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Ripples #97
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Ripples #97

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Ripples art--smallCongressman’s Tongue-in-Cheek Idea:
Install a Truth-Testing Swimming Pool

Rep. Tony Cardenas, D-Calif., a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has proposed a novel idea for speeding up the committee’s work — which he apparently thinks has started to resemble witch hunts of yore.

According to an article on abcnews.go.com, Cardenas called on committee chair Darrell Issa, R-Calif., “to ‘install an above-ground pool’ to aid the GOP chairman’s investigations into a wide range of controversies.” As proposed, the pool would be erected in the committee’s chambers. From the ABC News piece:

“We are picking winners and losers, when it is clearly obvious that witches can only be found by dunking them in water,” Cardenas wrote. “If they float they’re a witch. If they don’t, installing a pool will allow us to retrieve the nonwitch before he or she drowns.”

Cardenas wants to name the pool the “Senator Joseph R. McCarthy Memorial Truth Pond,” after the discredited, 1950s political witch-hunter (the witches then being alleged Communists).

Happily, Cardenas’ proposal amends the dunking procedure compared to how it was practiced in medieval times: Now nonwitches would be pulled out of the drink before they drowned. By way of explanation, we again present part of the March 16, 2011 installment of Ripples, entitled “Witchcraft and ‘Swimming’: Horrific, Always Deadly Test”:

Today we think of swimming as a fun, healthful, refreshing activity, but it was not always so. According to the Web site Suite101.com, a gruesome practice called “swimming” was used in 16th and 17th century Britain to ascertain if someone was a witch. Many thousands of women — and some men as well — suffered the consequences.

Suite 101.com reports the details of one typical case: “In Coldred, a small village of the outskirts of the Port of Dover in Kent, the village pond was regularly used for swimming during witch trials to establish guilt by whether the accused floated or sank. In the 1640s, an elderly woman, Nell Garlinge, was tightly bound, her thumbs and toes being tied crosswise, and then she was hurled into the water. Nell drowned and was pronounced innocent!”

And if Nell had not drowned? She would have been deemed guilty of being a witch and would have been promptly executed using one of the preferred methods of the day: burning at the stake, strangulation, beheading or hanging.

Talk about a lose-lose situation! Not to worry, though, dear fellow Americans: Cardenas clearly was speaking with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Even so, Chairman Issa did not appear to be all that amused, since none of his spokespeople would respond when asked about Cardenas’ innovative proposal.

One thing is clear: The long-running stage production of “The Capitol Hill Follies” in Washington, D.C., goes on… and on… and on…

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