Rutledge
Master Sergeant
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2006
- Messages
- 1,224
Today's Barron's had an article by weisenheimer writer Joe Queenan.
He addresses: "HOW WOULD IT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE FOR Bernie Madoff's wife, and sons and nieces and colleagues and senior employees, not to know that he was running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme for so many years...?"
A really good question. Anyway, below is a small exerpt, produced without permission, that WWII hobbyists may find humorous.
PS: Who doesnt need an extra laugh or two these days?
"....OR CONSIDER A MORE MODERN CASE, involving not a criminal, but rather a respected general: Erwin Rommel, commander of the Panzer divisions that wreaked havoc in North Africa in the early 1940s. Not wishing to let his family know the danger to which he was exposed in battling the Allies, he "deliberately filled the den with stuffed giraffes and photos of King Tut, so we all assumed that he spent so much time in North Africa because he really liked it down there," recalls his trusted accountant, Fritz Adelhoffer, now 98.
"He also said the desert air was good for his sinuses. Not until I got an angry letter from a dry cleaner in El Alamein asking when 'Mister Desert Fox' was going to pick up the 20 leather jackets he left behind in 1943 did I begin to suspect that he might be the head of the Afrika Korps. Gott im Himmel! I always thought he was in import-export."
Perhaps the most famous example of a renowned individual who succeeded in keeping his kin and friends in the dark was Attila the Hun. After his death in the year 453, all 356 of the wives of this unreconstructed enemy of mankind said that they had no idea whatsoever that they had been living with the Scourge of God.
"When we would ask him why he was always disappearing into the steppes with 150,000 horsemen armed to the teeth, he would tell us that he belonged to a re-enactors' club and they were going off to the Urals to simulate the Siege of Troy," explained his favorite wife, Barbetta, a former Thracian courtesan. "The truth is, those guys drank so much we were happy to see them go. It was the only way you could get any peace around here."
He addresses: "HOW WOULD IT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE FOR Bernie Madoff's wife, and sons and nieces and colleagues and senior employees, not to know that he was running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme for so many years...?"
A really good question. Anyway, below is a small exerpt, produced without permission, that WWII hobbyists may find humorous.
PS: Who doesnt need an extra laugh or two these days?
"....OR CONSIDER A MORE MODERN CASE, involving not a criminal, but rather a respected general: Erwin Rommel, commander of the Panzer divisions that wreaked havoc in North Africa in the early 1940s. Not wishing to let his family know the danger to which he was exposed in battling the Allies, he "deliberately filled the den with stuffed giraffes and photos of King Tut, so we all assumed that he spent so much time in North Africa because he really liked it down there," recalls his trusted accountant, Fritz Adelhoffer, now 98.
"He also said the desert air was good for his sinuses. Not until I got an angry letter from a dry cleaner in El Alamein asking when 'Mister Desert Fox' was going to pick up the 20 leather jackets he left behind in 1943 did I begin to suspect that he might be the head of the Afrika Korps. Gott im Himmel! I always thought he was in import-export."
Perhaps the most famous example of a renowned individual who succeeded in keeping his kin and friends in the dark was Attila the Hun. After his death in the year 453, all 356 of the wives of this unreconstructed enemy of mankind said that they had no idea whatsoever that they had been living with the Scourge of God.
"When we would ask him why he was always disappearing into the steppes with 150,000 horsemen armed to the teeth, he would tell us that he belonged to a re-enactors' club and they were going off to the Urals to simulate the Siege of Troy," explained his favorite wife, Barbetta, a former Thracian courtesan. "The truth is, those guys drank so much we were happy to see them go. It was the only way you could get any peace around here."