
300 page document, ran into the same difficulties mobsters may have
encountered among competing interests when gambling and drug distribution were
illegal. When the government or the mob picks winners and losers, tender feelings
are sometimes bruised.
It has been decided that English Captain John Mason, niched
in a necklace of Connecticut heroes around the state Capitol in Hartford, has
given Connecticut a black eye, and the black eye must be removed. In a series of raids on the Pequot tribe
in lower Connecticut, Mason had, along with other Indians, wiped out the tribe
after the Pequots had killed 13 English colonists and traders.
Mason's removal will leave an empty niche at the Capitol. With
whom shall it be filled?
Barnum would seem to be a painless choice for reasons mentioned
above. Also, Barnum was not a Puritan Indian killer. He improved the lot
of Bridgeport and never spent a stretch in jail for racketeering, racketeering
conspiracy, extortion, honest services mail fraud, bribery involving programs receiving federal funds, and filing false
income tax returns, charges for which the honorable Joe Ganim, present mayor of
Bridgeport, was sentenced to 108 months in prison. Barnum probably would have
voted down a measure to set aside state funding to help pot-heads taking
advantage of the new state law legalizing pot use, because -- see above, Barnum on
alcohol prohibition -- he would not have favored a bill legalizing pot in the first
place. Barnum was too ardently in favor of slavery abolition at a time when politicians and
media adepts in the Northeast regarded abolitionists as radical
disturbers of the peace.
Most importantly, Barnum, at age 60, three years younger than present President Pro Tem of the State Senate Martin Looney, sure knew how to run a three ring circus.
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