Halloween News Alert - The John McCain - Stingy Jack Controversy Unveiled (Humor)
Posted: Wednesday, October 29, 2008
by Dan Bimrose
Liberal Fix
The origins of Halloween go way back and can be found in the ancient Celtic Festival of Samhain. It is a festival to celebrate the end of the harvest.
The Gaelic culture believed that on October 31st the line between living and dead dissolved. Obviously this creates problems, more for the living than the dead. For the dead it would be little more than a one day vacation.
The placing of candles in carved out pumpkins began originally in Europe where they carved out turnips. They must grow pretty big turnips in Europe. The powerful turnip industry in the US is currently campaigning to reverse the trend back in the hopes that all of us will start taking our kids to the nearest turnip patch for our hay rides. Turnip industry insiders have told me that the slogans being considered are "got turnips" and "turnips rule".
As a side note did you know that if you say turnip multiple times over that the word starts to sound very odd.
Anyway, the term Jack O' Lantern goes back to the Irish legend of Stingy Jack. Stingy Jack was a greedy, hard-drinking gambler. He was also a sly man who managed to trick the devil. He talked the devil up a tree and while he was up there he carved a cross in the trunk thereby trapping him.
Well as you can imagine the devil was none too happy with this. He placed a curse on ole Stingy Jack which sentenced him to walking the earth with only the light of a candle inside a turnip to guide the way.
Hmmm.....interesting. Is it mere coincidence that a common nick name for John is Jack? Is it a mere coincidence that some believe that John McCain's heritage has been misrepresented as Scottish when it was likely Irish? Is it mere coincidence that after the last debate John McCain challenged Barack Obama to a tree climbing competition but only if Obama went first? Has anyone ever seen Stingy Jack and John McCain in the same room?
As described above Stingy Jack was greedy, hard-drinking and a gambler. So lets look at the facts. Is John McCain greedy? Well he and his wife certainly qualify as rich and he wants tax breaks for the rich. There could be a connection. Is John McCain a hard-drinker? Well I have not seen or found any evidence of it but he did marry the heiress to a wealthy beer distributorship. There might be a connection. Is he a gambler? Well he did choose Sarah Palin for his running mate, and regardless of your personal feelings for her this was seen by most to be a gamble. Another possible connection.
Spooky. Remember the Drudge Report, TMZ or Geraldo Rivera were not the first news sources to reveal this story it was yours truly. It looks like I just picked up the ball that they dropped.
Dan Bimrose is the creator of coffeeandprozac.com which features daily Opinions, Editorials, and Stories and the website tuesdaysreleases.com which is devoted to recently released DVD movies.
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