(Reprinted to Blog from email list of 7/30/05)
*** Bob’s Insider’s Message ***
Benjamin Franklin
c/o Time Warp Mail Service
Dear Mr. Franklin,
You are facing extremely serious legal problems.
1) Your invention of bifocal lens.
You have no qualifications whatsoever in the fields of optometry or ophthalmology. You are ordered to cease and desist from the use or discussion of this product.
Lawsuits have been lodged against you by people whose bifocals have broken and gashed their skins. Others say that they confuse the eyes and cause double vision.
2) Your invention of the stove
Your Franklin Stove has caused serious injury to a very large number of people. Children playing have bumped into it and been burned by it. You have no Federally-approve set of directions for its use, so you are personally responsible for every accident that occurs in using your product.
3) Your discovery of the Gulf Stream
As with optometry in the case of your invention of bifocals, you are practicing meteorology with no degree or other qualifications in the subject.
While no one has yet been able to formulate an actual lawsuit against you on this subject, you have made a laughing-stock of yourself by going outside the field of printing, where you do have some actual credentials.
You are in deep trouble in other areas.
Your comments about Quakers, Indians and other minority groups were definitely Hate Speech.
You are charged with manslaughter and armed robbery in aiding and abetting in the robbery of America from the Native Americans.
Other charges are pending.
Yours Indignantly,
The Association of Experts, Lawyers, Professors and Other Authorities in the Year 2005
Bob
#1 by Elizabeth on 07/31/2005 - 4:01 pm
I enjoyed this.
There have been some good new biographies of Ben Franklin. I read two of them — Walter Isaacson’s and a slightly earlier one by a fellow whose last name begins with a “B.” Isaacson’s was okay, but the other one was much better.
#2 by Bob on 07/31/2005 - 9:35 pm
Elizabeth,
I read Isaacson’s book and it is all that can be expected of someone named Isaacson writing about a gentile founding father. For some reason he concentrates heavily on Franklin’s concern for minority groups and fails to mention Franklin’s constant ridicule of same in his autobiogaphy.
I looked up authors who wrote before Isaacson and whose name begins with the letter “B.”
Since I am old and don’t have that much longer on this earth, could you narrow it down a little?