To Tell The Truth, a game show during the ’50’s, ’60’s and ’70’s, entertained the audience with guessing which of three people was who he or she claimed to be. I’ve read that they sometimes picked their imposters for the show from bus stops. That would be interesting.

“Hey, honey! I’m supposed to pretend to be a famous opera singer next week!”

“Very funny. The only one inspired by your singing is the silverfish in the shower.”

“No! Really!”

“Must’ve been a hard day. You’ll feel better after supper. Sit. Eat. Your mother called.”

A panel of celebrities (okay, so most of them were the kind of celebrities many people didn’t know much about – actually kind of refreshing from the celebrity culture bombarding the long-suffering public today) judged whether strangers were lying or telling the truth about who they were.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? The number of people running around claiming to be someone they are not has grown exponentially since then. How are we supposed to judge whether the person selected as transportation secretary actually knows diddly squat about airplanes, for instance? Or, speaking of air travel, whether Sam Brinton found a cute pair of shoes to go with the women’s clothes he stole at multiple airports? And why, as long as we’re on the subject of filling the post of an officer within an office within an office, a nation with trillions of dollars of debt actually needs a 1.deputy 2.assistant 3.secretary of 1.spent fuel and waste 2.disposition in the office of nuclear energy? Too many secretary positions and too much waste, if you ask me. And don’t get me started on the imposter(s) pretending to run the nation. But, hey, I’m just the audience. So are you.

I’ll tell you one thing. The day the audience rises en masse and asks “Will the real (fill in the blank) please stand up?” is fast approaching. It will be followed by the clamor of “The emperor has no clothes!” And it cannot come fast enough.

Reference# from: The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Anderson, 1837